Kern County is screwed if California stops oil production. I'm not a global warming denier nor do I deny the environmental issues related to extraction (although some are certainly exaggerated)
Bakersfield is fucked if they do that... it'll become another coal town situation where WalMart and some agricultural jobs are all there is.
If California's politicians want to sacrifice Kern to achieve carbon neutrality (if such a thing is even possible, I'm pretty sure all our efforts haven't even halted the rise of carbon emissions) then I wish they would just state that, rather than just reading off some boilerplate "just transition" speech.
Perhaps its necessary that the oil industry here should shut down.(although this is one of the cleaner operations, its not like California didn't regulate it before). We get most of our other oil here in California from Saudi Arabia.
Perhaps it will even be a push from renewable that does it. Its just going to be very depressing seeing hundreds of good jobs go down the shitter with it.
A part time job using your own car to beg homeowners to install solar on their rooftops isn't going to replace a 40$ per hour rig job.
@greylaw89 I understand your concern, and it's valid. There are so many towns in the middle of the US which were once vibrant and now are down in their luck, the industries gone, young people without much options for a decent living locally. Despair, booze and drug use has climbed as a result.
Reducing the size of the vehicles people use, and the amount of fuel consumed, would be a good way to go, but it's unpopular in the US. In Europe, fuel prices are higher and people conserve, use smaller vehicles or pay the costs at the pumps if they prefer that.
It would be much more tolerable if it was something that was "market driven" like that... it wouldn't be anyone's active attempt at shutting it down.
If you watch the video (live now), the sides are not as absolute as that, but its getting very hard to get new permits, etc here (they put a moratorium on new permits after a surface expression (ie, a bunch of oil leaked to the surface, which isn't allowed)... which will eventually drive out many oil companies, especially the smaller guys that share very little in common with your mega oil corps like Chevron, etc. These often provide some trickle income for senior citizens or other people with moderate means.
Vehicle size is fair, I don't understand the motive behind driving a giant hard to maintain hunk of metal everywhere (except in cases of poverty, where it is pretty much the only option). On the other hand, if you think we can all afford a Tesla or Hybrid, thats not going to happen.
