On the same day that Hurricane (Tropical Storm) Hilary brought record rainfall to the Los Angeles area (nearly 6 inches to Lake Palmdale and 4.26 inches on the UCLA campus), a magnitude 5.1 earthquake occurred in nearby Ojai.

Image: Creative Commons under Unsplash

To the truly enlightened, these rare disasters should serve as a warning from on high that the Golden State is headed for a massive downfall – punishment for trying to force smog-fighting electric vehicles on smog-free America and the world.

And rightfully so.

After all, every hurricane, every heat wave, every forest fire, and every flood today anywhere in the world is blamed on climate change. Climate change even eats children’s homework! Yet the same humans who cannot stop the heat, the wind, the water, and the fire believe that they can control the climate through electrification.

What is climate change, anyway? If you ask religious leaders, it might be the evidence of human sin. Spain-based Hindu spiritual leader Swami Rameshwarananda, one of 50 faith leaders who drafted a set of ten spiritual principles for addressing the climate crisis, says, “We have to exchange the concept of ego for the concept of ‘eco.’ Ego is the problem.”

According to “the Elijah Board of World Religious Leaders,” these principles include “do no harm” (the Hippocratic Oath) and “every action matters.”

One “action” in the name of climate spirituality is the electric vehicle mandate, which, like abolishing fossil fuels and ending all mining activity, applies only to Europe, North America, and other nations dependent on Western money and power.

But electric vehicle mandates and abandonment of fossil fuels clearly violate “do no harm” – though their failures do demonstrate the sad truth that “every action matters.”

Another violator of “do no harm” is the “C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group,” whose goals have been endorsed by over 100 cities worldwide. The group’s objectives include – by the year 2030 – “0 kg meat consumption, 0 kg dairy consumption, 3 new clothing items per person per year, 0 private vehicles owned, and 1 short-haul return flight every 3 years per person.”

Meat-loving residents of Austin, Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and the nation’s capital are likely unaware that their city leaders have endorsed these goals, which are “based on a future vision of resource-efficient production and extensive changes in consumer choices.”

The virtuous mayor of New York, Eric Adams, has introduced citywide caps on meat and dairy served at city institutions (including public schools and prisons). The government of Ireland has promised to kill off 200,000 cattle, at a cost of £600 million, to reduce methane emissions and human meat and dairy consumption.  

One might think that this is part of a grander scheme to dramatically reduce the human population.

Seven years ago, author and entrepreneur A. D. Largie listed “10 methods” for reducing the human population. Transhumanism topped the list, but controlling the food supply came in second.

Largie says, “If you control the food supply for any living organism, you control the organism… The power-hungry elites among us understand this fact fully and have been slowly modifying the food of humans … to ultimately reduce the human population rate.”

As University of British Columbia population ecologist William Rees sees it, “We’re using up Earth’s resources at an unsustainable rate.” Yet our natural tendencies as humans “make it difficult for us to correct this ‘advanced ecological overshoot.’”

What an open door for elites to pursue a “course correction” without telling anyone.

Rees correctly claims that merely switching to renewables does not actually address the problem of exponential population growth (a byproduct of using fossil fuels). Such efforts instead further contribute to excess consumption. Rees doubts that technological advances can enable the Earth’s 8 billion residents to survive, let alone thrive.

Suppose those in power unleash deadly viruses (for which they choose who gets the antidote) on an unsuspecting world. Ordinary people can do little to prevent a massive kill. New generations of androids will serve them, and Bill Gates and others are pioneering lab-based food.

It has long been said, “As California goes, so goes the nation.”  Yet as early as 1989, Ronald Brownstein wrote, “Operating virtually outside public reach, Sacramento has become the political equivalent of ‘Lord of the Flies’; [it provides] a chance to examine what happens when politicians are left on their own, free from supervision. It hasn’t been a pretty sight.”

Three decades later, political columnist James Shott noted that a million Californians had fled to other states over the previous decade (a continuing trend). A major reason is that the average price for a house had jumped from three times the annual salary in 1970 to 10 times in 2019. No wonder over half the state’s residents wanted to leave.

What the people want no longer matters, or so it seems. For example, the new California policy that requires heavy-duty trucks is forcing older vehicles and their owners out of the state. State politicians are demanding zero emissions from these trucks regardless of performance impacts.

Canadian Dalbir Bala spent $130,000 on an electric Ford F-150 (hardly a giant truck) only to learn that fast-charging stations are neither fast nor provide a full charge. He dared not take the vehicle on fishing or camping trips, and he found that its performance was heavily affected by the weather.

An astonished Ford CEO Jim Farley sought to disprove Bala’s contention that the electric truck is a “scam” by attempting a cross-country road trip in his own electric F-150. “Charging has been pretty challenging,” he admitted. Even in California, it took 40 minutes to get a 40% charge. Trying to spin this stubborn reality into a positive, Farley concluded, “Long hauling in an electric truck is an act of pioneerism.”

Meantime, the Proterra bankruptcy dealt a crushing blow to Vice President Kamala Harris’s gushing love for electric school buses. Proterra failed despite its receipt of huge subsidies pushed by California-imitating social influencers.

William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” ended in disaster for everyone on the island. The virtual reality in which today’s politicians operate (using computer models that flatter their assumptions) just might – if unchecked – lead to the worst-case scenario that Rees paints.

The fact is that the political class accepts the genocide of Uighurs and enslavement of eight-year-old Congolese children, along with the extinction of right whales and decimation of bald and golden eagles, as necessary sacrifices to keep the “net zero” juggernaut afloat. “Do no harm” is not the operating principle here.

But every action still matters.

Ordinary citizens worldwide are realizing that California-style mandates lead to disaster. Opposition to banning gas stoves and water heaters, forcing adoption of heat pumps, shutting off air conditioners, and other diktats is burgeoning. The Wall Street Journal has even reported that the electric vehicle bubble is starting to deflate.

Maybe that’s why Hilary came to California. Disasters always remind people to rely on one another, not governments.

As people watch inept or uncaring politicians weakly respond to disasters (fires in Maui and East Palestine, Ohio included), the courage to resist unwanted mandates grows. Even in California.

This piece originally appeared at RealClearEnergy.com and has been republished here with permission.