Activists blindly pushing for a ban on oil and natural gas production call repeatedly for California to “keep fossil fuels in the ground.” In doing so, these activists assert that the entire California economy can transition to renewable energy overnight – something climate policy experts reject as naïve and unworkable.
Yet, activists routinely fail to recognize how oil and natural gas aren’t just gas for our cars, or heat for our homes. Oil and natural gas are used in many common products we use every day, without them our lives would be very different.
Here’s a small sampling of the ways in which oil and natural gas enable our daily lives:
- Petroleum is used to make the technologies we leverage every day, from our cell phones, televisions, laptops, and computer monitors, to wifi routers, speakers, headphones, HDMI cords, and chargers.
- Petroleum is used to create hundreds of personal care and household products, including eyeglasses, cosmetics, toothpaste, toothbrushes, soaps, shampoos, hand sanitizers, and laundry detergent.
- Petroleum is used in the healthcare equipment and products that save lives every day, including medicines and pill coatings, latex gloves, examination equipment, anesthetics, x-rays, MRIs, IVs, doctor’s scrubs, wheelchairs, crutches, casts, hearing aids, pacemakers, artificial hips, and prosthetic limbs.
- Petroleum is used to make sporting goods, including tennis shoes, basketballs, soccer balls, volleyballs, footballs, football pads, and many of the facilities that these activities require.
Put simply, oil and natural gas make our entire day possible. As activists continue to push unworkable fantasy over practical policy, framing oil and natural gas as enemies to completely eliminate, do they understand the full implications of their proposals?
