Arnold Schwarzenegger shares an inconvenient truth

When it comes to booting Big Oil from California, Democrats have been as ruthless as the Terminator.

Gavin Newsom & Co. have spent years scorning fossil fuels — heaping so many taxes, regulations and climate burdens on oil companies that most have downsized or moved elsewhere.

The result for California? A disaster.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said as much this week: At his own climate summit in Austria, he rapped Democrats for chasing refineries out of state and importing oil to fill the supply gap, thus ensuring the very emissions they abhor.

Yes. They do that and more.

Thanks partly to green mania, California is among the least affordable states in the nation.

Far-left policies have inflated the price of gasoline, energy, appliances, housing, retail goods shipped by gas or diesel vehicles and other staples of California life.

Green decrees have also inhibited freedom by restricting consumer choice; strained the state energy grid, subjecting Californians to rolling blackouts; and left California dependent on foreign imports for 60% to 75% of residents’ oil needs.

In short, it’s green insanity.

And for what? California’s climate rules have made near-zero difference in global temperatures.

Meanwhile, while he’s right about Dems’ war on oil, Schwarzenegger seems unaware that his own choices helped bring us to a crisis point.

During his eight years in office, the celebrity gov. helped install a range of green policies that over time have spiked costs; served Sacramento, not the public; and laid the groundwork for today’s green lunacy.

These include mandates on renewable energy, solar rooftops, “anti-sprawl” housing patterns, gasoline blends and more.

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He also backed the state’s bullet-train boondoggle, sold partly on climate grounds, and signed (with great fanfare) the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, which bills business for emitting carbon while creating a multibillion-dollar de facto slush fund for Dems to spend on pet projects.

Gov. Newsom and his predecessor, Jerry Brown, have had a decade and a half to build on that framework.

They’ve hyped climate alarmism to signal virtue; deflect blame; demonize GOP “deniers”; raise money (apocalypse now!); enrich cronies and donors with taxpayer-funded green pork; control Californians’ choices; and of course, entrench their own power.

A clever political game, for a while. But the costs have caused deep harm, the world hasn’t ended, and the crying-wolf act has worn so thin it’s transparent.

Increasingly, residents see the state’s climate zeal for what it is: a green racket.

For the left, that is indeed “an inconvenient truth.”