It’s actually not terrible for California, if it causes them to grow their energy infrastructure more, because they have nowhere near enough power generation.
Interesting California fact. They decided that vented gasoline cans were polluting the air with gas fumes. So they made vented cans illegal. You can only buy gas cans that seal. So now everyone has gas cans that rupture and spill gasoline. People are installing after market vents.
Problem solved!
Well, shutting down Nuke plants doesn’t help.
I do think every source of power should be used, but California is doing it at a pace that is causing our power bills to climb as we are setting all time records for consecutive days over 100 degrees (26 IIRC).
In a state with a massive amount of natural gas I don’t understand why California doesn’t take advantage of that. There must be clean ways to generate power from natural gas.
It’s certainly cleaner than coal. Pretty much all of the UK’s emissions reductions under Kyoto were from switching from coal to gas power generation.
Well, you have to burn it. So, carbon.
It’s a fossil fuel. Cleaner than coal or oil, but still would impact climate.
California has decided that it is maxxed out on hydroelectric power, as they are refusing to build dams and are actually removing some. Solar is being built everywhere, but it will take one hell of a lot of solar to power California. Wind power is showing up everywhere, but again, it will take one hell of a lot of windmills.
The decommissioning of nuke plants and the refusal to encourage natural gas power plants, at this time, is pretty damn crazy.
No, it’s pretty damn crazy to expand the use of fossil fuels. (As climate modeling improves, the outlook is looking increasingly worse.) Energy is expensive, we’ve just not been paying the real cost (like, ever.)
Definitely should explore new nuclear plants (with new technology, nuclear offers the smallest environmental impact.) Just don’t build them on earthquake faults. :)
Well, as we all know California will save the world thru it’s own power management.
That’s not the point. Neither will any of the European countries moving away from fossil fuels. Neither will you or I changing our driving habits. But that’s like saying a single vote wont’ change anything.
Behavior change in aggregate will. Using energy more efficiently (and less of it) all goes into the same bucket.
We are in the position we are in because no one wants to do anything. CA is doing something. Others will follow suit. It’s gotta start somewhere (or, you could always move t Texas. They love to hate CA. <- That’s a joke.)
Not when they secede.
I think the current California government believes it already is independent. The legislature sent a law to the governor’s desk that will guarantee net neutrality last Friday.
I doubt any state has passed as many laws that run counter to current federal policy or law.
Texas (or maybe Idaho) are the favorite states of those leaving California.
Well if you’re looking for quality militias and potatoes, nothing really beats Idaho.
Idaho is also full of Mormons and Mexicans.
I have relatives there who teach, and the schools have the same problems as California schools when it comes to migrant workers kids in schools.
ps…I know they are not all Mexican, it just rolled off the tongue better.
Hey, states’ rights :)
One thing my love of Civil War history has done is made me a pretty ardent anti-secessionist, but even if I wasn’t one on ideological grounds, I would think that a secession movement would be pragmatically unwise because any president has the precedent of Abraham Lincoln to justify sending in the tanks. Best case would be a Syria type situation with a California militia fighting incredibly brutal urban warfare against a U.S. military that can always just drop a few tactical nukes if it really wants to stop batting at the mouse. Also, of course, total naval blockade, easy peasy.
That said: the bigger California, or Texas, or New York, or any mega-state becomes in population relative to the smaller states, the more anti-democratic the U.S. system (especially the Senate) becomes. And I don’t love that. ‘Dakota’ has twice as much representation in the Senate as California with about 1/25th the population. I know there’s a rationale for the bicameral setup we have, but it seems a bit odd with such massive variances in population size.
But still… even if California secession weren’t apparently the hobbyhorse of botfarm toolbags, I wouldn’t be a fan.
That’s it, I’m playing the Pacific States in my next Kaiserreich run.
I would think California should have access to significant geothermal sources. They could even tap some tidal sources.
Maybe they should put windmills off the coast from Trump’s Orange County golf course. :)
David Roberts (short for him) twitter thread on sustainability
The article he posted:
I have that report open on my browser, have to read it.