Climate change

California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he will sign climate-focused transparency laws for big business

September 19, 2023 By Staff Report 6 Comments

NEW YORK (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday that he plans to sign into law a pair of climate-focused bills intended to force major corporations to be more transparent about greenhouse gas emissions and the financial risks stemming from global warming.

Newsom’s announcement came during an out-of-state trip to New York’s Climate Week, where world leaders in business, politics and the arts are gathered to seek solutions for climate change.

California lawmakers last week passed legislation requiring large businesses from oil and gas companies to retail giants to disclose their direct greenhouse gas emissions as well as those that come from activities like employee business travel.

Such disclosures are a “simple but intensely powerful driver of decarbonization,” said the bill’s author, state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat.

“This legislation will support those companies doing their part to tackle the climate crisis and create accountability for those that aren’t,” Wiener said in a statement Sunday applauding Newsom’s decision.

Under the law, thousands of public and private businesses that operate in California and make more than $1 billion annually will have to make the emissions disclosures. The goal is to increase transparency and nudge companies to evaluate how they can cut their carbon emissions.

The second bill approved last week by the state Assembly requires companies making more than $500 million annually to disclose what financial risks climate change poses to their businesses and how they plan to address those risks.

State Sen. Henry Stern, a Democrat from Los Angeles who introduced the legislation, said the information would be useful for individuals and lawmakers when making public and private investment decisions. The bill was changed recently to require companies to begin reporting the information in 2026, instead of 2024, and mandate that they report every other year, instead of annually.

Newsom, a Democrat, said he wants California to lead the nation in addressing the climate crisis. “We need to exercise not just our formal authority, but we need to share our moral authority more abundantly,” he said.

Newsom’s office announced Saturday that California has filed a lawsuit against some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, claiming they deceived the public about the risks of fossil fuels now faulted for climate change-related storms and wildfires that caused billions of dollars in damage.

Click here to read the full article in AP News

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, carbon footprint, Climate change, Gavin Newsom

Public Health Researchers Float Idea of Climate-Change Warnings on Menu Items

January 10, 2023 By Baylen Linnekin 6 Comments

Warning diners that red meat is bad for the environment is yet another attempt to socially engineer food choices.

A study released last week suggests that fast-food menus that feature labels urging diners not to order red meat off those same menus due to the “climate impact” of those food items can help convince customers to swap out red meat for what the researchers argue are more climate-friendly foods—from fruits and vegetables to poultry and seafood. The study, published in Jama Network Open and led by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, concludes that “climate impact menu labels may be an effective strategy to promote more sustainable restaurant food choices and that labels highlighting high-climate impact items may be most effective.”

The study’s data comes from more than 5,000 Americans who took part in a nationwide online survey last year. Study participants were instructed to “imagine they were in a restaurant and about to order dinner” from an accurately priced sample menu containing a variety of choices, including hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, plant-based burgers, and salads.

The study asked participants to “order” different foods after viewing one of three types of sample menus online. Outside of a control group, the study presented web users with choices that either disparaged the sustainability of red-meat dishes or touted the sustainability of dishes not containing red meat. Based on the results, which showed people who were more likely to avoid red meat if it had a red warning label and more likely to order other menu items if they featured a green health halo, the authors conclude that “climate impact menu labels [a]re effective” and “that labeling red meat items with negatively framed, red high-climate impact labels was more effective at increasing sustainable selections than labeling non-red meat items with positively framed, green low-climate impact labels.”

The study has spurred some news outlets to suggest governments around the world may—or should—operationalize its findings.

“Policymakers have been debating how to get people to make less carbon-heavy food choices,” the Guardian recounted in a recent report on the study, “In April, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report urged world leaders, especially those in developed countries, to support a transition to sustainable, healthy, low-emissions diets.”

“Unfortunately, consumers have been resistant to change and many wish to continue eating meat,” a Phys.org report on the study laments.

Worse still, though the study itself does not suggest that it should be used to form the basis of any government policies, its lead author, Prof. Julia Wolfson of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CNN last week that “legislation or regulation may be necessary” to force restaurants to add climate warnings to their menus.

Let’s pump the brakes—for a couple of reasons.

Data from the study itself and, more generally, on the effectiveness of government-mandated menu labeling suggests the authors may wish to dial down their perception of the effectiveness of the labels they tested. For example, after completing their respective orders, the survey asked participants if they “notice[d] any labels” on the menu. As the study data reveal, only around 4 out of every 10 participants even noticed any climate-related labeling. While that’s a low percentage, in the real world—in an actual fast-food restaurant setting rather than in an online survey—the percentage would likely be far lower. That’s because, as I’ve explained time and again, study after study has shown that few people pay attention to mandated menu labels (except to choose which food or foods to order), and even fewer use that information.

The premise of the study itself also may rest on shaky ground. Some critics have pushed back against the notion that some chicken or seafood is more sustainable than all red meat. As the Guardian report on the study notes, “intensively produced chicken has been found to be damaging for the environment, as has some farmed and trawled fish.” Others disagree with the very notion that red meat is an inherently unsustainable food. While it’s become popular in recent years to argue that eating less red meat is better for the environment, that argument has received a good amount of pushback, with critics charging that swapping out meat for plants could be inefficient and ineffective, harm human health, and have unintended consequences for the developing world.

Even if I were to accept arguments that eating less meat is better for the environment, the choice to eat meat (or not) ultimately is and should be an individual’s to make. So it’s not “unfortunate” that consumers “wish to continue eating meat,” as Phys.org posits. And that wish isn’t a cry for government intervention, as Wolfson, the study’s lead author, argues. Rather, it’s a cry for freedom of choice.

Click here to read the full article at Reason.com

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: California Politics, Climate change, red meat

Gov. Newsom Relying on Politics and Deceit over CA’s High Gas Prices

November 14, 2022 By Katy Grimes 5 Comments

We are witnessing political science and not climate science

Californians pay the highest income taxes in the nation, have the highest taxes on the wealthy, highest gas taxes and highest gas prices at the pump, highest housing prices, highest energy prices, most regressive taxes hurting the poor… need we keep going? California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest proposal is a new tax on oil suppliers, and will only serve to make gas prices even higher.

But CLIMATE CHANGE!

Gov. Newsom continues to demonize the oil and gas industry for “windfall oil company profits,” while patting himself on the back for “taking action to lower prices at the pump, by ordering the switch to winter-blend gasoline.” He also is “demanding accountability from oil companies and refiners that do business in California,” by calling for a windfall tax on oil companies, claiming that money “would go directly back to California taxpayers.”

We don’t believe for a minute that Gov. Newsom is woefully ignorant of the supply and demand economic model of price determination in a market. So that means the governor is relying on politics and deceit.

California’s record-high gas prices have been as high as nearly $8.00 per gallon in some locations.

Newsom cannot legislate a better climate by increasing energy costs, and turning over more energy decisions to unelected state bureaucrats, lobbyists, and activists. This is one of the worst things California’s Governor and politicians can do while claiming they are “saving the planet,” but really harming Californians economically.

The Western States Petroleum Association has warned Gov. Newsom will start banning gasoline, diesel and even hybrid cars and trucks in 2026, well before California has an electrical grid that can handle the increased energy demand while keeping our light on, or before there are more affordable electric vehicle options for families.

Energy providers currently direct electric car owners to NOT charge their vehicles during hot days when they anticipate energy shortages and possible rolling blackouts.

The California Air Resources Board is leading this charge to fulfill Gov. Newsom’s executive order to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.

California is rich in natural resources which once powered the state: natural gas deposits in the Monterey Shale formation; geothermal energy, abundant rivers and waterways such as the San Joaquin River Delta and hydroelectric dams; the Pacific coastline; 85 million acres of wildlands with 17 million of those used as commercial timberland; mines and mineral resources, vast farming and agricultural lands, and hunting and fishing.

But California politicians and appointed agency officials, under pressure from radical environmental organizations and lobbyists, decided to ignore the energy producing natural resources, and instead move to an all-electric grid, and the only approved “renewable energy:” solar and wind energy, or “boutique fuels.”

In August, a poll by the Public Policy Institute of California conflated climate change, drought, wildfires and the oil and gas industry through dextrous questions and weighted demographics.

The pollsters obviously had a desired conclusion, and created the questions and demographics to draw that conclusion using a significantly higher number of polled Democrats, a significantly higher number of high income Californians, and a significantly higher number of polled whites.

The PPIC poll conclusion supports Gov. Newsom’s claims about “windfall profits,” justifying his restrictions of the oil and gas industry under the guise of “climate change.”

Newsom listed oil company profits in a recent email, and then accused refiners like PBF Energy of “making more profits off of Californians than in any other state.”

In 1982, California had 43 operational oil refineries and a population of nearly 25 million; today we have 11 operational oil refineries and a population of nearly 40 million. And these 40 million residents are driving more cars, living in more houses and apartments, working in more commercial buildings, shopping in more stores, and traveling more across the state – all of which takes much more traditional energy.

The Globe has addressed Gov. Newsom’s claim that oil companies “are ripping you off. Their record profits are coming at your expense.” Newsom left out the part where in 2021 he largely killed hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in California as part of his overall plan to end oil extraction… because of Climate Change. He also announced his action to halt issuance of fracking permits by 2024.

And then Newsom claims, “Big oil was making these record profits at a time when Californians were seeing gas price hikes at the pump, despite the fact that the cost of crude oil was down.”

In October, Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) boiled down the actual problem of California’s highest-in-the-nation gas prices and gas taxes in a letter to the governor. The highlights are:

California’s isolated markets
an inability to access additional fuel that meets California’s stringent standards
the most hostile regulatory requirements
the most aggressive environmental policies
the extraordinary expense of cap and trade
the highest tax per gallon of gasoline
impossible standards that are not found in any other state in the nation
limited supply

Click here to read the full article in the California Globe

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, Climate change, Gavin Newsom

California Governor Signs Sweeping Climate Legislation

September 18, 2022 By Sophie Austin 5 Comments

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping package of bills Friday to expand California’s reliance on clean energy and reduce carbon emissions, moves he said further establish the state as a global climate leader.

The new laws include proposals aimed at reducing exposure to gas and oil pollution in communities of color, expanding clean energy jobs and accelerating the state’s timeline for getting most of its electricity from renewable energy sources. Newsom signed them following a record-breaking heat wave that forced California to rely more heavily on natural gas for its electricity production.

“We could talk about the way the world should be and protest it,” Newsom said while standing underneath an array of solar panels. “Or we can actually make demonstrable progress.”

State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat, was an author of one bill aimed at protecting vulnerable communities from pollution coming from oil and gas production sites. It bans the drilling of any new oil and gas wells with 3,200 feet (975 meters) of homes, schools and other neighborhood sites and requires wells in those zones to enact stricter safety measures. Neighborhood oil drilling is prominent around Los Angeles and oil-rich parts of the Central Valley.

“The reason why we do this, first and foremost, is because some of us are parents,” said Gonzalez, who represents the southern part of Los Angeles County.

Another bill Newsom signed requires California to reach carbon neutrality by 2045, meaning it will remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as what it emits.

The state’s accelerated carbon reduction targets are a “big win for California,” Kassie Siegel, of the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, said in a statement.

The oil industry has broadly criticized Newsom’s climate package, saying it will harm an industry that still provides many jobs throughout the state. California is the seventh-largest oil producing state.

Some environmental groups were critical as well, though for different reasons. Food and Water Watch California, a nonprofit aimed at addressing climate and water issues, opposed a bill in the package that creates a permitting system for carbon capture projects. Such efforts rely on technology to remove carbon from the atmosphere to store underground.

Critics of the technology say it’s dangerous, unproven and a means for oil companies to keep emitting.

“Carbon capture is a smokescreen for fossil fuel industry players to protect their bottom lines at the expense of our climate and communities,” Food and Water Watch California Director Chirag G. Bhakta said in a statement.

Newsom, a Democrat, also took the opportunity to swipe at Republican political leaders in Texas. He compared California’s energy production to that of Texas, another major producer, where a winter storm in February 2021 left millions without power.

“And they’re talking to us about keeping our lights on?” Newsom said of Texas.

Click here to read the full article at AP News

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, Climate change, Gavin Newsom

Global Warming – Then Versus Now

April 18, 2019 By Timothy L. Coyle 2 Comments

The perils of climate change were first introduced to the world in 1968. It was then that the renown Stanford Research Institute (SRI) published its report, called Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric Polluters, warning everyone that a steady increase in levels of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere were unnaturally warming the Earth.

Yet, nine years passed before the now-oft-used term “global warming” appeared in any academic literature and another 20 years went by before Congress heard from the experts that worldwide temperatures were increasing, polar ice caps were melting and sea levels had risen about half a foot since sometime in the 1800’s. In California, home of the shrillest of the shrill advocacy to curb global-warming – and only after the abysmal failure of the latest environmental fad (“smart growth”) – it took lawmakers nearly half a century to act.

What were environmentalists, lawmakers and other political leaders – the same folks who endlessly tell us that global warming is the greatest existential threat to the planet since the proliferation of nuclear weapons – doing all that time?

Indeed, the late ‘60’s, early ‘70’s, when the SRI report was first published, represented the most thorough, enlightened environmental thinking ever, said the advocates and pundits. That’s when the nation, California especially, was worried about urban sprawl, coastal land protection and endangered species preservation. It was then that the most sweeping environmental-protection laws ever were enacted – the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and, stateside, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The federal Clean Water Act became law in 1972, shortly after California began regulating water.

Also, mindful that increases of carbon-dioxide in the air was bad – and with the vehicle population in California growing like topsy – it was during this period the state began setting auto-emission standards and, by law, it systematically removed lead from gasoline. Time was clearly running out on the use fossil fuels for transportation and California’s love affair with them was coming to an end.

(Advocates wanted energy reforms as well, but they didn’t come until much later. Still, solar mandates and those imposing the adoption of renewable sources did finally come to California and will have a direct impact on the state economy. For example, legislation like Senate Bill 100 – which requires the state to operate on 100 percent renewable energy resources by the year 2045 – will affect business and the state’s competitiveness. Incidently, debate over the legislation failed to include benchmarks or convincing evidence that following the law was possible.)

Those were all economically wrenching changes the nation was forced to adopt in the name of environmental protection. Commerce had to adjust to this new regime and here in California, for the most part, it did. There were new costs to businesses and new costs to consumers, but all were eventually absorbed.

Why global warming wasn’t managed at the same time isn’t known. Surely, the data existed. The needed advocacy was in place and seemed to be accompanied by the necessary political will, even if it was reluctant. Of course, businesses then as they do now would resist the mitigation called for by global-warming reform if it had too great an impact on the national (and global) economy – its costs would have to be few and reasonable. And, to its beneficiaries – people and polar bears – the reforms would have to deliver true relief.

Yet, nothing happened. Is it possible that the players involved weren’t ready to take on something as large and sweeping as global warming? Was it possible that growth control, oppressive land-use regulation and limiting immigration had to play themselves out first? Or, did a state like California have to go through an energy crisis (as it did in the late ‘90’s)? Or, did it have to suffer from a sustained drought (as it did in the early part of the current century, after years of watching precious water resources wash out to sea)? Or, did it have to transform (however unsuccessfully) single-occupancy vehicle trips into rail passage (both light and high-speed)? Or, did environmentalists and their pals in Congress and the state Legislature want all of these cataclysms to occur simultaneously forcing business to choose “death by a thousand cuts” as the optimum way to go?

Whatever the reason, if you’re a true environmentalist not taking up global warming during the ‘70’s was probably an opportunity missed. For a while back then, it seemed like the environmental zeitgeist was going to prevail forever, no matter what the cost. Now, happily, there is at least greater awareness of environmental extremism and its economic impacts.

If you were concerned about the national and California economies then – and their corresponding growth rates – you must have been somewhat relieved, albeit temporarily, that nothing worse was done. (Of course, since then subsequent legislation, regulation and general policy-making has thwarted efforts to minimize the environmental mitigation impacts – including those that can be tied to global warming – on business and consumers.) Could it have been the initial successes the environmental community was having in the early ‘70’s – and their effect on both the national and state economies – put the kybosh on the advancement of global-warming mitigation measures?

Maybe. Nevertheless, today at least two key questions remain: If concerns over the impact of global warming on the economy prevailed then, what’s changed? And, why are we going through all of these (silly) climate-change theatrics now?

Timothy L. Coyle is a consultant specializing in housing issues.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Climate change, Global Warming

Global Warming: Los Angeles Has Coldest February in 60 Years

February 27, 2019 By Joel B. Pollak 7 Comments

Los Angeles is officially experiencing the coldest February in nearly 60 years, according to the National Weather Service, as the city has endured a series of storms and is bracing for more later this week.

You think it's been cold in SW California this month? Check out the link below highlighting Downtown L.A. With just 4 days remaining this month, Feb 2019 ranks as the coldest February at #DTLA since 1962 nearly 60 years ago. #cawx #SoCal #LAweather https://t.co/cuSKwxMm2k

— NWS Los Angeles (@NWSLosAngeles) February 25, 2019

The Los Angeles Times reported Monday evening:

This month is the coldest February in downtown Los Angeles in nearly 60 years, with the average high temperature at 60.6 degrees as of Sunday. That’s a full 8 degrees below the normal average temperature, the National Weather Service said in a news release announcing the record lows.

It hasn’t been this cold since 1962, when the average high temperature for the month in downtown L.A. was 59.8 degrees, the weather service said.

The state is experiencing even more storms and cold weather, as a new “atmospheric river” — a front of moisture from the Pacific — is expected to dump rain on Northern California through mid-week. According to CBS San Francisco, rainfall totals were expected to reach 6 to 12 inches in the mountains, threatening mudslides in areas affected by last year’s wildfires.

Los Angeles is also expecting more rain, albeit with warmer temperatures than it is currently experiencing, before the end of the month.

Last week saw a rare snowfall within the urban parts of the city, including West Hollywood.

Currently, the state’s snowpack is already at 119% above its April 1 average.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

This article was originally published by Breitbart.com/California

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Climate change, Global Warming, Los Angeles

California Burning – How the Greens Turned the Golden State Brown

November 28, 2018 By CPR Editors 5 Comments

In October 2016, in a coordinated act of terrorism that received fleeting attention from the press, environmentalist activists broke into remote flow stations and turned off the valves on pipelines carrying crude oil from Canada into the United States. Working simultaneously in Washington, Montana, Minnesota and North Dakota, the eco-terrorists disrupted pipelines that together transport 2.8 million barrels of oil per day, approximately 15 percent of U.S. consumption. The pretext for this action was to protest the alleged “catastrophe” of global warming.

These are the foot soldiers of environmental extremism. These are the minions whose militancy receives nods and winks from opportunistic politicians and “green” investors who make climate alarmism the currency of their political and commercial success.

More recently, and far more tragic, are the latest round of California wildfires that have consumed nearly a quarter million acres, killed at least 87 people, and caused damages estimated in excess of $10 billion.

Opinions vary regarding how much of this disaster could have been avoided, but nobody disputes that more could have been done. Everyone agrees, for example, that overall, aggressive fire suppression has been a mistake. Most everyone agrees that good prevention measures include forest thinning (especially around power lines), selective logging, controlled burns, and power line upgrades. And everyone agrees that residents in fire prone areas need to create defensible space and fire-harden their homes.

Opinions also vary as to whether or not environmentalists stood in the way of these prevention measures. In a blistering critique published earlier this week on the California-focused Flash Report, investigative journalist Katy Grimes cataloged the negligence resulting from environmentalist overreach.

“For decades,” Grimes notes, “traditional forest management was scientific and successful — that is until ideological, preservationist zealots wormed their way into government and began the overhaul of sound federal forest management through abuse of the Endangered Species Act and the ‘re-wilding, no-use movement.’”

U.S. Representative Tom McClintock, whose Northern California district includes the Yosemite Valley and the Tahoe National Forest, told Grimes that the U.S. Forest Service 40 years ago departed from “well-established and time-tested forest management practices.”

“We replaced these sound management practices with what can only be described as a doctrine of benign neglect,” McClintock explained. “Ponderous, byzantine laws and regulations administered by a growing cadre of ideological zealots in our land management agencies promised to ‘save the environment.’ The advocates of this doctrine have dominated our law, our policies, our courts and our federal agencies ever since.”

Grimes goes on to outline the specific missteps at the federal level that led to America’s forests turning into tinderboxes, starting in the Clinton Administration and made worse, thanks to activist judges, by thwarting reforms attempted by the Bush Administration, and accelerating during the complicit Obama presidency.

All of this lends credence to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s fresh allegations of forest mismanagement. But what really matters is what happens next.

Institutionalized Environmental Extremism

California’s 2018 wildfires have been unusually severe, but they were not historic firsts. This year’s unprecedented level of destruction and deaths are the result of home building in fire prone areas, and not because of wildfires of unprecedented scope. And while the four-year drought that ended in 2016 left a legacy of dead trees and brush, it was forest mismanagement that left those forests overly vulnerable to droughts in the first place.

Based on these facts, smart policy responses would be first to reform forest management regulations to expedite public and privately funded projects to reduce the severity of future wildfires, and second, to streamline the permit process to allow the quick reconstruction of new, fire-hardened homes.

But neither outcome is likely, and the reason should come as no surprise — we are asked to believe that it’s not observable failures in policy and leadership that caused all this destruction and death, it’s “man-made climate change.”

Gov. Jerry Brown is a convenient boogeyman for climate realists, since his climate alarmism is as unrelenting as it is hyperbolic. But Brown is just one of the stars in an out-of-control environmental movement that is institutionalized in California’s legislature, courts, mass media, schools and corporations.

Fighting climate change is the imperative, beyond debate, that justified the Golden State passing laws and regulations such as California Environmental Quality Act, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008, and numerous others at the state and local level. They make it nearly impossible to build affordable homes, develop energy, or construct reservoirs, aqueducts, desalination plants, nuclear power plants, pipelines, freeways, or any other essential infrastructure that requires so much as a scratch in the ground.

Expect tepid progress on new preventive measures, in a state so mired in regulations and litigation that for every dollar spent paying heavy equipment operators and loggers to do real work, twice that much or more will go to pay consultants, attorneys, and public bureaucrats. Expect “climate change” to be used as a pretext for more “smart growth,” which translates into “stack and pack,” whereby people will be herded out of rural areas through punishing financial disincentives and forced into densely populated urban areas, where they can join the scores of thousands of refugees that California is welcoming from all over the world.

Ruling Class Hypocrisy

Never forget, according to the conventional wisdom as prescribed by California’s elites, if you don’t like it, you are a climate change “denier,” a “xenophobe,” and a “racist.”

California’s elites enjoy their gated communities, while the migrants who cut their grass and clean their floors go home to subsidized accessory dwelling units in the backyards of the so-called middle class whose taxes pay for it all. They are hypocrites.

But it is these elites who are the real deniers.

They pretend that natural disasters are “man-made,” so they can drive up the cost of living and reap the profits when the companies they invest in sell fewer products and services for more money in a rationed, anti-competitive environment.

They pretend this is sustainable; that wind farms and solar batteries can supply adequate power to teeming masses crammed into power-sipping, “smart growth” high rises. But they’re tragically wrong.

Here the militant environmentalists offer a reality check. Cutting through their predictable, authoritarian, psychotically intolerant rants that incorporate every leftist shibboleth imaginable, the “Deep Green Resistance” website offers a remarkably lucid and fact-based debunking of “green technology and renewable energy.” Their solution, is to “create a life-centered resistance movement that will dismantle industrial civilization by any means necessary.”

These deep green militants want to “destroy industrial civilization.” At their core, they are misanthropic nihilists—but at least they’re honest. By contrast, California’s stylish elites are driving humanity in slow motion towards this same dire future, cloaked in denial, veiled coercion, and utopian fantasies.

This is the issue that underlies the California wildfires, what causes them and what to do about them. What is a “sustainable” civilization? One that embraces human settlements, has faith in human ingenuity, and aspires to make all humans prosperous enough to care about the environment, everywhere? Or one that demands Draconian limits on human settlement, with no expectation that innovation can provide solutions we can’t currently imagine, and condemns humans to police-state rationing of everything we produce and consume?

That is the stark choice that underlies the current consensus of California’s elites, backed up by dangerous and growing cadres of fanatical militants.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Camp Fire, Climate change, Fire, Fires, Global Warming, Northern California

Let’s Avoid a “High Speed Rail” Situation in Space

September 21, 2018 By Joel Fox 4 Comments

Photo courtesy Steve Rhodes, flickr

Putting aside questions of effectiveness and even validity of the satellite project proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown at his Global Climate Action Summit, we should be concerned that the satellite could emulate the high-speed rail in that the costs will not be covered as promised and that taxpayers will end up holding the bag.

The release from the governor’s office said initial funding “has been provided by Dee and Richard Lawrence and OIF, as well as The Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust.” The release adds that, “Additional scientific, business and philanthropic partners are expected to join this initiative…”

Then there’s this: “Planet (Labs) will manage the mission operations and collaborate with the State of California and others on funding this groundbreaking effort.”

Clearly, the state–that is the taxpayers–are expected to chip in for the satellite project. More is expected from outside sources such as business and others. But let’s not forget the promise of the high-speed rail: That it would be funded by the state, federal and private interests. Yet, no private money has come forward.

Whether the state should even sponsor such an endeavor is not the issue here. The point to be considered is that given the situation with the rail, it would be best to have that money in the bank before setting off on this project; before the taxpayers are involved to a greater extent than desired.

Will California embark on the satellite project on the hope that money will come from private concerns? As with the high-speed rail, will we see a General Obligation bond to help support it?

Remember, the idea is not for one satellite but multiple satellites. No price tag was associated with the project so we can’t compare its costs to that of the rail project. But, who really knows the high-speed rail cost. It’s forever changing. Is that the future of the California satellite venture?

If, in fact, taxpayer money is involved it should also come from taxpayers beyond California’s borders. The satellite monitoring will be world-wide and at a minimum the United States Climate Alliance made up of 17 states that are involved in the alliance should contribute because they would benefit from any information the satellites collect.

On another level, you do have to hand it to a clever Jerry Brown for turning around the “Governor Moonbeam” moniker once given to him by Chicago Tribune columnist, Mike Royko, when Brown proposed California launch a satellite for a different purpose 40-plus years ago.

While Royko declared the moniker “null, void and deceased” 15 years after appending it to Brown, the governor has come to embrace the nickname. With his latest satellite pronouncement, he turned a mocking handle into a mark of enlightenment. And to do so at the end of his term completes the circle of his time as California’s governor.

But part of Royko’s complaint was the issue of cost and that nagging question of cost still exists. It is currently spoiling Brown’s signature issue, the high-speed rail. If the satellite proposal follows a similar path, it would undercut the now prized Gov. Moonbeam appellation.

This article was originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Climate change, Global Warming, high speed rail, Jerry Brown

California is following Germany’s Failed Climate Goals

August 24, 2018 By Ronald Stein 5 Comments

Germany was the first major economy to make a big shift in its energy mix toward low carbon sources, but Germany is failing to meet its climate goals of reducing harmful carbon-dioxide emissions even after spending over $580 billion by 2025 to overhaul its energy systems. Germany’s emissions miss should be a “wake-up” call for governments everywhere.

Germany stepped us as a leader on climate change, by phasing out nuclear, and pioneered a system of subsidies for wind and solar that sparked a global boom in manufacturing those technologies.

Like Germany, California’s renewables are becoming an increasing share in electricity generation, but at a HIGH COST. The emission reduction goals have increased the costs of electricity and transportation fuels and increased the already high cost of living in California and may be very contributory to California having the highest percentage of homelessness and poverty in the nation.

California households are paying about 40 percent more than the national average for electricity according to 2016 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Californians continue to pay almost $1.00 more per gallon of fuel than the rest of the country due to a) the state sales tax per gallon which are some of the highest in the country; b) refinery reformatting costs per gallon; c) cap and trade program compliance costs per gallon; d) low-carbon fuel standard program compliance costs per gallon; and e) renewable fuels standard program compliance costs per gallon.

California is an “energy island” to its almost 40 million citizens, bordered between the Pacific Ocean and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The state’s daily need to support its 145 airports (inclusive of 33 military, 10 major, and more than 100 general aviation) is 13 million gallons a day of aviation fuels. In addition, for the 35 million registered vehicles of which 90 percent are NOT EV’s are consuming DAILY: 10 million gallons a day of diesel and 42 million gallons a day of gasoline. All that “expensive” fuel is a heavy cost to consumers.

Despite higher energy bills, public opinion has remained supportive of the energy transition and the strategy to cut emissions. That support is apt to shift when politicians resolve the debate about how their targets match reality. Either they will have to abandon the goals and live with more pollution than they’ve promised, or they will have to force through painful and expensive measures that further limit emissions.

Germany, like California, is also trying to phase out nuclear reactors. California has already shutdown the 24/7 nuclear generating facility of SCE’s San Onofre (SONGS) which generated 2,200 megawatts of power that closed in 2013, and will be closing PG&E’s Diablo Canyon’s 2,160 megawatts of power in 2024.

Shutting down nuclear plants is leaving California, like Germany, short of 24/7 generation plants that can work on the breezeless and dark days when wind farms and solar plants won’t provide much to the grid—and demand is at its peak. Yet to be determined is the impact on rate payers? Will there be more reliance in California placed on fossil fuels for 24/7 power?

Germany’s economy, like California’s, is dominated by services that require less energy and produce less carbon than places tilted toward industry and manufacturing. Thus, less emissions to micromanage cost effectively reduce. California is a miniscule contributor to the world’s greenhouse gases. Statistically, the World is generating about 46,000 million metric tons of GHG’s, while California has been generating about 429 million metric tons, which is less than one percent of the world’s contributions. Germany’s contributions are about 905 million metric tons, which is about two percent of the world’s contributions.

Germany’s failed climate goals is an ominous wake-up call for California and governments everywhere struggling to reach their own targets. The result is a puzzle for politicians. Enacted legislation to make sure climate targets are hit, including stringent rules governing energy use, and new building codes to make buildings carbon neutral, and utility bill charges that subsidize investment in green energy, are all resulting in higher energy costs to consumers.

Ronald Stein is founder of PTS Staffing Solutions, a technical staffing agency headquartered in Irvine.