The Hidden Agenda of Extreme Environmentalism

We live in the most expensive state in America, and it is completely the result of political choices made by the California legislature. Across all sectors – oil, gas, electricity, water and housing – environmentalist arguments prevail. But there is a hidden agenda that most sincere environmentalists still don’t recognize. An agenda that pursues profit and power, instead of practical environmentalism that balances the interests of the planet with the interests of the people.

Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!

Even Gov. Brown has refused to support a ban on fracking in California. Moreover, there are reserves of oil and gas in California that don’t require fracking. Using slant drilling, for example (a technology that didn’t exist back in the 1970’s when offshore oil drilling was banned), you can access natural gas reserves in the Santa Barbara Channel from land based rigs. But fossil fuel development is only one issue that ought to be up for debate.

What about nuclear power? The technology has come a long way in the last fifty years. Even if coastal reactors are considered too dangerous, why not build some in geologically stable areas inland? There’s plenty of land in the Mojave Desert where nuclear power plants could be sited. And what about desalination? It’s only too costly if you consider California prices – artificially inflated – they build desalination plants in Israel for one quarter the price per output. Why can’t we?

What about water storage – what about the proposed Sites and Temperance Flats reservoirs? What about sewage reuse? Californians produce about 3 million acre feet of sewage each year, much of which is cleaned and poured into the ocean, when if we cleaned it a bit more we could reuse it.

What about housing? California’s a supposed sanctuary state, inviting millions of people in. Where are they going to live? Why do you think, even in the inland valleys, homes are priced at $400,000 or more (usually much more)? Do you actually think homes need to cost this much?

All of this is contrived, artificial, politically created scarcity. And it is making a lot of people filthy rich, while it makes life very difficult for 90%+ of California’s residents – old and young, regardless of ethnicity or immigration status.

Environmentalists in California act like they have all the answers. They are arrogant and selective in the facts they use. What about all the embodied energy in wind and solar installations? Do we ever hear about the payback periods for all the energy it took to build that stuff? What about the impact when taking into account the need for natural gas peaking plants that have to spin into action every time the sun goes behind a cloud or the wind dies down? What about the difficulty in storing intermittent energy, or the fact that sourcing rare earth metals for electric car batteries is causing environmental havoc all over the planet?

One might assume that of someone holds these positions they must not care about the environment, but if so they’d be wrong. We need an honest discussion about these issues, without ceding the discussion to environmentalist trial lawyers, phony “green” entrepreneurs, and oligarchs who control the artificially scarce supplies of entitled land, housing, electricity, gas, and water. Because they just want to keep things the way they are so they can continue to make money.

There’s two sides to this story.