California: Harbinger of National Doom? Green shoots?

[WhiskeyGirl]

Any green shoots in California?

...California is imploding. And it is dragging the rest of the country with it.

California is home to America’s leading manufacturing belt, the nation’s largest high-tech center (Silicon Valley), and one of its most productive agricultural areas (the Central Valley). As a stand-alone economy, it is bigger than Canada, Brazil, India and even Russia. It is also the most populous state, with one in eight Americans calling California home.

Maybe instead of a smart energy grid, they could create a transnational pipeline.  The Midwest where I live has been overwhelmed by water.  Water, water, everywhere in Wisconsin, and not a drop to drink in California.

Environmental Regulation and Strangulation

A crisis of another sort is strangling Californian industries. California has some of the most progressive environmental laws in the world. It needs environmental laws, because vast swaths of the state are a polluted mess.

However, misdirected and poorly timed environmentalism is also inhibiting job growth and sending jobs out of state—as well as out of country.

Maybe other countries don't have such strict environmental laws?  I hope we stop that polluting product at the border...

The New York Times reports that Californian businesses are being slammed by new requirements to curb carbon dioxide emissions at a time when they are already struggling to survive in a very tough economy. In 2006, the state passed laws to curb carbon dioxide emissions from all economic sectors, including transportation, manufacturing and real-estate development. The result: People are paying more to travel and make purchases, manufacturers are moving out of state or to places like China (taking jobs with them), and just look at the real-estate industry.

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=6290.4732.0.0

I'm all for eliminating pollution.  It's a matter of doing it smarter and so that it works for everyone.  In the U.S. it seems to be all about making money for government pass throughs to reward political favorites.  It's not about cleaning up anything.  Just another political ear mark, slush fund, that will bankrupt the nation for generations.

jmho = just my humble opinions

[WhiskeyGirl]

Another example from the article -

On June 18, the New York Times gave another example of environmental activism gone awry. Apparently, unions are exploiting environmental laws to blackmail companies into signing labor agreements and becoming unionized. The latest developments in this regard are taking place in the solar energy field.

To reduce California’s dependence on polluting-but-inexpensive fossil fuels, which it has in abundance, state legislators decided they would promote solar power plant construction. However, an unpredicted turn of events has resulted. Laws designed to protect the environment are being used to hold up projects designed to help the environment. How so? California’s giant worker unions want a foot in the door.

If a company proposes to build a plant, but does not agree to be unionized, unions inundate the company with demands to study the effect of their proposed project on all kinds of endangered creatures, from the short-nosed kangaroo rat to the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly. The studies add hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of delay to a development plan—if the plans pass at all, since the unions are sure to produce their own scientists at public hearings.

Not only are Californians forced to pay the higher cost of solar energy, but they are forced to pay the higher cost of union labor when the plants are constructed and operated. The unions get their plants and union jobs, or else Californians get no jobs at all.

Maybe the goal is to send all power generation to Mexico and the U.S. residents can import that too.