It is now August in California.
Green Napalm
So we can expect the following from our postmodern state government. There are the now-normal raging wildfires in the coastal and Sierra foothills. And they will be greeted as if they are not characteristic threats of 500 years of settled history, but leveraged as proof of global warming as well as the state’s abject inability to put them out.
When the inept state can’t extinguish them as it has in the past, it suggests that it’s more “natural” to let them burn. Jerry Brown’s team told us that the drought’s toll — millions of dead trees and tens of millions of acres of parched grass and calcified shrubs on hillsides — provided a natural source of food and shelter for bugs and birds and thus need not be grazed or thinned or harvested. And so the wages of drought could be in a sense good for an “ecosystem” that otherwise proved to be green napalm for the people of foothill communities.
We can expect power outages, because we don’t believe in releasing clean heat to make energy. Note that we do not mind people heating up in their 108-degree apartments without power. The planet is always more important than the non-privileged people who inhabit it.
For some reason, solar panels don’t create much power when the state is engulfed in dust, haze, and smoke.
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-Nemo
I wanna know if the state of Commiefornia filed and Environmental Impact Statement before they polluted my entire state and the pacific northwest with all their damn smoke...
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question, look no further than the consequences the State of California paid when they allowed the spillway at the Oroville Dam to crumble, sending millions of tons of mud and debris into the Feather River and forcing the evacuation of 188,000 people down a two lane highway.
DeleteAs punishment, FEMA reimbursed the State of California approximately 75% of the $1.1 billion cost of rebuilding the spillway. And during the rebuilding process local media fawned over how wonderfully the state was handling the crisis.
BTW, according to Gavin Newsom the state isn't responsible for that smoke, Climate Change is.
I watched that whole fiasco in real time beginning when cracks were first discovered in the main spillway. There was a YT channel* that live streamed the whole she-bang all the way through Kiewit completing seeding after all reconstruction. There was a live chat with the video. It became part of my daily schedule to tune in.
DeleteThe only reason the citizens were evacuated was the Butte County Sheriff just happened to drop in the Emergency Command Center one night and overheard one half of a phone conversation that the state was going to let the dam overtop. Right then and there he ordered the evac.
(Rule #1 for rammed earth dams: Do NOT allow the dam to overtop.)
The ruling elite in the state screwed up badly. And they did not give a shit!
In the live chat, the regulars used their collective brain to dredge the minutes of past DNR meetings and research archives stored at UCBerkeley library. Uh oh, the cat is out of the bag. Much of what was discovered was brought up by locals at the meetings.
The public was as angry as can be. So the state attempted to mollify the people by hosting regular meetings at night. DNR and other government shitbirds spouted so much BS it was unreal. Understandably the meetings became adversarial. Then the DNR tried moving the meetings to Marysville and faraway places. Then to Craptomento during the day. Purely designed to force people to travel hours after taking off work for that day. It was pure bullshit.
*Not Blancolirio (Juan Browne). His channel did add valuable information since he had a press pass plus his aerial video.
Side note: CA has an extensive water system. Oroville Dam is the kingpin of the State Water Project. The system includes thousands of miles of levees even right to San Francisco Bay. I had noted that during and following the heavy rains, every levee and channel were flowing at minimum 3,500% capacity. Some channels were over 20,000% capacity. Every bit* of that water went straight into the ocean. I forget how many millions of acre feet that was. Most levees were in danger of collapse, some had already. The problem was burrowing rodents weakening the levees (a problem that exists to this day). Farmers and others were prohibited from repairing or fortifying the levees because to do so would potentially harm rodent habitat.
Nearly immediately following that fiasco, the state announced a mandatory water conservation, with steep fines, for the entire state.
*Except for that water which was impounded in the newly dug lake on the private property of one Moonbeam.
Elmo, I reckon you know most, if not all, of this. I put this here for others and the record.
A very worthwhile read. I don’t know much about California other than what I read. Liberals all swear it’s great there and all of those things are worthwhile to deal with in the name of being woke, but right now they mostly have water and electricity. Nothing changes until that doesn’t. But the problems, as I see them, is the problems outlined in this will take many, many years to fix, if not decades, even if the political will existed, which it doesn’t. You can’t make reservoirs appear overnight, and new power plants are costly and intense endeavors. This will all have to be done with a steadily shrinking tax base as well, amid an environment where those who already contribute little to nothing to this tax base make increasing demands for more free stuff from the state, and with the states pension plan teetering on the edge of collapse. Best of luck. And the most amusing part about it is people have been warning of this very thing happening for 20 years or more.
ReplyDeleteGator
Co-generation electrical plants are modular and be set up withing a year or so. They burn clean natural gas which has been real cheap for 10 years.
DeleteThe CA commies just don't want that for their Utopia.
I don't know about newer arrivals to the state, I think most people are living on fading memories of how great the state was. And it was. I came to CA in 1971 and it was wooded and free to roam. I used to hitchhike up and down the state just for the heck of it. I could camp overnight on any beach I could get to. Fish and shellfish were plentiful. The water was clear and clean. People were friendly and I literally could walk down the street with a rifle and no one batted an eye. Truck gun racks were everywhere. The education system, especially the state college system was low cost and top notch, a jewel in the crown.
DeleteYes, work became hard to find but that was national. Do you remember the wage freeze under Nixon? But if a guy showed initiative there was always good paying work to be found.
That golden dream decayed into a socialist nightmare. That is what the left has wrought. Happily, those many, many years of which you speak have mostly already passed. That plus the fact that the communists have dropped their pretense to make an all out effort, more people are wakening to the true ugly face of the leftist. I have already read several influential persons talking of the state turning red* this election. That kind of talk has come before I thought it would but that's okay by me. I don't think it will be this election but I do think it will be soon.
Don't bet infrastructure like dams and power plants will take years to go from breaking ground to online. The proven designs are on the board. And there is pent up demand. All it takes is a change in attitude and ideology. That may come sooner than we think. People everywhere are waking up. Can't stop a tsunami.
* Red. When I grew up, red was commie through and through. As in, 'Better dead than red'. I reckon the movie, The Matrix is to blame for today's color scheme where red signifies conservatism. Still, it's hard to choke down this talk of red used in a way that is diametrically opposite to what I read and heard throughout the Cold War.
I had to move to SoCal a few years ago. Given the whole place is desert and receives water from elsewhere I was astonished to find there is no formal water conservation effort anywhere down here. Further, I was utterly flabbergasted of what I was reading.
ReplyDeleteA local railway was being constructed. The Metroline, or something like that. Basically a people mover on rails. There are hills in SoCal. So the rail line included tunnels. What I read involved one particular tunnel in the vicinity of Hollywood. The tunnel was constantly flooded and engineers were stumped. (!?) Had they found an unmapped aquifer? It was two years before the figured it out. When they figured it out they ordered the people to stop irrigating their lawns so often. Meanwhile, 2 million gallons PER DAY was being pumped out of the tunnel. Pumped to basins to recharge the ground water? No. Pumped straight into the Pacific Ocean. I still shake my head at the dumb shittiness.
Meanwhile, there are busybodys scolding and snitching on neighbors because they might water their lawn and plants on the wrong day. No lie.