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Our inability to handle crises that everyone can see coming from miles away just shows you that our political class is not doing its job. See the droughts, wild

by fakethenews2022 4y ago

Our inability to handle crises that everyone can see coming from miles away just shows you that our political class is not doing its job. See the droughts, wildfires, power shortages, homelessness, drug overdoses, etc... These have the potential for leading California on a downward spiral. We could and should have built far more renewable power. We could and should have built far more desalination plants. We could and should have cleared out far more undergrowth. We could and should have built far more cheap housing while cleaning up the streets. The Democratic supermajority has been in power for years but has done nothing in these areas. Perhaps some solutions go against the far left of the party and so they do nothing. Perhaps these issues don't better help them get reelected. Oftentimes, behind an issue is a powerful lobby group benefiting from the status quo. You can easily tell from the lobbyists that the politicians choose to meet with: PG&E, healthcare, teachers unions, etc... and who have carveouts against policies held over the rest of the population. That is why teachers were amongst the last to go back to in person, PG&E now has insurance against fires, etc... The Democrats holding office bounce from one office to another up the office hierarchy irrespective of their qualifications for the office. Many if not at the least overwhelming majority of the Republicans running for office appear to the neighborhood crazies you don't want to be office.

epistasis 4y ago
> crises that everyone can see coming from miles away just shows you that our political class is not doing its job. While I don't agree that everyone saw the energy capacity issues from miles away (even if it's obvious in retrospect), I do agree that our political class is not doing their job. But I disagree with the partisan political analysis of it. The problem isn't that we have a lack of diversity of political opinion, and in fact there's a huge diversity in democratic opinions, as big as I ever saw between democrats and republicans in the 1980s. The problem is that we have embraced an extreme form of conservatism that rejects changes to the status quo, and let's a tiny number of people prevent any form of change. We have embraced the power of the veto in nearly all parts of our government. Which may be fine if you are trying to stop negative changes. But we live in an era where we need lots and lots and lots of positive change in our system in California. And all those spots that allow vetos have blocked us from making those changes. The one story that gives me hope is of the story of a NIMBH blocking thousands of students from being enrolled in Berkeley. It set off a media storm and the legislature finally took action to overturn this one specific case. Sure, it was only because it was the parents of thousands of over-achieving students reacting with rage. But it gave me hope that this sort of "we can't change anything" attitude can at least be confronted. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/uc-berkeley-university-enrollment-nimby/622927/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/uc-berkele...
- fakethenews2022 4y ago
  There were blackouts in California in 2000. Everyone should have seen them coming by now. They weren't solved then. It should have been obvious that the problem would recur. Those NIMBYs you refer to are often lobbyists for special interests groups. For example, PG&E has been lobbying for years and in the meantime they inadequately cleared underbrush, didn't keep records on natural gas pipes falling into disrepair, etc... And in return we get falling power lines sparking wildfires and the San Bruno natural gas explosion. We have had water shortages for years and years. Yet the far left environmentalists block desalination plants. The environmentalists are actually ideologically opposed to all attempts to increase water supply: dams, desalination plants, etc... Meanwhile water rights are such that most of the water goes to agriculture. You can completely starve urban areas of water and the problem will still be there. The agricultural groups are loath to give up water rights. Our politicians are serving these groups at the cost of most of the population.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Agreed on a lot of this, except that the 2000 blackouts gave us any clues about what to do for the blackouts decades later. Completer different, unrated causes. For 2000, deregulation was don't poorly and allowed a corrupt company to exploit a bad market. For the later blackouts, climate change estimates were not taken into account for extreme weather events, which led to underestimating peak load.
    - fakethenews2022 4y ago
      Fair enough but look at population growth in California from 2000 till recently. That alone was going to cause problems.
      - epistasis 4y ago
        Right, they accounted for population change, as you can tell because we don't have daily blackouts. They did not account for extreme weather events that were outside prior models of weather possibilities. This is quite distinct from, say, Texas's failure to respond to freezing events that were identical to the freezing events from a decade prior. The California blackouts were due to extreme events that had not been experienced. (In addition to failure of a large natural gas plant, IIRC, but the plan should take that into account too)

epistasis 4y ago

> crises that everyone can see coming from miles away just shows you that our political class is not doing its job. While I don't agree that everyone saw the energy capacity issues from miles away (even if it's obvious in retrospect), I do agree that our political class is not doing their job. But I disagree with the partisan political analysis of it. The problem isn't that we have a lack of diversity of political opinion, and in fact there's a huge diversity in democratic opinions, as big as I ever saw between democrats and republicans in the 1980s. The problem is that we have embraced an extreme form of conservatism that rejects changes to the status quo, and let's a tiny number of people prevent any form of change. We have embraced the power of the veto in nearly all parts of our government. Which may be fine if you are trying to stop negative changes. But we live in an era where we need lots and lots and lots of positive change in our system in California. And all those spots that allow vetos have blocked us from making those changes. The one story that gives me hope is of the story of a NIMBH blocking thousands of students from being enrolled in Berkeley. It set off a media storm and the legislature finally took action to overturn this one specific case. Sure, it was only because it was the parents of thousands of over-achieving students reacting with rage. But it gave me hope that this sort of "we can't change anything" attitude can at least be confronted. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/uc-berkeley-university-enrollment-nimby/622927/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/uc-berkele...

fakethenews2022 4y ago
There were blackouts in California in 2000. Everyone should have seen them coming by now. They weren't solved then. It should have been obvious that the problem would recur. Those NIMBYs you refer to are often lobbyists for special interests groups. For example, PG&E has been lobbying for years and in the meantime they inadequately cleared underbrush, didn't keep records on natural gas pipes falling into disrepair, etc... And in return we get falling power lines sparking wildfires and the San Bruno natural gas explosion. We have had water shortages for years and years. Yet the far left environmentalists block desalination plants. The environmentalists are actually ideologically opposed to all attempts to increase water supply: dams, desalination plants, etc... Meanwhile water rights are such that most of the water goes to agriculture. You can completely starve urban areas of water and the problem will still be there. The agricultural groups are loath to give up water rights. Our politicians are serving these groups at the cost of most of the population.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- epistasis 4y ago
  Agreed on a lot of this, except that the 2000 blackouts gave us any clues about what to do for the blackouts decades later. Completer different, unrated causes. For 2000, deregulation was don't poorly and allowed a corrupt company to exploit a bad market. For the later blackouts, climate change estimates were not taken into account for extreme weather events, which led to underestimating peak load.
  - fakethenews2022 4y ago
    Fair enough but look at population growth in California from 2000 till recently. That alone was going to cause problems.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      Right, they accounted for population change, as you can tell because we don't have daily blackouts. They did not account for extreme weather events that were outside prior models of weather possibilities. This is quite distinct from, say, Texas's failure to respond to freezing events that were identical to the freezing events from a decade prior. The California blackouts were due to extreme events that had not been experienced. (In addition to failure of a large natural gas plant, IIRC, but the plan should take that into account too)