It's too bad what's happening to California. I've spent a fair amount of time there, having maintained a second home there on two different occasions while working on projects; the first, for 18 months in Santa Clarita Valley, the second time a year in Silicon Valley. It's a lovely state with a great climate and a lot of cool things to see and do. I have friends in California, and they are fighting to try to turn their home state around; I admire their tenacity and hope they can manage to right that leaky ship.
Meanwhile, though, California continues to commit climate lunacy on a, well, California-sized level. A piece published Monday in the excellent climate site Watts Up With That from guest author Willis Eschenbach lays out some of the costs of this lunacy — all for a reduction in climate change that's not even up to the level of a rounding error.
Encouraged by the reception of my previous post “Eight Ten-Thousandths Of A Degree Per Gigaton“, which ranged from warm acceptance through amused contempt to outright hostility, I’ve expanded my research to analyze the CO2 emissions of the late great State of California.
In my post linked above, I found that IF the IPCC is correct (which is a big “IF”), for each gigaton (Gt) of avoided CO2 emissions, there is an avoided global warming of 0.0008°C. Please read that post for the detailed calculations.
In a recent piece, we discussed the rising costs of housing in California; that story had a lot to do with NIMBY zoning and onerous regulations and building codes, but as we'll see, the state's climate laws, passed by the overwhelming Democrat majority in Sacramento and supported enthusiastically by Governor Gavin Newsom, also have a lot to do with it.
See Related: Why Young Californians Can't Afford Homes - and What The Powers That Be Aren't Telling You
There are a couple of real and proposed laws and regs that are driving up the cost of housing — and everything else.
First, solar mandates.
The California solar mandate is estimated to increase the cost of newly constructed single-family homes by approximately $8,400 each. There are ~ 60,000 new single-family homes built each year in California. That’s about half a billion dollars per year for the next 20 years until 2045, or $10 billion total.
That $8,400 added to the tab probably represents hundreds of young California families, hoping to attain their chunk of the American dream, who are now priced out of the market.
It gets worse.
The California ban on gas-powered appliances in new single-family homes goes into effect in 2030. It is estimated to increase the price of new homes by ~ $24,000. Sixty thousand new homes per year, times $24,000 per home, times fifteen years 2030-2045 gives a total cost of ~ $22 billion.
So, add that $24,000 per home and the solar mandate, and it adds up to $32,400. Per home. That's pricing even more young American families out of the possibility of home ownership. This is from a state that can't even guarantee free passage on public highways and byways.
That’s a total of about $1.5 TRILLION dollars, and it doesn’t count the cost of other California CO2-related laws and regulations. The increase in electricity demand from electric houses and electric cars alone will be another huge cost. A trillion and a half hard-earned taxpayer dollars … and all of that to MAYBE reduce the temperature in 2045 by six-thousandths of one degree C.
Seriously. 0.006°C.
Meaningless. Unmeasurably small. Lost in the noise. And please, don’t say that if only everyone did it, everything would be wonderful. At a cost of $1.5 terabucks for a reduction of 0.006°C, it would cost us OVER $250 TRILLION DOLLARS to perhaps maybe possibly reduce the 2045 temperature by one degree … madness.
Granted, between Democrats in California's legislature and the character sitting in the governor's chair, that's a lot of noise to get lost in.
California simply can't keep this up. This state simply needs a better class of criminal politicians. Their current crop is not only literally letting California burn, but they are saddling the people of that once-great state with skyrocketing housing and fuel costs. The coastal elites whose words ring many bells in Sacramento think these climate boondoggles are a good idea, although they have no intention of reducing their own massive carbon footprints, and they can easily afford the rising energy and building costs. And on the other end, these schemes don't affect much of the subsidized dependency class — although they, too, are probably chafing at California's gas prices.
But the regular people of California, the middle class that Democrats are determined to drive out of the state, are, as always, the ones hit hardest.
Maybe there is some good that will come out of the fires that ravaged places like Pacific Palisades and revealed the inept fecklessness of Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom. Maybe California will start to turn around now, and some of these idiotic climate schemes will get dumped. The next election will tell us a lot.
