California, Climate Emergency Poster Child.

 

California Dreaming' - once was.

I used to love riding the Pacific Coast Highway through northern California and the giant redwoods to the vineyards and wineries of the Napa Valley, to San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Big Sur and San Louis Obispo.  L.A., San Diego, not so much.

California was larger-than-life beautiful. Today, however, the bloom is off California's rose.

The state illustrates what happens when political leadership won't make the tough calls.

“We are misusing our environment and ourselves to the point where amenities are rapidly disappearing, social order gives way to turmoil, and life itself is threatened,” a group of environmentalists argued 50 years ago in “The California Tomorrow Plan,” detailing all too familiar problems: lack of housing, erosion of natural resources, lack of economic stability for struggling workers, lack of public transportation, bad air and unregulated growth.

The authors called for governments to be restructured to coordinate planning; economic growth predicated on a guaranteed income base; and strategies that stabilized population, protected natural resources and guided and controlled growth through public policies. The writer Wallace Stegner, summarizing the plan, wrote: “Physical resources are managed largely to stimulate economic growth; problems are dealt with disconnectedly and only as they become pressing; wasteful and polluting consumption continues; and the old patterns of growth, spreading outward from the uninhabitable city, continue to break up country into suburbs.”

...But for the most part, the response to problems has been to engineer a workaround rather than tackle the underlying issue or change behavior.

Rather than reduce the number of miles driven by car owners, the solutions have been to mitigate the damage — build more roads to alleviate congestion (although studies show it does the opposite) or mandate emission controls rather than provide adequate mass transit. Even modest proposals like car pool and bus lanes have been met with contempt: When Gov. Jerry Brown’s transportation chief proposed car pool lanes in 1976, she was effectively run out of office.

...What happens in California matters, and not just here. Because it is the fifth largest economy in the world, and by virtue of its size and character, the state has historically influenced policies across the country, from how cars are manufactured to how property taxes are assessed.

Elected officials are notorious for their propensity to avoid difficult decisions or plans beyond the next election. The former New York governor Mario Cuomo liked to tell a parable to illustrate the propensity of politicians to not grapple with the long-term consequences of their actions: A condemned man was told by the king that he could live if he promised that within a year, he could teach the king’s horse to fly. A fellow prisoner asked why the man accepted such a hopeless deal. In a year, the man said, the king may die. In a year, I may die. Or in a year, who knows — the horse may learn to fly.

We see this same failure of leadership in Canada, the avoidance of difficult decisions, the reluctance to plan beyond the next election. It suits the political interests of our leaders but it comes at the grave cost and risk to the country and our society. 

Our leaders can't bring themselves to make a clean break with our fossil fuel economy. They won't recognize that some fossil fuels, notably coal and bitumen are on the cusp of becoming stranded assets. They hope kind words and empty promises will mask their failures, at least until the next election.