>This is certainly not an argument for abandoning the state's commitments to the California model [of setting aggressive green energy goals], but it suggests paying close attention to the choices that are made in the energy transition to avoid backlash and major economic losses
The problem isn't the energy transition, the problem is that environmental reviews have been weaponized by NIMBYs. Whenever anyone tries to build anything in California, NIMBYs sue them to delay the project for years with environmental review laws. This is far more disruptive than, say, needing to get bureaucratic approvals for environmental impacts, because these lawsuits happen after planning has finished and shovels are already in the ground.
The only infrastructure that can get built in California is, naturally, the kind that spews carbon in the face of the poor. In fact, I have a bit of a conspiracy theory: California isn't nearly as blue as we think it is. A lot of nominally liberal Californians are actually extremely conservative, because they use bullshit lawsuits, local city councils, and other measures of vetocracy to stop progress. They disguise this with wokewashing - bathing their blatant conservatism[0] in the language of social justice so that liberals don't notice it right away.
Green energy would be already attainable for a good chunk of California residents but for the NIMBYism. California actually has to build a lot of their wind farms in Wyoming - yes, the deep-red state whose low taxes are subsidized by the coal industry - purely because the residents can't enact the fallacy of relative privation and sue a wind farm for not being green enough. California wants green energy, sure, but they want it "over there" where they don't have to even know that it exists.
Isn't "small government" the definition of political conservatism?
I think if people like big government, and they use this big government to crush housing projects for NIMBY goals, they are most certainly progressive.
> Isn't "small government" the definition of political conservatism?
Not at all. Small government was a movement within US conservatism that gained a lot of momentum in the second half of the twentieth century.
Plenty of conservatives did and do have ideas that rely on some significant government apparatus or another, at some level or another. Even during the hey day of the “small government” era, Republicans were loudly in favor of expanding military and law enforcement programs, and many craved the reintroduction of censorship programs to protect kids from being exposed to naughty things.
Conservatism is defined by reactionary conservation or restoration of traditional norms (per the specific conservatives’ vision) as set against any number of emerging alternatives. If it takes a government bureau to make that happen, history shows no reluctance to use one.
The problem isn't the energy transition, the problem is that environmental reviews have been weaponized by NIMBYs. Whenever anyone tries to build anything in California, NIMBYs sue them to delay the project for years with environmental review laws. This is far more disruptive than, say, needing to get bureaucratic approvals for environmental impacts, because these lawsuits happen after planning has finished and shovels are already in the ground.
The only infrastructure that can get built in California is, naturally, the kind that spews carbon in the face of the poor. In fact, I have a bit of a conspiracy theory: California isn't nearly as blue as we think it is. A lot of nominally liberal Californians are actually extremely conservative, because they use bullshit lawsuits, local city councils, and other measures of vetocracy to stop progress. They disguise this with wokewashing - bathing their blatant conservatism[0] in the language of social justice so that liberals don't notice it right away.
Green energy would be already attainable for a good chunk of California residents but for the NIMBYism. California actually has to build a lot of their wind farms in Wyoming - yes, the deep-red state whose low taxes are subsidized by the coal industry - purely because the residents can't enact the fallacy of relative privation and sue a wind farm for not being green enough. California wants green energy, sure, but they want it "over there" where they don't have to even know that it exists.
[0] Don't Utah my California.