California Dreamin' is a green nightmare...

...ahh California, the cradle of cool, the State of the Nation, where the American dream was first dreamt. Where, (with apologies to Garrison Keillor ) the women are all beautiful, the men are all handsome and the children are all above average...Not however, any more. California is in the death grip of a huge demented green monster, more destructive and frightening than anything seen in any of Arnie's Terminator movies. Arnie's neighbour state, Oregon is in similar financial crisis due to "green" jobs and tax breaks which are in effect breaking the taxpayer...more here... Look out, the green giant is heading our way too...This article from the current online City Journal, is in response to Time magazine's rose coloured, spin doctor cover story...Time magazine applauds California’s voters for approving “huge bonds” for stem-cell research and a high-speed rail line, and its politicians for adopting “first-in-the-nation greenhouse-gas regulations, green building codes and efficiency standards for automobiles and appliances that have rearranged the national energy debate.” These expensive innovations are going to pay for themselves, it appears, because California is “by far the national leader in green jobs, green patents, supply from renewables and savings from efficiency. It’s also leading the way toward electric cars, zero-emission homes, advanced biofuels and a smarter grid.” Which is all terribly exciting, unless it turns out that the green economy of the future is always in the future...California’s achievement of creating 10,000 green jobs annually has been overwhelmed by the loss of 700,000 jobs in the state since the start of the recession.
Worse, the state’s economic policies are based not on environmental planning but on “environmental preening,” according to Troy Senik, author of the forthcoming California at the Crossroads. The state is committed, by law, to greenhouse-gas emissions in 2020 that are no larger than its emissions in 1990. Since California’s population (like every state’s) will be much larger 11 years from now than it was 19 years ago, this goal will be impossible without “massive economic regression,” according to Senik. “Such is the fate of Californians: to live in a state where environmentalism is a religion and economics a superstition.” ...more here...