Why are People Leaving California?

California climate is delightful. Many people or their parents move here to escape the humidity, the cold, the hurricanes and the tornadoes found everywhere else in the United States. The price we pay for this has finally become too much for most of us.

In Central Phoenix, the average list price for single-family homes is $455 per square foot.

The median sale price of a home in Los Angeles is $1.1M, and the median sale price per square foot is $643, according to Redfin.

Gasoline in California, according to AAA, which tracks national gas prices daily, costs an average of about $4.78, compared with $3.16 nationally. The cost of electricity in the state is now the highest in the continental U.S., at 30.22 cents per kilowatt hour.

The notoriously high cost of gas in the state is the result of a lot of factors — we tax gas to pay for road infrastructure and a less-polluting fuel mix in the summer months. Last year, Sacramento decided to move harder, faster toward its goal of a carbon-less future, adding disincentives for refineries and incentives for EVs that the California Air Resources Board has predicted will add 47 cents a gallon at the pump.

Overall, California’s zero-carbon climate policies — pushing EVs as your next car purchase and heat pumps to cool and heat your house — rely largely on electricity that in turn depends on expensive, and intermittent, energy sources, such as wind and solar. Come hell or high water, California’s leaders are trying to regulate, tax and incentivize their way to electricity that is 100% carbon-free by 2045.

In fact, recent analyses say California will face “acute electricity shortages” over the coming decade. Not least among the reasons: a dragged-out, exorbitantly expensive and unpredictable permitting process; the difficulty in finding appropriate locales for wind turbines and solar farms; and, ironically, objections from locals and environmentalists who don’t want renewable facilities in their backyards. Case in point: Moss Landing, where a toxic fire in a battery plant, coupled with plans for offshore wind turbines, have turned locals against green policies.

California can only prosper if it can develop affordable, reliable energy from all sources, including the state’s fossil fuel supplies. Without a change of direction, the trajectory is building toward a neo-feudal future — a state widely divided between the few rich and the many struggling.

Source for some of this article from a Joel Kotkin column in the Los Angeles Times.

Palos Verdes landslide keeps getting worse. Residents’ anger boils

While I am sad to read of the landslides in Palos Verdes apparently the people living there want the government to fight mother nature. The On January 10, 2005, a landslide struck the community of La Conchita in Ventura County, California, destroying or seriously damaging 36 houses and killing 10 people. This was not the first destructive landslide to damage this community, nor is it likely to be the last reported the U.S. Geological Survey. From a landslide in Sonoma County to intense floods in San Diego the cliffs and hills near the beach communities are common. Amtrak announced the tracks are unexpectedly closed due to debris on the rails in the San Clemente area. A landslide caused by recent weather events was identified as the culprit, as reported by the L.A. Times. Anger will not solve this problem. If there was a solution to the landslides in Palos Verdes the government would have already taken that action.

I noticed that one news outlet called Palos Verdes the richest area in the country so money to fight the landslides is not an issue.

“COP28 is now on the verge of Complete Failure”

This AP (Associated Press) article is worth displaying in full. The world has a problem that needs attention now.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Countries moved closer to reaching what critics called a watered-down final deal on how to act on climate change on Monday, to the disappointment and anger of nations who called to phase out planet-warming fossil fuels as the United Nations summit in Dubai neared its culmination.

A new draft released Monday of what’s known as the global stocktake — the part of talks that assesses where the world is at with its climate goals and how it can reach them — called for countries to reduce “consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”

The release triggered a frenzy of fine-tuning by government envoys and rapid analysis by advocacy groups, just hours before the planned late morning finish to the talks on Tuesday — even though many observers expect the finale to run over time, as is common at the annual U.N. talks.

Anger grew as people had more time to read the document.

In a closed-door meeting late Monday, some country delegation chiefs needled COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber’s frequent calling of the goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times his “north star,” saying the president’s proposal misses that star.

“It is not enough to say 1.5, we have to do 1.5. We have to deliver accordingly,” Norway minister Espen Barth Eide said.

A person inside the room said several negotiating blocs, including those for small island states, Latin American countries, the European Union and developing countries, all spoke against the new draft, saying its ambition wasn’t strong enough. The person spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak without fear of affecting the negotiations.

Some Pacific Island nations argued the text amounted to a death sentence.

The proposed text “doesn’t even come close to delivering 1.5 as a north star,” Tuvalu’s delegation chief Seve Paeniu said. “For us this is a matter of survival. We cannot put loopholes in our children’s futures.”

Small island nations are some of the most vulnerable places in a world of rising temperatures and seas. Final decisions by COPs have to be by consensus and objections can still torpedo this. Activists said they feared that potential objections from fossil fuel countries, such as Saudi Arabia, had watered down the text.

German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said Europe is “extremely unified” in opposing the COP presidency’s text, calling it unacceptable.

“We’re prepared to stay as long as it takes to get the course correction that the world needs,” Morgan told The Associated Press as she walked into the heads of delegation meeting.

Zhao Yingmin, China’s vice minister for Ecology and Environment, said at the meeting that “the draft fails to address the concerns of developing countries on some key issues” and in particular the idea that greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025.

United States climate envoy John Kerry says the language on fossil fuels in the text “does not meet the test” of keeping 1.5 alive.

“I, like most of you here, refuse to be part of a charade” of not phasing out fossil fuels, Kerry said. “This is a war for survival.”

Kerry’s remarks received a round of applause from the room.

A combination of activists and delegation members lined the entry into a special late-evening meeting Monday of heads of delegations, with their arms raised in unity as delegations walked through, creating a tunnel-like effect. A few activists told delegates passing by: “You are our last hope. We count on you.”

Negotiators broke well after midnight, and it wasn’t clear when talks would resume.

“We need to find a solution that has maximum ambition and maximum equity,” South Africa minister Barbara Creecy said as negotiators left the room. “One without the other will not solve the conundrum we face.”

In the 21-page document, the words oil and natural gas did not appear, and the word coal appeared twice. It also had a single mention of carbon capture, a technology touted by some to reduce emissions although it’s untested at scale.

Activists said the text was written by the COP28 presidency, run by an Emirati oil company CEO — Al-Jaber — and pounced on its perceived shortcomings. It fell fall short of a widespread push to phase out fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal altogether.

Al-Jaber skipped a planned news conference and headed straight into a meeting with delegates just after 6:30 p.m. It was the second time for him to cancel a press briefing on Monday.

“We have a text and we need to agree on the text,” al-Jaber said. “The time for discussion is coming to an end and there’s no time for hesitation. The time to decide is now.”

He added: “We must still close many gaps. We don’t have time to waste.”

Critics said there was a lot to do.

“COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure,” former U.S. Vice President and climate activist Al Gore posted on X. “The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word. … It is deeply offensive to all who have taken this process seriously.”

Jean Su from the Center for Biological Diversity said the text “moves disastrously backward from original language offering a phaseout of fossil fuels.”

“If this race-to-the-bottom monstrosity gets enshrined as the final word, this crucial COP will be a failure,” Su said.

But Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa said the “text lays the ground for transformational change.”

“This is the first COP where the word fossil fuels are actually included in the draft decision. This is the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era,” he said.

Also on Monday, the latest draft on the Global Goal on Adaptation — the text on how countries, especially vulnerable ones, can adapt to weather extremes and climate harms — was released on Monday.

The adaptation is “utterly disappointing” and “an injustice to communities on the frontline of the crisis,” said Amy Giliam Thorp of Power Shift Africa.

“The text is even weaker, more vague in many areas, and lacking in ambition,” she said. It’s “set to corrode trust between developed and developing nations. A framework focused on action without concrete targets, especially to support developing countries, is pointless and toothless.”

Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio, a senior advisor for adaptation and resilience at the U.N. Foundation said “the new text doesn’t have the strength that we were hoping to see.”

On Monday morning, visibly tired and frustrated top U.N. officials urged COP28 talks to push harder for an end to fossil fuels, warning that time is running out for action.

“We can’t keep kicking the can down the road,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “We are out of road and almost out of time.”

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Associated Press journalists Olivia Zhang, Malak Harb, Bassam Hatoum and David Keyton contributed to this report.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

A 2058 Prediction

The year is 2058. America’s greatest foreign relations challenge in the 21st century, North Korea’s desire to obtain a nuclear weaponized ICBM that can reach the United States has been stopped thanks to American and Chinese negotiators. The real threat has become nature. Rising sea levels and a warming climate has resulted in the United States becoming a super advocate for controlling all things that can further harm the environment.

Those that questioned the theory that climate change is real and doubted the effects that will result have largely become silent. They have become as rare as those who claim the world is flat.

Former Vice President Al Gore (deceased in 2036) is remembered as the man who first rang the warning bell about global warming. While his dates and impact were incorrect, his prediction that the world would be experiencing major changes thanks to global warming were correct.

There is now a 6 meter (20 foot) wall at the beach around much of southern Florida. Coastal plains have become part of the sea everywhere that is not protect by a sea wall.

Back in 2017 there were three successive years of Houston, Texas flooding that were called once in 500 years or once in a thousand year events. Even those who grew up there were trying to decide whether it was worth the fight to live in that flood plain. Most people have abandoned that city along with those who have left New Orleans.

Phoenix, Arizona summer temperatures now reach 120 Fahrenheit (49C) or more on the very hottest days. The population has grown because there is now an abundance of water and farming has become a significant industry in that state.

Los Angeles still has a Mediterranean climate along the coast but inland high temperatures now frequently reach 115 Fahrenheit (46C) in the summer. The highest temperature in the San Fernando Valley in 2057 was 120 Fahrenheit and the National Weather Service says more days close to that record are anticipated in the future. The humidity is now more similar to the east coast of the United States.

Solar panels are everywhere. Without them the cost of air conditioning would be too expensive for most families. Even now in 2058 many families have moved into communes to afford living in southern California.