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.

California energy officials vote to extend Diablo Canyon nuclear plant operations

But is it safe?

Pacific Gas & Electric’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant is the only operating nuclear plant in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom supports keeping the plant along the coast near San Luis Obispo operating past its planned shutdown date of 2025.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

BY TONY BRISCOE STAFF WRITER for the Los Angeles Times

California energy officials have voted to extend the operation of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant through 2030, extending the life span of the state’s last nuclear plant an additional five years.

The California Public Utilities Commission approved a proposal to keep Diablo Canyon’s twin reactors online, overturning an earlier agreement to close the plant in 2025.

Three commissioners — Alice Busching Reynolds, John Reynolds and Karen Douglas — voted in favor. Commissioner Darcie Houck abstained and Commissioner Genevieve Shiroma was absent.

Thursday’s decision is expected to preserve a large bloc of the state’s zero-emission power supply. But it also raises concerns over the high cost and potential safety issues associated with operating an aging nuclear power plant.

The state utilities commission acknowledged that the costs associated with the plan were still unknown but were expected to exceed $6 billion. A federal safety review will also be conducted.

State energy commissioners emphasized that the extension should serve as a bridge to renewable energy and that the plant was not expected to operate beyond 2030. The decision, they said, was intended to bolster the reliability of California’s grid, which has narrowly avoided rolling blackouts during heat waves in recent years.

“The short-term extension of the power plant as proposed is a transitional strategy to help California weather the challenges of the energy transition, including the weather and climate extremes that we have experienced … and the cost challenges that we face in scaling up the clean energy transition so quickly,” Douglas said ahead of the vote. “So this is an opportunity for us to help bridge some years.”

Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the plant’s operator, lauded the commission’s decision, saying it will help provide the state with a dependable, emission-free source of energy.

“We’re grateful for the opportunity to answer the state’s call to ensure electrical reliability for Californians,” said Suzanne Hosn, a spokesperson for PG&E.

At a state meeting filled with heated discourse, supporters argued that California needed the power supply from Diablo Canyon to avert outages and meet the state’s climate goals. The plant supplies about 9% of the state’s electricity and 17% of the state’s zero-emission power.

“It was methodically determined that Diablo Canyon is in fact integral to the California electricity reliability,” said Brendan Pittman, a Berkeley resident, who supported the proposal. “It contributes substantially to California’s zero-emission targets and the costs for continued operation are not, quote, too high to justify.”

But a chorus of critics warned that the extension could bring rate hikes from PG&E.

Opponents also argued that the plant’s proximity to several fault lines makes it susceptible to earthquakes, and a significant risk.

The plant, which sits along the Pacific Ocean about 10 miles outside of San Luis Obispo, opened in 1985. A 46-page report by Digby Macdonald, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering, suggested one of the plant’s nuclear reactors “poses an unreasonable risk to public health and safety due to serious indications of an unacceptable degree of embrittlement,” or deterioration due to prolonged exposure to radiation.

“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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