Vertical Farmers Are Coming to Your City

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Over 4 billion people have joined the global population in the last 50 years, putting stress on available farmland, water and fertilizer. At the same time, the capacity of the planet to absorb farm waste – toxic farm runoff contaminating aquifers and rivers – has stretched the limit. Nearly 8 billion people now depend on 5.5 million square miles of water-guzzling farmland for their food.

Vertical farms, by contrast, look enticing. Depending on who you ask, and what crop you’re growing, they only require somewhere between 1 percent and 5 percent of the water required by outdoor farming. They also operate in a completely controlled environment, which eliminates the need for pesticides and herbicides.

They can be located anywhere. By siting them within urban areas, the transportation and refrigeration costs necessary to get the crops to market are largely eliminated. With all of these competitive advantages, why aren’t vertical farms sprouting up everywhere?

An interesting 2021 study published in the Rutgers Business Review attempts to quantify these cost variables to compare traditional farming to vertical farming. The authors found that vertical farming was at a huge disadvantage to traditional farming with respect to energy cost and labor cost, while enjoying a decisive advantage in terms of water cost. The analysis was an oversimplification, since these costs vary greatly depending on what crop is being compared, but overall it found vertical farming currently to run about 2.5 times more expensive per unit than traditional farming.

This cost disadvantage is not deterring innovators from entering the field. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, farming worldwide is a $3.4 trillion industry, constituting 4 percent of total global GDP. The vertical farming market, already worth an estimated $3.3 billion in 2020, is projected to grow to $24 billion by 2030.

At that size, it will still represent a fraction of the total global farming economy. Its growth prospects – assuming the cost constraints can be overcome – are stunning.

Investors are taking notice. In San Francisco, a company aptly named “Plenty,” has already received nearly $1 billion in venture financing, with investors including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Eric Schmidt and Softbank’s Masayoshi Son. Plenty’s CEO Matt Barnard intends to build 500 farms in major cities around the world. Barnard was born into a seventh-generation Wisconsin farm family, but his vision for AgriTech is quintessential Silicon Valley.

In a recent podcast interview, Barnard explained how he attracted some of the top investors in the world: “What we are able to do in a Plenty farm is recreate the best soil and climate conditions on Earth for each individual food product and we can make them even better.”

Plenty’s approach to achieving cost parity with traditional agriculture mirrors the leading vertical farming companies. They are attacking the labor disadvantage with robotics, with the goal of having a mostly automated vertical farm that remains safe and ergonomic for the remaining human workers. The challenge of energy to heat vertical farms and apply artificial sunlight to the plants is harder. Every serious contender in the large-scale vertical farming market considers its technological solutions and internal costs to be trade secrets.

Along with Plenty, another U.S.-based player includes Bowery Farms in New Jersey, founded by Kimball Musk (yes, Kimball has a famous brother). Bowery Farms, already valued at an estimated $2.3 billion, has two operating “warehouse farms,” and is currently constructing three more. As reported in Bloomberg earlier this year, they just acquired a robotics company, Traptic Inc., which makes “artificial-intelligence-enabled robotic arms that pick strawberries.”

Outside of the United States, Sky Green Farms in Singapore offers a look at how the challenge of artificial lighting and heating is minimized in a tropical climate. With equatorial sunlight delivering roughly 12 hours of daylight year-round, Sky Green Farms claims they have no need for artificial lighting.

According to its website, it automatically moves the vertical towers of plant trays in and out of the sunlight coming into the periphery of the glass-clad building: “Rotation is powered by a unique patented hydraulic water-driven system which utilizes the momentum of flowing water and gravity to rotate the troughs. Only 40 watts electricity (equivalent to one light bulb) is needed to power one 9 meter tall tower.”

Lack of sunlight, however, isn’t deterring investors in the far northern latitudes. In Germany, Infarm GmbH, founded in 2013 and based in Berlin, has built a global network of vertical farms. According to its website, “With operations across 10 countries and 30 cities worldwide, Infarm harvests 500,000+ plants monthly while using 99.5 percent less space than soil-based agriculture, 95 percent less water, 90 percent less transport and zero chemical pesticides. Today, 90 percent of electricity use throughout the Infarm network is from renewable energy and the company has set a target to reach zero emission food production next year.”

Skeptics may be forgiven for questioning the bold renewable energy claim. The real question is how much electricity does it take to grow a kilogram of food? Nonproprietary estimates that might answer this question are scarce. An in-depth 2012 study published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information evaluated hydroponic farming and concluded most of the energy consumed by vertical farms is for heating and cooling, and transportation fuel to bring the produce to market.

As for electricity for lighting, advances in LED technology, to the point where the spectral characteristics of the lights are tailored to each plant physiology, will bring down this cost. On the other hand, humanity is going to have to crack the challenge of abundant energy with or without the added demands of indoor farming, and if global food shortages become acute enough, it won’t matter how much energy these farms require, they’ll still get built.

It may be profitable, or nearly so, to grow leafy greens and strawberries and wine grapes in your vertical farm, but what about wheat, corn, rice, soybeans, barley, sorghum, cotton, rapeseed, millet, and dry beans? These are the top 10 crops by acreage in the world, and together, these crops consume over 90 percent of all arable farmland. This fact, even more than energy, is a challenge that vertical farming technology has yet to address, but solutions may be in the works.

Dixon Despommier, professor emeritus at Columbia University, spoke with me about this challenge and others in a recent phone call. Currently working with students at Fordham University to design the sustainable city of the future, and author of the 2010 book “The Vertical Farm Feeding the World in the 21st Century,” Despommier is considered the father of vertical farming. As he explored in a 2020 paper, “wheat grown on a single hectare of land in a 10-layer indoor vertical facility could produce from … 220 to 600 times the current world average annual wheat yield.”

Imagine wheat, currently consuming nearly 25 percent of all farmland in the world, suddenly requiring a fraction of one percent of farmland. If Despommier’s vision were actually implemented, and all the wheat in the world were grown this way, it could require buildings that altogether would have a footprint of only 1,500 square miles. Put another way, the space necessary to produce the world’s wheat crop would shrink from 3,200 square feet per person to only five square feet per person.

It’s a long way from here to there. For example, the most efficient vertical farms are “aeroponic,” which means that the roots hang freely from a growing scaffold to dangle within a nutrient-rich mist. This precisely controlled mist requires precision sprayers, and precision sprayers routinely clog. For all its promise, vertical farming today is an extremely capital intensive business and is limited to high value crops.

But as world population stands poised to pass the 8 billion mark, the ongoing innovations of the vertical farmers will play a growing role in feeding humanity – and could even boost the economies of cities.

This article was originally published by the Pacific Research Institute.

Are Government Pensions Funds in Crisis Again?

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If ever there were a case of Chicken Little, it’s the endless squawking over the imminent implosion of public employee pension funds. In California, ever since pension benefits were enhanced, retroactively, starting in 1999, critics have been claiming a pension apocalypse was imminent. But no matter what happens, pension funds muddle through.

The modern era of pensions began in the 1984, when pension system guidelines were revised to permit them to purchase equities without limit. By 1999, on the strength of a nearly 15 year run of unbroken equities growth, California’s pension systems were fully funded with surpluses. With their confidence undiminished after the internet bubble popped and stocks tanked, pension system managers blithely continued to advocate pension benefit enhancements. By 2005 those benefit enhancements had rolled through every agency in California, and by then the markets were recovering as well. Then came the crash in the fall of 2008. To cope, the pension systems began to use creative accounting. Collectively these gimmicks obscured growing problems.

For example, asset “smoothing” made it possible to hide recent drops in the value of invested assets by reporting the average value of those assets over previous years. As the funded status – the difference between total invested assets and the amount the fund actually needs to pay current and future pensions – worsened, pension systems began to require so-called “unfunded contributions,” which were catch up payments necessary to reduce the growing amount of underfunding. But by negotiating repayment terms analogous to negative amortization mortgages, agencies were allowed to make low payments in the early years of the amortization term, which frequently meant the underfunded amount wasn’t even being reduced. Then when those payments become burdensome, agencies would refinance the new, now even larger unfunded liability, to get that unfunded payment down again.

Gimmicks abounded. Pension funds in the early 2000s used an estimated rate-of-return per year of around 7.0 percent, which was obviously too high, since the funding status of pension systems continued to worsen. But by maintaining the fiction of a higher than realistic rate-of-return, pension systems could underestimate the size of their pension liability, and claim there was enough money in the system. If they acknowledged that returns might be lower, they would need more assets to make up the difference.

The consequence of this was pension systems quietly ended up with an unfunded payment that came to dwarf the “normal” payment. If a pension system is fully funded, the only contribution required each year is the “normal” payment, which is the amount of money that has to be invested in order to pay whatever amount of future pension benefits were earned in that year. This is the essence of pension finance. You estimate the present value of future pension benefits, and make sure you have that amount invested today. When you don’t do that, you end up with an unfunded liability. In California today, in almost every one of the pension systems set up for government retirees, the unfunded payment that agencies have to make to the pension systems is now more than the normal payment. But guess what? The only portion that public employees have to themselves help pay through payroll withholding is the normal payment. Taxpayers pick up everything else.

If all this complexity is tedious, join the club. An innumerate legislature, a powerful public employee union lobby, and inadequate pension system oversight has put us where we are today. Pension systems that remain only 70 percent funded, with taxpayers footing far more than their share.

So are we today at just another Chicken Little moment? After all, the pension systems have bent but they never broke. This is thanks to the PEPRA reforms of 2013, the GASB reforms of 2015, along with agencies picking up unfunded contributions that slowly grew into the monster they are today, which allowed them time to raise taxes and cut services so they could make those higher payments.

Taking all this into account, it is not unreasonable to consider government pensions resilient enough to take whatever is coming next. Nonetheless, with today’s uncertain outlook for stocks, bonds, and real estate, it is timely to have another look at the financial health of California’s pension systems. Since CalPERS is the 800 pound gorilla in California’s pension jungle, a look at its finances may be illustrative.

The first chart shows the funding status of CalPERS by year, starting with the fiscal year ended 6/30/2007 and continuing through 6/30/2020, the most recent year for which financial statements are available. As can be seen, CalPERS has only been around 70 percent funded for over six years. It is also evident that 2013 was a pivotal year for the fund, because in that year, the value of the total invested assets actually declined, from $283 billion on 6/30/2012 down to $281 billion on 6/30/2013. The funded ratio prior to 2013 had stayed over 80 percent, but subsequently fell down into the 70s and still has not recovered.Something else that should be noted from this first chart is the relentless growth of the pension liability. Between 2012 and 2013, as total investment assets shrunk in value, the present value of future pensions increased by over 10 percent, from $340 billion to $375 billion. Overall, during the 14 years reported here, while assets increased in value by 181 percent, liabilities increased by 223 percent. The combination of absolute growth in the total pension liability and a diminishing funded ratio has a compounding impact on the amount of the unfunded liability. As of 6/30/2020, CalPERS was facing an unfunded liability of $163 billion. Taxpayers are on the hook for 100 percent of this debt.

While complete financial statements for CalPERS – and most public employee pension systems – lag about 18 months behind their close dates, every month CalPERS offers an update on the value of their invested assets. Reviewing the latest available report reveals the risks they have begun to take in order to prevent their funded ratio from further deteriorating.

The next chart, below, provides a snapshot of CalPERS investments as of August 31, 2022. Their total assets have swollen to $446 billion. That’s good performance, implying an annualized return over the 14 months since 6/30/2020 of over 9 percent. But what’s in these numbers?Here is where CalPERS position may be more precarious than ever. Consider each category of assets, including some you would not have spotted ten years ago. Public equity refers to listed stocks, and with the market in turmoil, the direction of these investments is uncertain. “Income” refers mostly to bonds with fixed yields, and as interest rates go up, the value of previously purchased bonds must fall, since for them to remain marketable the yield from their fixed payment has to rise to a competitive level. “Real assets” refers to real estate investments, which, like publicly traded stocks, is in uncertain territory. But what about the other categories?

Here is where even greater risk to the CalPERS investments may reside. Private equity and private debt refer to investments in companies that are not yet listed. These investments lack the liquidity of publicly traded stocks and bonds, and the financials of these companies are not as transparent. Private equity may also include hedge fund investments which are even more volatile.

And then there is “Other Trust Level” investments, where CalPERS has deigned to commit over $16 billion. In the footnotes to CalPERS Trust Level Quarterly Update, decipher this description: “Trust Level Financing reflects derivatives financing and repo borrowing in trust level Synthetic Cap Weighted and Synthetic Treasury portfolios.” Good luck with that. This is pre-financial crisis speculative behavior, the sort that almost brought down the entire financial system. To further put this in context, “Leverage” refers to money CalPERS borrowed in order to make additional investments, hoping those investments would earn more than they paid to borrow the money.

A financial blogger operating under the pseudonym “QTR” (Quoth the Raven), with thousands of subscribers on Substack, warned last week what could happen to U.S. pension funds, writing “The fact that these funds were unable to post the returns that they needed during arguably the most euphoric bull market in history is extremely concerning.”

If CalPERS is any example, indeed they could not. During the period from 2007 t0 2020, CalPERS went from 87 percent funded to 70 percent funded. Because annual pension benefit payments to government retirees in California are required to match inflation once the purchasing value of a pension falls to within 75-80 percent of its purchasing power upon retirement, inflation is going to drive the amount of the total pension liability up faster than the 6.4 percent it averaged over the past 14 years. CalPERS, and the other pension plans, are chasing a greyhound, and the engine is overheating.

California’s pension systems, to the extent they have matched CalPERS in diverting billions of dollars into private debt and equity, hedge funds, derivatives, and other highly speculative financial instruments, and financed these adventures with borrowed money, are stretched as far as they can go. California’s legislature needs to investigate the asset mix of state and local government pension systems and honestly appraise the exposure. Are they facing margin calls? Do they face liquidity risk?

As for the financial experts running California’s pension systems, they need to back away from speculative investments, deleverage, and tell the union lobbyists and their captive legislators the truth: We can no longer use creative accounting and high-risk investment strategies to perpetuate the perception of system stability.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

The Globalist Climate Agenda is a Crime Against Humanity

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“This anti-sustainability backlash, this anti-woke backlash, is incredibly dangerous for the world.”
– Alan Jope, CEO, Unilever, speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative

It would not be an exaggeration to say this is probably one of the most inverted takes on what is “dangerous” in the history of civilization. Not because anyone is against the concept of sustainability, but because sustainability as defined by Alan Jope is incredibly unsustainable. If he gets his way, he will destroy the world.

Jope, Clinton, the infamous Karl Schwab who heads the World Economic Forum, the ESG movement informally headed by Larry Fink of Blackrock (with over $10 trillion in investments), and all the rest who champion today’s prevailing globalist climate agenda are coercing nearly 8 billion people into an era of poverty and servitude.

The primary target of the “sustainability” movement is fossil fuel, the burning of which is allegedly causing catastrophic climate change. Heedless of the fact that fossil fuel provides more than 80 percent of all energy consumed worldwide, banks, hedge funds and institutional investors throughout the Western World are using ESG criteria (environment, social, governance), to deny the financing necessary to maintain or build new fossil fuel infrastructure.

It’s working. Pressure from governments, international NGOs, and global finance is now delivering unprecedented shifts in policies around the world, creating needless scarcity and turmoil. In just the last month, new emissions rules have triggered protests by farmers in the Netherlands, Canada, Spain, Italy, Poland, and elsewhere. Sri Lanka, in the process of earning a near perfect ESG score, lost its ability to feed its people. In the ensuing fury, the President was forced to flee the country. Undaunted, globalist climate activists are discouraging African nations from developing natural gas.

It should be easy to see the hidden agenda behind this repression. If you control energy and food, you control the world. The biggest multinational corporations on Earth are empowered by ESG mandates, because marginal or emerging competitors lacks the financial resiliency to comply. From small independent private farmers and ranchers to small independent nations, once their ability to produce is broken, the big players pick up the pieces for pennies on the dollar. But that’s not what you read in the Washington Post.

In a blistering editorial published on September 18, under “The Post’s View,” the editors wrote “The World’s Ice is Melting: Humanity Must Prepare for the Consequences.” For at least 30 years, and with increasing frequency and intensity, it is not the weather that has become extreme, but rather these proclamations. We have now reached the point where every major institution in the Western World is bent on spreading this panic. Yet very little of this panic is justified by the facts.

To verify the credibility of the globalist climate agenda, should it have any, several hurdles have to be overcome. If global warming and extreme weather is definitely happening, then how serious is the problem, what is the cause of the problem, and what are rational solutions to the problem? To all four of these questions, serious debate is mostly absent from mainstream discourse. Skeptics are pariahs.

But if a skeptical response to any one of these four questions is accepted, the entire edifice of climate alarm collapses. Consider each of them:

Melting ice is sort of a trump card in the hands of the climate alarm community. If every molecule of ice on top of Greenland were to melt into the ocean, sea level would rise by over 20 feet. If the entire 5 million square mile Antarctic continent were to lose its ice, sea level would rise by 200 feet. That much is indisputable. But is ice in retreat?

The Wall Street Journal recently published an analysis by theoretical physicist Steven Koonin, where he noted that Antarctica has been ice-covered for over 30 million years, and is covered with over 26 million gigatons (a gigaton is a cubic kilometer) of ice. He points out that even at the current estimated rate of net loss, 250 gigatons per year, it would take a century for sea level to rise 3 inches. What Koonin ought to also point out is that 250/26,000,000 is a fraction so small, it is unlikely to exceed the margin for error using existing measurement technology.

In Greenland, as in Antarctica, summer ice melt is offset by snow that causes accumulation of ice in the interior. A recent paper authored by NOAA’s Michael Gallagher evaluates how snowfall affects ice mass in Greenland. Throughout the document, the author acknowledges large uncertainties that make it difficult to predict that climate change automatically signifies net losses in ice mass. It may be that a warmer climate would cause increased snowfall to more than offset increased melting in Greenland.

As for floating ice in the Arctic, which does not raise sea level when it melts, but does offer a cooling, reflective surface at the top of the world, inexplicably it is at a decade high. Vijay Jayaraj, writing for Principia Scientific, citing findings from both the Japanese Institute of Polar Research and the Danish Meteorological Institute, reported that “the extent of ice in the summer of 2022 has been greater than the 10-year average. On most days in July and August, sea-ice levels were above the 10-year average and significantly more than the previous few years.”

Digging further into arctic ice loss, over the past 40 years, the summertime retreat of ice has become more significant, while the wintertime maximum has dropped slightly. So let’s assume the planet is warming. How serious is the problem?

To answer this, you can go to the IPCC’s own reports, which are routinely misread by governments and media to hype the worst case scenarios. Michael Shellenberger, an environmental writer and activist, and author of the book Apocalypse Never, in a recent essay he published on Substack, referenced IPCC reports among others to refute the idea of a climate crisis. Here are excerpts:

“Since the end of the Cold War, policymakers, journalists, and activists have pointed to melting glaciers, dying coral, and deadly floods as signs of the apocalypse. But people misread the signs. Scientists in 2022 measured more coral on the Great Barrier Reef than at any point since they began monitoring them in 1986. And, not only have deaths and damages from flooding declined significantly worldwide, for the first time in 25 years, there were no Atlantic hurricanes in August.

Climate change is real and having real world impacts, to be sure. But none of those environmental changes are the end of the world. While warmer temperatures increase bleaching, corals can survive bleaching; scientists find that corals are adapting and evolving to warmer water; and people are breeding coral that can survive hotter temperatures. And the main factor preventing flood damage and death remains water management to channel stormwater through upgraded drain systems, not modestly higher rainfall. As for hurricanes, NOAA estimates that they will become 25% less frequent.

In truth, there is no scientific basis for any claim of climate apocalypse. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and others forecast that farmers in the world’s poorest regions, like sub-Saharan Africa, could see a 40% increase in crop yields if they gain access to fertilizer, irrigation, and mechanization, even at high levels of warming. There is no science supporting the alarmist claims of an imminent collapse of the North Atlantic Ocean currents, which bring warm water north, and cool water south, an oft-repeated ‘tipping points’ scenario. Indeed, it is hard to come up with any scenario where temperature changes of 4°C could be world-ending.”

So whether its mild or severe, what is causing climate change?

First of all, as climate skeptics are fond of pointing out, the earth’s climate has always been changing. Many of the variables at work today are identified as causing major climate shifts in previous epochs. For much of the last 2.5 million years, the earth has been a snowball. What we are living in today is known as the Holocene interglacial, a warm period that has lasted for 11,000 years. Based on geologic history, another ice age is past due.

Clearly it wasn’t anthropogenic CO2 that drove these profound episodes of climate change in Earth’s past. Other causes include how the shape of Earth’s orbit fluctuates on a 96,000 year cycle, how the tilt of the earths axis fluctuates on a 41,000 year cycle, and how the Earth’s axis wobbles on a 26,000 year cycle. The combinations in which these cycles converge impacts how much sun hits the polar latitudes, possibly triggering warming or cooling.

These orbital phenomena are not believed to be enough to trigger the beginning or the end of an ice age on their own, but instead start a feedback loop in the Earth’s climate system. In that regard, anthropogenic CO2 may actually be postponing the next ice age. From LiveScience.com, “Scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany have shown that the onsets of past ice ages were triggered mainly by decreases in carbon dioxide and that the dramatic increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because of human-caused emissions, has likely suppressed the onset of the next ice age for up to 100,000 years.”

More immediate variables affecting climate include solar cycles, as well as major fluctuations in ocean currents such as the 20 to 30 year Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Climate is also affected by volcanic activity which releases CO2 and aerosols into the atmosphere. The climate may be affected by deforestation or desertification, urban heat islands, and other changes in land use. The climate is greatly affected by water vapor in ways that are still poorly understood.

The multi-disciplinary nature of climate science, the infinitely complex assortment of variables impacting climate, the uncertain and often conflicting measurements, the dichotomy between predictive modeling and actual events, combined with relentless pressure on scientists to always reinforce the “consensus,” ought to call into question all alarmist proclamations. But weather has always been capable of wreaking havoc on civilization. What should be done to mitigate its extremes?

This is where the doomsday coalition, with the globalist ESG lobby in the vanguard, are themselves the most dangerous people on Earth. Their solution, preposterous on its face, is to halt further development of fossil fuel resources and, within thirty years, eliminate use of fossil fuel entirely.

This is nihilistic, tyrannical oppression. It is horrendously unsustainable. It is an impossible goal to achieve. To even come close to accomplishing this objective in a matter of a few decades would cause famine, depression and war, impoverishing if not killing billions of people.

In his remarks at the Clinton Foundation, Unilever CEO Alan Jope also said this, “In 1939, George Orwell wrote that we have sunk to such depths that stating the obvious is the first responsibility of every person.” He went on to say “stating the obvious, that we are having a climate emergency, is becoming an unpopular thing to do.”

To state the obvious, however, is to state that we are not having a climate “emergency.” And while we have reason to hope that a tipping point is near, that remains the unpopular sentiment. Equally obvious is that the globalist climate agenda, among other things, aims to control and ration all energy in the world.

Alan Jope, and every other powerful person who is pushing this death wish on the world, are themselves the most dangerous people in the world. They may claim to be high-minded altruists, but if they get their way, the destruction they wreak will relegate Hitler, Stalin, and Mao to amateur status by comparison.

One must wonder how anyone can be so delusional in the face of overwhelming evidence. Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, and an energy expert who is becoming a powerful voice for sanity on this topic, recently produced the following chart showing the resources required to produce renewable power.

Epstein’s revealing chart, using data taken from the U.S. Department of Energy, shows, per unit of energy produced, how much goes into building solar and wind generating plants compared to natural gas, nuclear and coal. It isn’t even close. This illustrates one of the biggest lies being told by the renewables lobby. Wind and solar energy provide less than 5 percent of all energy currently consumed worldwide. Imagine the footprint of this many solar farms and wind farms, if fossil fuel, nuclear power, and hydroelectric power were phased out. Renewable energy is not “sustainable.”

The architects of the globalist climate agenda are well aware these facts. They also know that for everyone on Earth, per capita, to consume half as much energy as Americans consume per capita, energy production worldwide will have to double. That should be the shared objective of all nations, and the idea that this can be accomplished without further development of fossil fuels is a blatant, outrageous lie.

What are these obscenely wealthy, inordinately powerful people thinking? How can they possibly believe they’re going to make the world a better place, if their plan is to force billions of people into starvation and poverty while carpeting literally millions of square miles with wind and solar farms? How is this a good thing?

If the world gets a little warmer, we can adapt, as will most species of wildlife. More CO2 means higher crop yields and faster growing forests. More energy means more prosperity, and history has proven that prosperity is the fastest way to induce people to have fewer children. Indeed in most industrialized nations we already face population decline. The footprint of civilization is not destined to expand forever. The situation is not dire. The biosphere will endure.

The globalist climate agenda more than a misguided but well-intentioned mistake. It is a monstrous crime against humanity, promulgated by some of the most dangerous people who have ever lived. It is a brazen lie for any of them to claim that we are dangerous if we do not think the world is coming to an end, are not promoting panic and fear, and wish to see citizens of all nations achieve prosperity.

We are not the dangerous ones, Alan Jope. You are.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

How Rick Caruso Can Become the Next Mayor of Los Angeles

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If I could have a thousand lives, I could live them all in Los Angeles, and never tire of this beautiful city. There aren’t enough words in the English language to describe greater Los Angeles; the way the sunlight reflects off the ocean, bounces off high mountains to the west, and dances in the haze; the endless urban plain broken up by rolling hills in unlikely places; boulevards that are fifty miles long, traversing countless neighborhoods, each with its own style and tradition; the people, millions of people, coming from every corner of the world, all of them with dreams that are nurtured in the mellow Southern California sun.

That poor attempt to describe the magic of Los Angeles doesn’t begin to do it justice. I could go on but others have offered homage to this wonderful and unique city with far more eloquence than I’ll ever manage. Others have also done a better job than I ever could of describing the crisis facing Los Angeles today. Joel Kotkin, a writer of extraordinary depth, earned through a lifetime of research into urbanization and demographics, recently published in Spike Magazine an essay entitled “The Fall of Los Angeles.” Kotkin paints a grim and comprehensive portrait of just how bad things are getting in what still remains the most interesting city on Earth.

What Kotkin describes so well needs only a brief summary. An epidemic of crime and homelessness. Failing public schools. Unaffordable housing. Business flight. Precarious access to overpriced energy and water. And a city council – and county board of supervisors – controlled by public employee unions.

Now two candidates are vying to become the next mayor of this magnificent but troubled city. At first glance, they couldn’t be more different. Republican Rick Caruso, a wealthy real estate developer, versus Democrat Karen Bass, a career politician. But first impressions can be deceiving.

Karen Bass’s campaign website is predictable enough. To address homelessness, Bass intends to enlarge programs that have cost billions and only made the problem worse. She does not repudiate the folly of the “housing first” doctrine, which calls for “permanent supportive housing” to be granted with no behavioral conditions and before investing in drug treatment or job training.

A Mayor Bass would be a disaster. For every policy highlighted on her campaign website, Bass adheres to failed progressive mantras. She questions “zero dollar bail” but doesn’t commit to stopping it. She deplores property crime but proposes to set up a fund to reimburse victims, instead of changing the laws that have effectively decriminalized theft. She calls for more investigation of “hate crimes” and “racial profiling,” but nowhere acknowledges that crime rates fall when criminals know that if they’re caught they’ll go to jail.

Bass devotes a lot of verbiage to helping businesses and creating jobs, but almost everything she comes up with involves more government agencies, commissions, grants, and subsidies. At one point she does claim she will reduce excessive regulations, but even if she means it, whatever good some deregulation might accomplish is completely overshadowed by her plans to “protect the climate.”

Who does Bass think are going to pay for EV charging stations, subsidize EV purchases, electrify all bus fleets owned either by the city, Metro, or LAUSD? Who is going to pay to retrofit every home and apartment to reach “zero emissions,” or “achieve 100 percent zero emissions for all Port operations by 2030”? How is it going to help commuters and delivery vehicles by expanding “protected bike lanes” and “open streets” in order to “encourage shifts in modes of mobility beyond the use of cars.”

Karen Bass is determined to outdo the competition to become the greenest politician of them all. In California, she has a lot of competition. On that note, under “Landscape and Land Use Transformation,” she wants to “make water-sucking grass a thing of the past.” Never mind the cooling, humidifying, recreational benefits of lawns, or that when lawns die, trees die. Reality check: almost nobody still waters trees growing on lawn they stopped watering. So never mind the inevitable dead tree uglification of an entire city, or the heat island effect of dead lawns and dead trees.

It is useful to reiterate that the whole “green” movement is often brown, and that abundant water ought to be the goal of every Los Angeles mayor, instead of calling anyone who wants to keep the city green a “water waster.” But to stay on topic, where is Rick Caruso on all these issues?

The problem with Rick Caruso is so obvious that when he loses decisively, he may in hindsight grasp the breathtaking negligence of his expensive political consultants. Rick Caruso has been portrayed as a gracious, moderate, not quite so progressive alternative to Karen Bass. And guess what? Nobody cares. Bass will outspend you. Bass has armies of public sector “volunteers.” You’re badly outgunned, despite your wealth. So swing for the fences, or go home.

For example, Los Angeles doesn’t need a mayoral alternative who promises to “impose a per unit cost limit of $350,000” on new housing for the unhoused. According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, in 2022 there are at least 69,000 homeless in the county. At $350,000 per unit, that’s $21 billion dollars. Stop it. That’s not a plan. It’s a bad joke.

Rick Caruso needs to stop trying to appease progressives, because progressive “ideology” is so riven with contradictory imperatives they don’t know what they actually believe or really want. He needs to start talking to the gritty Angelenos who still have to work and live among the lawlessness and filth that has been created by the current policies. Here’s what Rick Caruso should be saying:

“We will get every homeless person off the street immediately and move them to inexpensive sites within the city limits or in the region. They will be screened so criminals, substance abusers, and the mentally ill are assigned to three separate locations. Those who do not have these afflictions will be given access to our already substantial shelter network. I expect that once this policy is implemented, most of the criminals and substance abusers will either find shelter on their own with friends or family, or they will leave the county. I will divert existing funds to accomplish this and expect there will be plenty of money left over to provide counseling, drug treatment, and job training. I will work with the Bureau of Prisons to process those convicted of minor crimes and recovering addicts into minimum security work camps where they can contribute to conservation programs, wildfire prevention, and other activities that will allow them to recover their dignity and also benefit society.”

Similar pronouncements from Rick Caruso would galvanize voters to support him, because they would know that finally, after so many years, the person about to become mayor is not a feckless, self-serving coward. Here are some soundbites that would get Rick Caruso elected:

“I will use the full resources of the City Attorney’s office to challenge in court every law that prevents us from prosecuting criminals and eliminate vagrancy.”

“George Gascon is a dangerous idiot, and I am going to do everything in my power to support responsible prosecutors and marginalize his ability to do further damage to our great city.”

“We aren’t going to kill good jobs by shutting down our oil wells or our oil refineries because we’re not hypocrites who turn around and pay Venezuelan murderers to supply us the fuel we need to live.”

“I am not going to jump on the climate emergency bandwagon, because it is not an emergency, and will not support any climate oriented policy that doesn’t also make life in Los Angeles easier and more affordable.”

“The City of Los Angeles, along with the County of Los Angeles, are ran by public employee unions that are completely out of control. Only when they put the interests of all residents in front of their own, as public servants should, will I work with them.”

Instead of making these bold assertions that voters are starving to hear, Rick Caruso is trying to appeal the political center. But there is no political center. Politics in Los Angeles, and in California, are in flux. The only thing holding the Democratic party together is money, greed, and the rhetoric of resentment and fear. Results matter now, not ideological positioning.

Caruso will not win by positioning himself on some optimal point along a theoretical Left/Right continuum that is obsolete. He can win by telling self-evident truths about crime, the economy, the environment, and the opposition he faces.

No matter what happens this November or thereafter, Los Angeles will never lose its mystique. It may morph from a city of dreams into a Blade Runner sort of dystopia, but either way, living in Los Angeles will always be a fascinating adventure.

This article originally appeared in the Epoch Times.

Ken Cooley is a Mudslinging, Demagogic Stooge

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When you can’t defend your record as an incumbent Democrat in a contested Assembly District in California, the “professional” thing to do is attack your opponent. In California, this tactic has been used to marginalize an entire political party. According to Democrats, if you are a Republican, you are a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a transphobe, a xenophobe, a bigot, an election denier, a climate denier, a conspiracy theorist, and an insurrectionist.

When you taint over six million Californians with these unwarranted labels, and hurl these accusations at anyone speaking for them, you are the bigot. But with far more money, Democrat candidates hire better political consultants and PR firms, the partisan media does its part, and voters forget about what really matters: California is falling apart. Nobody is safe. The public schools are a joke. Nobody can afford to live here. Businesses are going under or getting out.

Democrats own all of this. It’s their fault. It’s their policies that did this to us. But vote for them, because they’re not Republicans. Democrats good. Republicans bad. It works.

A typical, ordinary, mudslinging, demagogic stooge, dutifully following the dirty playbook that defines Democrat strategy in California, is Ken Cooley. Not that it’s going to matter much, but for the record, let’s make Cooley the recipient of the sort of vitriol he’s willing to spew at his opponent. Like everyone in his party who has failed normal Californians but has empowered fanatics, cronies, rentiers, and plutocrats, Cooley relies on mudslinging demagoguery to destroy his opponent and deflect attention away from his status as a stooge for a corrupt political machine.

This November, Ken Cooley hopes to be reelected as an Assemblyman for the fifth time, this time in the redrawn 7th district that spans the suburban communities east of Sacramento. Cooley’s first dirty trick was during primary season, when he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to frame the race as between him and a candidate who was not endorsed by the Republican Party, Jeffrey Perrine. This tactic delighted Perrine, allegedly a member of the “Proud Boys,” but was deliberately misleading, since Josh Hoover was the candidate endorsed by the Republican Party.

Now that Hoover has survived the primary and is the official challenger in November, Cooley has continued his mudslinging. In a recent campaign flyer, Cooley claims that Hoover has “spent his entire career working for extreme, far-right politicians…” and “helped them echo and advance Donald Trump’s dangerous agenda.”

This is laughably false. For the last several years, Hoover worked for Kevin Kiley, who is currently running for U.S. Congress. During his eight years in the California State Assembly, Kiley co-authored over 600 pieces of legislation with – get ready – Ken Cooley. If Hoover’s known associates are such unsavory characters, why did Cooley work with them hundreds of times? Cooley is selling dehumanizing pablum: “extreme, far-right politicians.” Kevin Kiley? The Harvard graduate, who then got a law degree at Yale, then a master’s in secondary education from Loyola Marymount? The guy who worked for Kamala Harris as a district attorney, before becoming as assemblyman? That guy? That’s our extreme, far-right politician?

Also false is the implication, later in Cooley’s hit piece, that Hoover “stands with extremists who want to outlaw abortion with no exceptions for victims of rape and incest.” Hoover, reached by phone, confirmed that while he is pro-life, he has consistently supported exceptions for rape, incest, and the health of the mother.

But so what? Abortion is a nonissue in California. When pigs fly and hell freezes over, politicians will vote to restrict abortions in California. Until then, it is just another distraction from what really matters: education, crime, homelessness, housing, wildfires, water, energy, the cost-of-living. And why, anyway, is it so horrible to care about what happens to human embryos?

Since we’re digressing over something that will never happen in pro-choice California, what’s Cooley’s position on abortion? Does he support the gruesome extreme of abortions right up until birth? Or maybe Cooley’s fine with existing California law, which permits abortions with no restrictions up until six months of pregnancy. Maybe Cooley should post some videos of a six month old fetus squirming to avoid the abortionist’s blade, then getting cut into pieces, just to reassure voters of his pro-choice bona fides. Take a look at this beautiful photo of a living and unharmed six month old fetus. How’s this sound: Ken Cooley stands with extremists who want to cut this living six month old fetus into pieces while it’s still alive. That’s you, Ken. Own it.

Those of us who can see both sides of most contentious issues have a hard time respecting politicians like Ken Cooley who pander to extreme sentiments. That’s what demagogues do. Ken Cooley is a cog in a Democratic machine that has made life almost impossible for anyone who wants to buy a home or run a business. A machine that can’t prosecute criminals, effectively educate children, deliver reliable water and power, or move the homeless into inexpensive shelters instead of building absurdly expensive “permanent supportive housing” a pointless scam that only enriches politically connected developers.

Try to challenge any of this as a candidate in California, and the demagoguery comes thick and fast from the machine Ken Cooley’s part of. If you want to incarcerate criminals or require a single set of standards for college admissions, you’re a racist. If you want reliable water and power, you’re a climate denier. If you want to put homeless drug addicts into a shelter where they can get treatment and finally recover their dignity, you’re a fascist. Such simple minded slime. And it works so well. Until the lights go out.

Cooley’s entire political career has been to pander to voters and feed the one-party machine. In one of his campaign mailers he boasts about getting “$25 million for the county to help with supportive housing and services for those suffering from homelessness.” How’s that working out? Earlier this year, with great fanfare, Sacramento Mayor Steinberg announced the city would spend $23.9 million to convert a downtown hotel into 92 units of “permanent supportive housing.” That’s $250,000 per unit.

This is a scam, and until Ken Cooley denounces it as such, he is part of the problem. Sacramento now has more homeless people than San Francisco. If the homeless populations in California were rounded up and placed in safe, inexpensive shelters, they could be helped for a fraction of what is being spent. Instead, Cooley, Steinberg, and all the rest of California’s corrupt stooges have poured tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of developers who build free housing, at stupendous cost to taxpayers and in grossly inadequate numbers. With no conditions on entrance, this “supportive housing” has turned California’s cities into magnets for every indigent vagabond in America.

If you object to any of this, you’re a Nazi.

Mudslinger. Demagogue. Stooge. Cooley’s all three. Just check where he gets his campaign money. As a candidate in a competitive district, Cooley is getting most of his money from the Democratic Party. That’s to be expected. But what is revealing is where he gets the rest of his money. Of the top 12 nonparty contributions to Cooley’s campaign, every one of them, is from a union representing public sector employees.

This is the power behind the Democratic party in California. These are the bosses who manipulate the stooges. California’s state legislature, with a Democratic supermajority in both houses, is filled with politicians whose careers depend on doing whatever these unions tell them to do. Why are public employees even allowed to unionize? Don’t they have civil service protection already? What is the inherent agenda of a public employee union? Wouldn’t it be more members, more pay and benefits for those members, and more job killing, economy wreaking regulations so still more public employees can be hired to pay even more union dues?

Ken Cooley, on the other hand, doesn’t care. He goes through the motions, saying all the things the machine tells him to say, sliming his opponents, spreading misinformation so long as it enriches his enablers. On those campaign flyers where he isn’t sliming his rival, Cooley’s presented as one of the good guys, trying to do his part to make the world a better place. He’s not. He is a wholly owned marionette, part of a machine that is destroying California as fast as it possibly can.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

Will Libertarian Candidates Again Deny GOP the U.S. Senate?

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The political reality in America today is that of a two party system. Embracing this reality means that if you want to change the political direction of the nation, you have to transform one of the two major parties. Denying this reality, by running as a 3rd party candidate, can also transform the political direction of the nation, but in precisely the opposite direction than where the 3rd party candidate supposedly wants to go. 3rd party candidates rarely win elections, but they’re very good at splitting the vote.

This is the only context in which the national Libertarian party, “The Party of Principle (TM),” is relevant in America today. This party, with their principled candidates, above all else, believes in limited government. Which is to say they oppose socialism. And voila, when you split the anti-socialist vote, the socialist wins.

It shouldn’t be necessary to defend Republicans vs Democrats. Right now, the fact that Republicans are NOT Democrats ought to be enough. Even if many Republicans are just RINOs, they generally vote with their party major issues, and in any case, when Republicans control the Senate or the House, they have control over the budget, the court appointees, the investigations, and overall, Republicans approve less damaging legislation than Democrats.

This is reality. This is politics in America. Consider the Republican leaders with national stature today, then compare them to Democrat leaders with comparable visibility and influence. Maybe some of these Republicans are rough around the edges, or don’t agree with you or with each other on every issue. So what? Which gang do you want running the country? If you’re a populist conservative, or even if you’re a libertarian, it ought to be an easy choice.

The ability of Libertarian candidates to get Democrats elected is vast. From who occupies the White House all the way down to control of state legislatures, the deeper you dig, the more you find. The last two presidential elections both offer compelling evidence of libertarian impact.

In the 2016 election, the Libertarian Party candidate for President, Gary Johnson, attracted just over 4.5 million votes. The Leftist equivalent, Green candidate Jill Stein, received only 1.5 million votes. Despite being a deeply flawed candidate, Gary Johnson moved the national popular vote from a toss-up to a clear Clinton edge. In the Electoral College, Johnson’s influence was even greater.

At the state level in 2016, Gary Johnson very nearly handed crucial states to Clinton. In Pennsylvania, where Trump’s margin was a 1.3 percentage points, Johnson got 2.4 percent. In Wisconsin, where Trump won by 0.6 percentage points, Johnson got 3.7 percent. In Michigan, where Trump won by a razor thin 0.3 percentage points, Johnson got 3.6 percent.

Not only did Gary Johnson very nearly leave the “Blue Wall” intact for Democrats in 2016, he also took states out of play that might have been toss-ups. In Colorado, for example, Trump lost by 3.6 percentage points, but Gary Johnson got 4.7 percent. In Nevada, Trump lost by 2.7 percentage points and Johnson got 3.1 percent.

In the 2020 election, it is possible that Jo Jorgensen, the libertarian candidate, threw the election to Biden. In the six states where Trump was reported to have lost by the thinnest margins, the impact of the Libertarian candidate either flipped the election to Biden or very nearly did. Notably, the Green Party candidate was not present on the ballot in any of these states except for Michigan, where he only won 0.2 percent of the vote. If the voters who’d opted for Libertarian presidential candidate Jo Jorgenson had chosen Trump instead, Trump would have won Georgia with 50.5 percent of the vote, Arizona with 50.6 percent, and Wisconsin with 50.1 percent, and he would have been reelected.

You don’t have to be a MAGA zealot, or an “election denier,” to remain unconvinced that a Biden presidency is better for the average American than a reelected Trump.

Libertarians frequently argue that they also take votes away from Democrat candidates, or they attract votes from people who would not have otherwise participated. Maybe the 2020 election was impacted more by other factors – Mark Zuckerberg’s $400 million comes to mind, as does the mass censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, to only name two – and so maybe we should lay off Libertarians. Or maybe not. In close races, Libertarian candidates get Democrats elected.

Will Libertarians Again Deny Republicans Control of the U.S. Senate?

Which brings us to how libertarians affect which party controls the U.S. Senate. In Georgia, in November, 2020, the candidacy of Libertarian candidate Shane Hazel threw the battle between Republican David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff into a runoff. It might be true that Perdue could have won his runoff if various external events hadn’t affected turnout on January 5, or of course, if he’d been a better candidate, but that’s beside the point. If Hazel hadn’t been a spoiler in November, there would have been no runoff for Perdue to lose.

Perdue only needed an additional 0.3 percentage points to win on November 3, 2020. To secure victory if Hazel had not been on the ballot, only one in seven of Hazel’s voters would have had to decide instead to vote for Perdue. Read Hazel’s 2020 candidate survey on Ballotpedia, or watch his podcast. This man did not take votes away from Democrats.

The battle for the U.S. Senate in 2022, according to the Cook Political Report, includes eight races that are currently listed as “toss ups.” Of those eight, there are six states with Libertarian candidates also in the race. They are Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Only one of those states, Pennsylvania, has a Green Party candidate also running.

The race in Arizona, currently rated a toss-up by Cook, bears a closer look. The libertarian candidate, Marc Victor, raised over $60,000 in individual contributions. These are through June 2022 and don’t reflect contributions since then, which may be substantial. The next report to the Federal Election Commission isn’t due until September 30. But $60,000 is just enough money to hire a campaign attorney and campaign treasurer, gain the endorsement of the Libertarian party, and end up on the Arizona state ballot as a spoiler.

Most interesting is who has supported Victor in his senate campaign. Through June of this year he has only attracted 21 donations, every one of them from California. Of those 21 donations, 16 came from donors with the same surname, presumably from the same family. The patriarch of this family is Ron Conway, Sr., a venture capitalist now who lists his address in Belvedere, one of the wealthiest cities in America.

Why would wealthy and politically savvy individuals offer financial support to an obscure candidate in another state, who has no chance of winning his race? There is only one reason that makes sense. To take votes away from the Republican candidate, and keep the U.S. Senate in the hands of Democrats. When the November 2022 election is done, it will be interesting, and telling, to see how much money pours into the hands of Libertarian candidates for U.S. Senate and House seats. For Democrat and Never Trump mega-donors, it will be smart money spent.

Libertarian candidates have various motives. Some are running on principle, some to acquire celebrity status, and some who are so disillusioned with the Republican party that they’re running as spoilers to hasten its destruction. There is a lot that Republican candidates could be doing better. Offering a compelling and coherent vision of America’s future, instead of merely identifying the spectacular failures of the Democrats, would be a good start.

But the disunity, imperfections and failures of Republicans don’t justify their destruction. Overall, the ideological bias of Republican candidates and voters leans in the direction Libertarians also lean. The more powerful the Libertarian party becomes, the more certain it is that they will turn America over to Democrats, rendering the majority sentiments of Americans politically irrelevant. That’s life in a two party system.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

Prop. 30 Splits California’s Ruling Elite

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Even by national standards, state ballot initiative campaigns in California are big time politics. You can run a campaign for U.S. Senator in most states in America for less than it costs to qualify and successfully campaign to pass a statewide ballot initiative in California. Political insiders in Sacramento describe any controversial initiative with well funded antagonists as a “war.” And if politics is war by other means, they’re right. The latest war is over Prop. 30, the “Clean Cars and Clean Air Act.”

What’s unusual about Prop. 30, however, is how it has split California’s ruling elite. On the side in favor of Prop. 30, you have billionaire Democrats, a powerful corporation that promotes itself as both woke and green, and the firefighters union. Opposing Prop. 30 are Governor Newsom and the California Teachers Association, and to fund their opposition campaign, an assortment of individuals and organizations that defy categorization other than to say that Newsom and the CTA have picked some surprising bedfellows.

In this battle of juggernauts, and in a twist of politics that is exceedingly rare, the CTA is up against a bigger and stronger bully.

The best way to get recent information on campaign spending in California is on the Secretary of State’s Campaign Finance website under “Propositions and Ballot Measures.” Since the only money that matters in a state ballot initiative is big money, select “Proposition 30,” then for each committee listed, click on the “Late and $5,000+ Contributions Received” link. This will give you information on every major contribution up to 10 days ago.

The primary force behind Prop. 30 is Lyft, which has already dumped $25 million into the Yes on 30 campaign. This represents over 90 percent of the funding so far, and if their battle to rewrite AB 5 back in 2020 is any indication, Lyft is prepared to spend the opposition into the ground.

Joining Newsom and the CTA in opposition to Prop. 30 is the uncreatively named “No on 30” committee, with major donations so far totaling $11.4 million. The big donors include individuals whose giving history puts them all over the map: Libertarians, Never Trump Republicans, and Democrats. Motivations must vary. No new taxes? Not another subsidy? Business or ideological concern with Lyft’s agenda?

Also opposing Prop. 30 with $1.0 million in contributions is “Govern California,” a centrist PAC – emulating the public sector union model – that has 18 chapters spread around the state. This enables mega-donors to contribute to each chapter, then each chapter donates to an assortment of candidates targeted for support. The practical effect of this is that instead of a donor being constrained by the individual maximum donation they can make to a candidate, that maximum is magnified by the number of Govern for California chapters they support which in-turn donate to that candidate. Brilliant.

Although the firefighters union and the teachers union have not made significant contributions to the committees for or against Prop. 30, at least not yet, they are the face of the campaigns. Lyft may be paying the networks, but it’s a firefighter we see on television, in a saturation level campaign to convince us Prop. 30 will stop wildfires, clean the air, and fight climate change. Similarly, Newsom and classroom teachers are the face of the opposition campaign, which stresses the need for income taxes to prioritize “classrooms, communities,” and “transitional kindergarten, public schools, community colleges.”

Rhetoric aside, what does Prop. 30 do?

The initiative calls for a 1.75 percent additional state income tax on earnings over $2.0 million per year, and this new levy is estimated to raise up to $4.5 billion per year. Of that total, 80 percent will subsidize ZEV (Zero Emissions Vehicle) charging stations and ZEV rebates, and 15 percent will pay for wildfire response – mostly to hire more firefighters – and 5 percent will be spent to thin forests to prevent future wildfires.

The biggest problem with this initiative isn’t just that it raises taxes, offers subsidies, and expands the state government. Those are all problems, but at the risk of heresy, one may consider the possibility that if new taxes, subsidies, and bureaucracies were doing something productive, that might make sense. Looking back to the construction of the state water project back in the 1950s and ’60s, we see evidence that public investment has not always been a pointless waste.

That isn’t the case here.

When California’s state legislature and the regulated electric utilities have figured out how to reliably pump 70 or 80 gigawatts (or more) through California’s grid, instead of the fitfully achieved 50 gigawatts that characterize power capacity today, then they can start disconnecting the natural gas pipelines that heat our homes, and then they can force automakers to sell nothing but electric cars, and force rideshare companies to ban non EVs. And that’s not all.

When California’s high-tech innovators who lobby for these special interest driven laws that supposedly are going to save the planet have perfected a battery that can be charged in five minutes instead of an hour, won’t catch fire, will last for at least 250,000 miles, and put it into an EV that doesn’t cost twice as much as a gasoline powered car, or even a gas/electric hybrid, only then can they honestly claim the electric age is going to be cheaper and equally practical for people who just want to get about their lives. They’ll also have to demonstrate that this new age of renewable electricity is going to be less destructive to the environment.

Altogether these are reasonable prerequisites. None of them have been adequately addressed.

But equally disingenuous is the claim Prop. 30 will save California’s forests. A research paper published in March of 2022 by the California Fire Science Consortium concluded the following: “Overall, between 1911 and 2011, tree densities on average increased by six to seven fold while average tree size was reduced by 50%. This shift in contemporary forest conditions resulted from ingrowth with very high densities.” Got that? California’s forests are seven times as dense as they were 100 years ago.

Forests are burning because at the same time as California’s firefighters got so good at extinguishing natural fires caused by lightening strikes, the state legislature regulated into near oblivion our timber industry, along with our ability to conduct controlled burns, mechanical thinning, and cattle grazing to reduce underbrush.

That’s the reason the forests are burning so hot. These overcrowded trees and overgrown brush are dried out and stressed. Our once majestic forests have been reduced to tinderboxes, because wherever the root systems of just one tree used to compete for water, now there are seven trees and a ton of brush. Until these absurd policies are reversed, devastating superfires will keep on burning. The destructive impact of these policy blunders have no prior equivalent throughout the millennia that California’s forests have existed. If and when California’s forests are entirely gone, burnt down to the dirt, blame environmentalists. It will be their fault.

Lyft has committed by 2030 to only work with EVs. How many people driving for rideshare companies, not exactly a super remunerative occupation, are going to be able to afford an EV? Equally of concern, how are they going to put in a decent work shift as a driver, if every three hours or so they have to pull over and wait in line to refuel at a rate of five miles of range for every minute spent plugged in to the “high speed” charger?

When 2030 rolls around, and normal people who can’t afford EVs won’t be able to make money in the rideshare business anymore, Lyft can adapt. They can buy a fleet of company cars. When these cars aren’t charging, Lyft can rotate independent drivers through them to earn money like 21st century sharecroppers. Or Lyft can just deploy company cars that don’t need a driver at all. Lyft has options.

But for now, and as reported by Reuters over two years ago, “The company plans to push competitors, lawmakers and automakers to make it easier for drivers to switch to electric vehicles by creating financial incentives.”

That was an understatement, and a promise kept. With Prop. 30, they’re pushing. Also reported by Reuters, “John Zimmer, Lyft’s co-founder and president, said the company has reached a scale to impact policy change.” Also an understatement. Lyft spent $79 million on Prop. 22, their 2020 initiative to roll back certain provisions of AB 5. They’ve spent $25 million so far this year on Prop. 30. As we enter the final weeks of campaign season, there is no reason to think their spending will abate.

CTA take note. There’s a new kid in town. Just as woke, wielding equally seductive populist rhetoric, armed with big bucks, and just like the CTA, determined to advance their special interest agenda regardless of how it might actually help or harm ordinary Californians.

Prop. 30 is likely to pass. But regardless of the outcome, California’s state legislature should approve new nuclear power plants and end their war on natural gas development and infrastructure. They should guarantee equipment loans to revive California’s decimated logging and milling industry, and scrap the regulations that make it so hard to operate logging and ranching operations, as well as conduct controlled burns and mechanical thinning.

Almost everything Prop. 30 is doing is misguided. If it passes, taxpayers will pour tens of billions into EV technology that will be obsolete within a decade or two. Billions more will be spent to hire more firefighters, while only a token percentage will be spent on prevention. But in this war, money talks.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

California’s Prop. 30 Will Not Save the Forests

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The television ads are impossible to ignore. A stern man in a firefighter’s uniform stands beside the wasted ashes of an immolated forest. As a harrowing montage of towering flames, skies filled with smoke, and CO2 belching cars on freeways slide across the screen, exuding masculine authority, he explains “we are in a crisis.” His message is compelling. To save our forests, clean our air, and address the climate emergency, we must vote yes on Proposition 30.

Despite the vociferous opposition of the California Teachers Association, and their reliable surrogate, Governor Gavin Newsom, Prop. 30 looks headed for victory in November. This is proof, once again, that you can convince California’s electorate to approve anything so long as you claim it will address the climate crisis.

Prop. 30 is clever. Its popularity relies on the understandable frustration Californians have over worsening wildfires, which most Californians have been convinced is caused by climate change. Its solution? Slap a 1.75% tax on all personal income over $2.0 million per year, and use the money to fund “Zero-Emissions Vehicles and Wildfire Prevention.”

The devil is in the details. Of the estimated up to $4.5 billion annual proceeds, 80 percent will subsidize ZEV (Zero Emissions Vehicle) charging stations and ZEV rebates, and 20 percent will pay for “wildfire response and prevention.” But of that 20 percent, 75 percent will go to wildfire response, and 25 percent will go to wildfire prevention. Which is to say that out of $4.5 billion per year, five percent will be spent to thin forests, and the other 95 percent will be to either hire more firefighters, or to subsidize the EV industry.

To be clear: if every car in California were an EV, it would do nothing to prevent catastrophic wildfires. Even assuming that the planet is experiencing a permanent warming trend, and even assuming cars and other uses of fossil fuels are the reason for that warming, California, at roughly 350 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year, only contributes one percent of the 35 billion metric tons of CO2 emitted globally each year.

As for using 20 percent of Prop. 30’s funds to pay for fire suppression and fire prevention, the priorities are flipped. Californians are already spending over a billion dollars per year to put out wildfires. Fire suppression is the primary reason forest fires have gotten so bad in California, and climate change, for all the hype it attracts, is a secondary cause. Cataclysmic wildfires will never be stopped merely by extinguishing them, at least not until every one of California’s 33 million acres of magnificent forests are burnt down to the dirt. To solve the problem of superfires, California’s forests need to be thinned back to historical norms.

For over 100 years, and with increasing effectiveness, California’s firefighters have suppressed forest fires that, for millennia, were sparked by lightening and would burn away smaller trees and brush. Up until about thirty years ago, despite suppression of natural fires, commercial logging, cattle grazing, mechanical thinning and controlled burns kept forest growth in check. As recently as the 1990s, over 6 billion board feet were being harvested every year out of California’s forests. Today that total is down to barely 1.25 billion board feet, and the regulatory process to graze, thin, or burn off undergrowth has become prohibitively expensive and protracted. As a result, California’s forests are tinderboxes.

If you care about such things, every year there’s a superfire in California, around 100 million tons of CO2 enter the atmosphere. Less abstract and of more universal relevance is the filthy smoke and soot that hangs in the air for weeks, and the ash laden silt that fouls the rivers after the first rain. Anyone concerned for the environment might also recognize that trees in California’s forests are stressed and dying not because we’re having heat waves and droughts, but because wherever the root systems of just one tree used to compete for water, now there are seven trees. This unnatural reality is also the reason less of our precious rain percolates into aquifers, replenishes springs, or runs off into streams. The desperately overcrowded tree roots suck up every drop.

A research paper published in March of 2022 by the California Fire Science Consortium concluded the following: “Overall, between 1911 and 2011, tree densities on average increased by six to seven fold while average tree size was reduced by 50%. This shift in contemporary forest conditions resulted from ingrowth with very high densities.” Got that? California’s forests are seven times as dense as they were 100 years ago.

This is the truth that firefighters ought to be proclaiming in front of television cameras, and this is the catastrophe that responsible politicians and public servants ought to be urgently trying to fix, instead of endlessly preening and bloviating about the “climate crisis.” Restoring the timber industry ought to be a top priority. It has been decimated thanks to relentless and misguided assaults by environmentalists. Private investment in logging and milling operations could then finance much of the necessary forest thinning. Encouraging the adoption of mass timber – cross laminated structural beams that are stronger and weigh less than reinforced concrete – could make harvesting the unwanted and overcrowded smaller trees profitable, since manufacturing this innovative new wood product does not require large diameter trees.

Reforming the environmentalist edicts and bureaucratic obstructions that prevent property owners to thin and do controlled burns, or ranchers from grazing their cattle, would attract additional private investment that would help restore California’s forests.

Without private investment as described, thinning California’s forests is impossible. As it is, Prop. 30 will allocate, at most, $225 million per year to forest thinning. Cost estimates to do thinning vary, but the best we may expect on average is around 1,000 per acre. That means these funds, even if most of them aren’t first skimmed to placate armies of ESG commissars, would restore 225,000 acres per year. That sounds like a lot, but it isn’t. With 33 million acres of forest in California, and with that budget, it would take 150 years to finish a job that has to be repeated every 20 years unless private logging, grazing, controlled burns, and mechanical thinning are once again permitted.

California’s firefighters should be using their substantial political clout in Sacramento to publicly confront an inconvenient truth: environmentalists and state bureaucrats have inspired and implemented policies that are destroying California’s forests. Until those policies are reversed, forests will continue to burn like hell.

Newsom, who has the advantage of being politically unassailable merely because he is less lunatic than every other major politician in California’s ruling party, has decided, just this once, to defy the will of the climate crisis industry. Instead he’s lining up with the CTA in opposition, preserving their apparent determination to make sure they remain first in line to pickpocket the deep pockets of California’s wealthiest taxpayers.

But Newsom, along with every other special interest that opposes Prop. 30 in order to make sure their own place at the public trough is undiminished, are lying in a bed of their own making. When the forests burned, Newsom didn’t call for meaningful reforms to forest management. He announced a plan to ban gasoline powered vehicles. Now he is going to get what he wanted. The results will be expensive and mostly symbolic, if not counterproductive.

This article originally appeared in the Epoch Times.

Are There Viable Alternatives to Reservoirs?

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AUDIO:  How dam removal efforts are gaining momentum in the Western United States and around the world, with a specific focus on four large dams on the Snake River in Washington that have been targeted – 16 minutes on KVI Seattle – Edward Ring on the John Carlson Show.

The Destruction of the American Middle Class

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AUDIO: A discussion of how the convergence of an intellectual and financial elite, combined with the advent of technologies that can automate most jobs, are leading to the destruction of America’s middle class. Edward Ring with Kara McKinney on Tipping Point.

https://www.spreaker.com/user/oneamericanewsnetwork/tp-092122-oantp1785