Southern Bread Blog

I saw this article yesterday morning and just had to shake my head. The story starts with about 2,300 words of dire, horrible news about the state of post-bust society in California right now. But, at around the 2,400 word mark, he finally gives us the solution to California’s problems: environmentalism! And no, I’m not kidding. One of the biggest contributors to California’s decline has been absurd, government mandated environmentalism. And somehow, this dude thinks that more of it is just what Cali needs in order to heal it’s economy.

Here’s the money quote:

But amid the crisis there are a few sparks of hope for the future. California has long been an incubator of fresh ideas, many of which spread across the country. If America emerges from its crisis a greener, more economically and politically responsible nation, it is likely that renewal will have begun here. The clues to California’s salvation – and perhaps even the country as a whole – are starting to emerge.

Green jobs are at the forefront of Obama’s ideas on both the economy and the environment.

Jones believes California will once more change itself, and then change the nation. “California remains a beacon of hope… This is a new time for a new direction to grow a new society and a new economy,” Jones has said.

–Paul Harris, The Guardian(UK)

Ok, so a “new economy” based on green jobs is what California needs to get out of the economic depression it’s in now. What would this new economy look like?

The number of solar panels in the state has risen from 500 a decade ago to more than 50,000 now. California generates twice as much energy from solar power as all the other US states combined.

California’s attorney-general, Jerry Brown, recently sued one county government for not paying enough attention to global warming when it came to urban planning.

Every freeway may be lined with fast-food outlets, but California is also the state of Alice Waters, the guru of the slow-food movement, who inspired Michelle Obama to plant a vegetable garden in the White House.

–Paul Harris, The Guardian(UK)

That’s pretty much it. That’s the evidence he gives for a “new” green economy that will turn California around. Solar panels, a global warming lawsuit, and a Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden. Is it any wonder that so many people are mocking the green movement as pseudo-religious idiocy? What America, and California, needs are people who will get back to work making things that people actually need. Food, clothes, tools, etc. at an affordable price, without government interference of any kind. Solar energy is wonderful, but since it still costs about $70,000 dollars to install the third of an acre of solar panels you need just to power a single home, I don’t see that as being very profitable.

This is just more green religion being couched as economics. There is a way to do green right, and with free-market principles perfectly in tact. But that’s not anything that the statists would ever endorse, since it doesn’t line their pockets with government grant money. Pardon me while I wad this story up and throw it in the recycle bin.