Of all 50 states, it would be difficult to match California’s posturing as a “green” state with the nation’s most stringent environmental policies. Burdensome laws and regulations are imposed by elected officials and bureaucrats who try to outdo each other by burnishing their environmental bona fides. But how much of this posturing is really posing? Worse yet, how many of these policies actually damage the environment?
The pursuit of effective environmental policies requires clear thinking and critical analysis that transcend sound bites and superficial conclusions. Regrettably, that doesn’t happen often in California and here are the most glaring examples.
First on the list is California’s High-Speed Rail Project. This project was justified almost entirely on environmental grounds. A carbon-free rail project (false) that could travel from L.A. to San Francisco in about two hours (false) and would replace thousands of cars on the road (false) sounds great, but sober international transportation experts now doubt the project will ever be completed.
In the meantime, the massive amount of greenhouse gas emissions associated with construction and the destruction of valuable farmland in the Central Valley exposes HSR for the truly environmentally damaging effort that it is.
Second, for some strange reason, California does not count hydroelectric power as a “green” energy source. This makes no sense whatsoever and deters the development of additional projects that are reliable (not dependent on sun or wind) sources of carbon-free energy.
Third, in California, it is accepted as gospel that urban transit is better for the environment than individual automobiles. Whether that is true depends on innumerable factors that make broad pronouncements suspect. Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation is an expert in all matters involving surface transportation and has this to say about transit today: “But what I want to question is the premise that shifting huge sums to mass transit and passenger rail would make America greener. There’s growing evidence that it would not. For example, cars are presumed to be more polluting (both conventional emissions and CO2) than mass transit—but that is no longer so.”
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