LA Mayor Declares Allegiance to the Green New Deal, Ditches Plans to Rebuild Natural Gas Infrastructure

I’ll consider this an experiment for all the world to see. I guess somebody has to try it first to actually execute the idealism. Best of luck, LA.

It seems fairly idiotic at the moment, but the proof is in the final results. I will attempt to reserve judgement, until LA falls. And if success comes, the it will be ME who is shown to be the idiot.

Democrats going full psycho.

“It’s the right thing to do “. Australia’s leftist former PM Julia Gillard used to use that phrase to justify the most horrendously stupid policies.
Must be in the Communist Manifesto.

You can pay me now, or you can pay him later.

Once these plants are torn down, and LA has to buy all of it’s power from out of state sources, what is expensive now we be even more expensive.

Please tell me again how it’s the Democrats who care about and protect the poor.

Idiots don’t get bailouts when the time comes

Then I guess we can disconnect – immediately – the two peaker stations here around Ventura. They only feed LA, and they only do it during peak power draw on hot days when AC systems are running strong. They are gas turbine peakers… They do nothing for the Ventura County residents, they are just to support LA. So turn them off and see what happens!

Yes, lots of furious comments, and they are quite right as far as they go. But there are two interesting things about this, which are indicative of the general trend in Green thinking.

1) The proposal doesn’t tackle the main source of LA pollution: the automobile and freeway system. The real problem in LA is not electricity generation. Its the fact that its design is spread out urban sprawl with the car and the freeway as the only really functioning transport system. The sprawl means everyone has to travel to do almost anything. The reliance on the car and freeways for that travel leads to the pollution.

If you really wanted to lower LA emissions and air pollution, the place to start would be the car, which would involve restructuring the entire living and working and playing environment so that transportation needs could be met by non-auto travel. Whether mass transit, bikes, walking, whatever. So that would mean a whole different layout, moving people and businesses.

Are they doing or thinking about any of that? No, change out some generating capacity. It will do almost nothing, because this is a minor source of the problem.

This is typical, focussing on a minor cause or instance of the alleged problem. But there is also:

2) Doing something expensive which will have no effect on the alleged problem.

One of the reasons cited is to do something about global warming by reducing emissions. But its surely obvious that nothing LA does will have the slightest effect on global emission levels. This is also characteristic of the Green movement – advocating unilateral or local action when the source of the problem is not local and where local action is too small to have any effect on it.

Tuvalu cannot lower sea level rises by lowering its own emissions. LA cannot have any effect on climate by lowering its emissions. Even were it to pick some actions which would actually lower its own emissions.

So, when thinking about this, the thing to focus on and understand is the two typical aspects of Green policy proposals and recommendations:

(1) To refuse to focus on the largest component of the local problem. Instead pick some relatively minor source of emissions and try to minimize that. A bit like looking for one’s keys under the streetlamp because its well lit there.

(2) To propose taking unilateral local action to reduce emissions in order to contribute to reducing global emissions, when that local action, because of the fact that the local emissions are trivial globally, can have no effect on the global picture.

Now its been pointed out, ask why Green thinking and policy almost always contains these two features. Now, that is a really interesting question!

Maybe it’s a plan to increase house prices by forcing out poor people who will not able to afford exorbitant electricity rates, thereby gentrifying the city.
Good for current property owners.

And the voters in LA deserve exactly what will happen to them

I have to say that I have long enjoyed the movie, “Shakespear in Love” (1998). I never thought I’d have cause to compare fictional lines from that movie to current events. Well, that day has come.

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?
Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Hugh Fennyman: How?
Philip Henslowe: I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

Henslowe repeats those lines throughout the movie. Whenever crisis looms, he optimistically responds that it will turn out well, and when asked how?, his answer is “I don’t know. It’s a mystery.”

That seems to be the attitude of the liberal left today. Not just in California, New York, the USA, but world wide. Germany to Venezuela and beyond. No rational thought. No analysis. Not even a cursory adherence to the Biblical advice to count the cost before undertaking to build a house. These people deliberately reject accounting, their bank balance, etc. before proceeding full speed ahead. They have no plan to succeed, just the belief that if they want it, it will happen.

This is a cold and harsh statement, but sometimes you just have to allow Darwinian principles to govern your responses. If their stupidity leads to their demise, then they will no longer waste valuable oxygen. And ironically, they will achieve one leftist goal, a reduction in human population.

Now would be a good time to sell any property you have in LA and gtfo.

When I read stories like this from California (or Oregon, or Washington state, or British Columbia), I ask myself whether there might be something in the water on the west coast of North America that makes people go insane.