Each year when air conditioners are needed, California has to ask EPA for permission to violate federal emissions standards and burn enough natural gas to keep the brown-outs that nearly got Governor Gavin Newsom recalled from happening again.

Brownouts happen because the Governor and his bulletproof majority in the legislature mandated and subsidize solar and wind energy, and they have been complete failures. Mandates and subsidies for electric cars which require electricity from the grid add an additional strain. So they are scrambling to extend the life of the last remaining nuclear plant that they had ordered closed, also to appeal to their anti-science base. For much the same reason they are tearing down hydroelectric power - political favors.


Oroville dam spillway. Link: Wikimedia

Like Europe pretending solar and wind were ready, right up until they had to stop importing gas from Russia, California is in trouble. A deficit that may be as high as $70 billion, so high they won't know how much it was last year until September of this year, and wealthy people fleeing the state have led to a financial crisis. Yet they won't accept failure and produce more local energy, so they are paying a premium to import it from states where it is affordable. Like those Republicans in Utah. Southern California Edison just signed an agreement for 320 megawatts of geothermal energy. Geothermal is not cost-effective, as Californians know thanks to having the highest utility costs in America. A contract from Nevada showed it is not cost-effective, but it is not hydroelectric green energy, which Democrats oppose, and it is not nuclear green energy, which Democrats oppose, so it will have to do. Utah is showing California how to be leaders in both green energy and economics. California certainly needs help there. 

There is some hope for clean energy outside anti-science states like California. Senator Bernie Sanders was one of only two who opposed a recent nuclear energy initiative, which means aging Baby Boomers are losing control. Thirty years ago the entire party cheered when Senator John Kerry and President Bill Clinton concluded thirty years of work by Democrats to effectively get nuclear energy banned. 

Their anti-vaccine stance also originated in the 1990s, and in 2021 they dropped that when they realized they could take credit for the COVID-19 vaccines they said a Republican president was rushing through approval. If they stop letting activists dictate their science beliefs in nuclear also, that will leave them only with being opposed to farming.

Then academic scientists will have a legitimate reason to vote Democrat, instead of rationalizing that if their party opposes a world of critical thinking and natural laws, it isn't really important.