Californication

Victor Davis Hanson has some interesting thoughts on the political mess in California:

One of the hallmarks of the elite California mind-set has been to stop production, whether energy or agricultural, without any concern of the consequences on less fortunate others—and often to do so by judicial mandate or by legislative blockage.

So our representatives and judges have ensured that we won't build refineries, though we have the most cars per state in the country. We won't drill off our coasts although to do so might have made our state almost energy independent. We won't build nuclear power plants or raise our dams for more hydroelectric power, although we have been plagued in the past by rolling blackouts and burn high-priced imported natural gas. And we impose environmental regulations with no thought or care how average people can have access to water or fuel.

Here's the latest from the New York Times on our current drought, sort of an environmental version of our recent gay marriage judicial ruling:


Even more significant, a judge in federal district court last year issued a curtailment in pumping from the California Delta — where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers meet and provide water to roughly 25 million Californians — to protect a species of endangered smelt that were becoming trapped in the pumps. Those reductions, from December to June, cut back the state’s water reserves this winter by about one third, according to a consortium of state water boards.

The judge's ruling demonstrates the perils of making animal life equal to human life, which has been a goal of the environmental movement all along. Rather than risking the loss of a few tiny fish we're going to dramatically reduce water supplies to millions of people and hamstring growth throughout the region. It's foolishness, but totally in keeping with the self-loathing types who think a smelt has the same or even more value than a person.