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Comment by eplanit | Hacker News Reader

I live in a state (California) that prides itself for its environmentalism, and has been vocal for many years regarding climate change. But...that very same state is doing nothing to prepare for it aside from lecturing others and virtue-signalling: there are no new reservoirs being built, despite sustained droughts already happening, the forests are mis-managed and overgrown due to misguided "let's never cut down anything, ever" thinking, with massive fires every year, the electric grid is unable to keep up with demand...

I don't doubt that climate change is happening, but with such ostensibly smart and aware people making such poor policy, and for so long -- I have little confidence in the government's willingness or ability to do any good.

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> : there are no new reservoirs being built, despite sustained droughts already happening, the forests are mis-managed and overgrown due to misguided "let's never cut down anything, ever" thinking, with massive fires every year, the electric grid is unable to keep up with demand...

And very unsustainable agriculture which is highly contributing to the droughts additionally to climate change itself. Using high demand water crops in a place like California just wasn't a great idea to start with.

Problem you have not growing in CA and AZ is the fact you have very long growing seasons in both states.

You can pump water over the same thing you can oil. You cant pump sunshine that way

I do get it, using a lot of water in a very hot and sunny place leads to amazing crop results. The only issue with that is that the water they are pumping probably took decades to accumulate to that level, that strategy will just stop working abruptly very soon.

you are under-informed - in research, policy, and budget, the State of California is a recognized world-class.. (long lists of references left as an exercise to the reader)

forests are mis-managed and overgrown

First, forests manage themselves. There are wildfires because of the drought that you mentioned and higher temperatures.

Second, the first order problem is too many people. The warming/drought is a second order hysteresis effect. Creating more reservoirs exacerbates the first order problem.

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