California Must Triple Rate of Carbon Emissions Reductions to Reach 2030 Target | Hacker News Reader

California Must Triple Rate of Carbon Emissions Reductions to Reach 2030 Target

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17 pointsabhayhegde19 comments

We can't do it on electric cars alone... we should have actually invested in high-speed rail for LA County, SD County, Orange County, San Francisco Bay Area, etc. How much more saturated can the electric car market here realistically get? Seems like everyone who wants one has one and those who don't can't due to renting in an apartment building etc.

We did invest in one. Sadly the investment hasn't paid off and doesn't look like it will anytime soon, if at all.

That was a scam though. All the money went to lawyers, consultants, and the usual grifters. Hardly anything was actually spend on construction and they started with the most useless leg of the rail. They should have done obvious ones like LA to SD, SF to Tahoe, etc. Every layer of government in this state is incompetent and over-spends intentionally because there is zero accountability as it's a one party state.

no, your start with the most useless leg because it's cheaper to make all the mistakes there first, and learn from them, before fucking it up in downtown LA and SF where the cost of ducking up is much higher.

I disagree, the public tax payers want/need/deserve to see how this is going to benefit them--so make the first leg in places that will have the biggest impact. That would have actually increased support for it, rather than it becoming this boondoggle project that is ridiculed.

If California tackled their electricity generation they would put a huge dent in it. California only has numbers for 2022 and not 2023 but 49% natural gas is not going to cut it. I would say they should build nuclear but that's not sufficient for some people.

https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

Even if approved today, it'll probably take a decade or more to build a nuclear power plant in CA.

Better get approving then.

Or anywhere else, for that matter. Even in China, which has the most recent experience, you're talking close on ten years, realistically.

In other news, the CA Legislature wrote a bill in 2022 that would allow all the private utilities to essentially destroy the rooftop solar industry by gouging the consumer directly and essentially make your electric bill an income tax [1]. The way it's worded, none of the exported energy from a solar install will offset any of the connection costs (only the lowered rates).

Meanwhile, PG&E gets to keep paying its investors before its victims. California can't get past its corruption, and people wonder why we can't meet our climate goals.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/solar/comments/12hobyp/california_a...

All net emission schemes in California for solar are essentially subsidized from non solar customers (generally a poorer, more consumption conscious population) to solar customers. NEM2 was outrageously bad but nem3 is still a subsidy.

Removing those schemes will make people install batteries instead, which will have a bigger impact on co2 reductions

Why is it that other states have true 1:1 net metering while NEM3 is essentially less than 1:3?

The real problem is that our grid is criminal underdeveloped. I get they need connection fees (as opposed to the $0 we pay now) but $128/mo for a connection charge for a high income earner (read: entry level dev) is pure theft compared to the average for other states with connection fees ($11/mo).

California should nationalize PG&E, wipe out its investor payback schemes and start running things properly.

Just saw Scotland is also saying it won’t meet its 2030 goals:

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/20/scotland...

Is California one of the more progressive states with regards to reductions?

This does not bode well for the world we share.

Depend on how you define "progressive". But it does say something about how the world function.

Imo, CA is more interested in appearing to be progressive than actually being progressive, i.e. making laws that treat the symptoms instead of the root cause and as a result ended up making things worse. Prop 13, "anti-discrimination" laws, tough laws against gas cars, etc. Those backfired and instead of repealing and fixing them, they moved on to making more laws to add on an already gigantic clusterfuck.

It is hard to make real progress. It is so much easier to mess up and never admit to it.

If California’s goal was to actually reduce carbon emissions, then it would increase taxes on fossil fuels every year until the target emissions were met.

And before someone chimes in on that hurting poor people, California could use those taxes to redistribute cash to poorer people.

But the goal is not to actually reduce emissions, it is to say they are trying to while not really reducing quality of life (i.e. making sacrifices, especially amongst the richer half). And in the process, create tons of avenues for corruption and bureaucracy to suck productivity out of society.

We want to pretend like we do stuff for the environment or future generations, but we still want that detached single family 2.5k sq ft house, and the SUVs, and the tropical vacations. And, of course, it is going to be a hard sell to get a small portion of the world’s population to do that if everyone else is not.

but we still want that detached single family 2.5k sq ft house, and the SUVs, and the tropical vacations. And, of course, it is going to be a hard sell to get a small portion of the world’s population to do that if everyone else is not.

Most of that would be fine if it were built and operated by nuclear and renewables though.

I have been hearing that for at least 20 years. There is a reason fossil fuels reign supreme, their cost to convenience ratio cannot be beat (including regulatory challenges).

> triple rate of reductions

That’s such a confusing way to say it

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