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Comment by zgs | Hacker News Reader

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

This does not bode well for the world we share.

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).

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.

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