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Shellenberger seems to be another random independent centrist hell-bent on throwing around the name "Soros" because it gets votes.
But... some aspects of some of his policies are sane. I don't know that his Cal-Psych idea is fully fleshed-out, but it has roots in sense. I don't think Californians should pay for people relocated here by fedgov.
Our schools are broken. My sister-in-law is a teacher and the stories she tells... holy shit.
Better vocational education is a must.
Nuclear energy is a must. Diablo Canyon can last decades more and produces, in less than 900 acres, 9% of the state's energy needs. The actual reactor facility is smaller than a medium-sized city's Costco. It has less impact on its surrounding ecosystems than a less-efficient natural gas facility.
California imports 30% of its power. We import 30% of our power and I have to drive by those fucking hideous wind turbines every time I take the 10 back from the Salton Sea or 29 Palms. We import 30% of our power and I have to drive by those fucking hideous solar panel arrays every time I go to or from Vegas.
We don't need water storage. We have 1,500 water storage sites in California. This is a regurgitation of the same bullshit Elder was on about and it needs to stop. California's water problem can be solved, it will just take some tough love.
We do need water recycling and we need to advance desalination technology before going all-in. Agriculture is less than a tenth of our state's economy; let's stop exporting our water.
Still, this dude's site has four issues. That's it. Four issues that need to be addressed to save the state (and one of them is energy, water, housing). He conveniently leaves out his stance on abortion (pro-choice), his stance on gun rights (pro-regulation), his stance on minimum wage ($15/hr), his stance on universal health care (for it), and his stance on collective bargaining (for it) because he's counting on Republican support.
No one mentions ethanol because it's a great way to lose funding, but California needs to end the requirement for ethanol in our gasoline. It's killing my cars (vintage Porsches hate ethanol, and we have to compromise on some tunes) and ethanol is proven to have its own emissions problems- some of which are severe. Additionally, the world used to use 51% of its crops for food and that percentage is down to 29%; should we really be pumping million-year-old aquifers dry to create what amounts to a massive subsidy for multinational farming concerns and to feed people what used to be a luxury protein?
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