After over a decade of mismanagement and misdirection under governors Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown, Californians now can double down by electing the latest aspiring Gubernatorial candidate: billionaire Tom Steyer.
Steyer, who made much of his money investing in such things as fossil fuels, including coal, is now preaching to the masses as a converted environmental zealot. He has remained a hardline defender of the state’s climate regulatory regime, a stance more central to his candidacy than even Gavin Newsom or his prospective rivals.
Given the impact of such policies on California, a potential Steyer Governorship and the continuation of dogmatic climate policy is exactly what the state does not need. For well over a decade, the state’s politicians have indulged in a misguided drive to lead the world’s response to climate change, with catastrophic effects.
But there’s no bucking this trend, and Steyer may soon lead the charge. The unfortunate Kamala Harris has bowed out, and former Representative Katie Porter — an Elizabeth Warren acolyte — has undermined her candidacy with televised outbursts and nasty testimony from former employees and her ex-husband.
California’s lower-income and minority households are already suffering from the consequences of the ruling elite’s green obsessions. The California Air Resources Board, for example, has produced evidence that the 2022 Scoping Plan for Achieving Carbon Neutrality policy was likely to hurt the income of those earning less than $100,000 annually while raising the income of those above this level.
It’s no surprise then that California is now moving below the national average of both income and job growth and even further behind rivals like Texas, Utah and Washington. When you add this to the fact that regulations aimed at stopping suburban development have helped push the median cost of a home to 2.5 higher than the rest of the country, the detrimental impact that climate policies have had becomes clear. This has been particularly tough on Latinos, California’s largest ethnic group — with some even labelling these policies “the green Jim Crow”. For Latinos, California ranks near the bottom in terms of homeownership, business ownership and real adjusted incomes — roughly $10,000 less than in Texas.
For his part Governor Newsom, in his bid for national power, has realised the weakness of these policies. He has shown some signs of adjusting his reality, pushing back against Steyer and the powerful green lobby by allowing the once massive oil industry to remain and keeping the last nuclear and natural gas plants, which together account for more than half the state’s electricity.
Given his quasi-religious commitment to Net Zero, Steyer is unlikely to follow Newsom in taking these moderate steps, or let his Democratic opponents suggest any changes. And it’s not like the GOP hopefuls — former David Cameron Advisor Steve Hilton or Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — will prove to be effective opposition. Republicans have not won a state-wide race in almost two decades.
Intensifying the push to Net Zero is the last thing working-class Californians need. But with his money, entrenched lobbyists and a compliant media, Steyer looks hard to stop. Even if he doesn’t win, he could still shape the race, forcing candidates to cleave ever more to the Left on the environment. The Golden State deserves better.
This piece first appeared at: UnHerd.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Phil Roeder via Flickr, under CC 2.0 License.
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