Max Schulz looks past the facade of California’s Potemkin Environmentalism:
California’s environmental policies have made it heavily dependent on other states for power; generated some of the highest, business-crippling energy costs in the country; and left it vulnerable to periodic electricity shortages. Its economic growth has occurred not because of, but despite, those policies, which would be disastrous if extended to the rest of the country.
Some history:
Much of California’s heightened environmental awareness dates back to January 1969, when an industrial accident on a Union Oil (now Unocal) drilling rig about five miles off the Santa Barbara coast blew out of control. Over 11 days, the rig spewed more than 3 million gallons of oil over 800 square miles of ocean and along a 35-mile stretch of coastline. The massive spill killed innumerable birds, fish, dolphins, and seals and coated beaches with a six-inch-thick film. Union Oil president Fred Utley’s ham-handed response enraged an already angry public: “I don’t like to call it a disaster,” he said, noting that there had been no loss of human life. “I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds.”The concern over “the loss of a few birds” was even more powerful than Utley thought. It’s no exaggeration to say that much of the modern environmental movement emerged from the Santa Barbara oil spill. Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson said that he conceived of the first Earth Day because of the accident. A powerful movement to ban offshore drilling sprang up. Environmental advocacy groups formed. A marked hostility to oil companies took hold in the public’s mind. Voters established the California Coastal Commission in a 1972 referendum. And at the federal level, in 1970, President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency largely as a response to the spill.
From then on, the environment would be central for California lawmakers and regulators.