Burying the Bullet Train

The coronavirus has forced everyone to make hard financial choices, both in their business and personal lives. Thr State of California, facing a $54-billion budget deficit, has even put Jerry Brown's bullet train under the microscope.

The state High-Speed Rail Authority now projects the 171-mile stretch [from Merced to Bakersfield] would cost $20 billion to build and lose between $40 million and $90 million a year. Even that assumes millions of people living in the Central Valley each year will ride the train to Merced and then use commuter rail to connect to San Jose.

As economic consultants William Grindley and Bill Warren have pointed out, a round-trip between Bakersfield and San Jose would take 12 hours and 10 minutes and cost $189 without a subsidy and $104 with a subsidy.

Long gone are the dreams of connecting the major population centers of San Francisco and Los Angeles. As we noted last year:

Merced-Bakersfield route (Chron graphic)

Since 2012 we've been commenting on the complicated design, pie-in-the-sky ridership assumptions, and cost overruns of the California high-speed rail project.

On Tuesday Governor Newsom effectively killed the project by announcing that he would only commit to completing the Central Valley line between Merced (pop. 83,000) and Bakersfield (pop. 376,000).

The deadly pandemic that has caused record unemployment and business closures has prevented officials from getting raises ("The four members of the California Citizens Compensation Commission voted unanimously Thursday to leave the salaries as they are"), so you know things are really serious.

So, Do Something

Hetch Hetchy water and power system (Water Educ. Fdn)

Hydroelectric power checks a lot of boxes:

Plentiful source of energy;

No burning of fossil fuels;

Low operating cost;

Water storage.

An updated version, pumped storage, can also provide wind and solar energy storage without the drawbacks of chemical batteries.

One such project has been proposed in "a remote canyon in the towering eastern Sierra."

(Chronicle diagram)

The proposed “pumped-storage” project would essentially bank solar and wind energy by pumping creek water uphill when the power sources are plentiful, say during sunny or windy times, and conversely, send the water back down through power-producing turbines when the energy is needed.

“It’s a great way to manage the intermittency of renewable energy,” said Frank Wolak, an economics professor at Stanford University and director of the school’s Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, who called pumped storage “ideal” for helping the state scale up its clean power.

Construction would occur mostly on Federal land. At risk would be

a landscape known for its brown trout and bighorn sheep, unparalleled alpine vistas, and pristine rivers and lakes.

Politicians must weigh the habitat of sheep and fish and "vistas" which only a few people have the time and money to see, against the millions of Californians who would benefit from increased water, electricity, and alternative energy storage.

The choice is obvious, but I don't give it much of a chance. The very influential people who say the planet is doomed unless we do something don't seem to want to do something (or they don't really believe the planet is doomed).

The Choice is Easy

Nov. 2018: Lt. Gov. Newsom, Gov. Brown, Paradise mayor Jody Jones, Pres. Trump, FEMA Adm. Long (AP)

The Wall Street Journal editorial page takes the side of California Governor Gavin Newsom:

The Governor on Friday declared a statewide emergency to expedite 35 wildfire-prevention projects including prescribed burns and tree-thinning around 200 cities over the next year. The emergency finding will let the state waive certain bureaucratic obstacles to tree-clearing. This could prevent a reprise of the last two horrific wildfire seasons in which 1.7 million acres burned. The Camp Fire in the Sierra Nevada foothills last fall razed 14,000 homes and killed 85 people. [snip]

Yet Mr. Newsom is drawing fire from his friends on the left for waiving regulations such as the California Environmental Quality Act that produce mounds of paperwork and allow locales to veto sensible fuel-reduction projects for reasons unrelated to environmental protection. “The governor should reject this doomed, destructive approach” of thinning forests, the Center for Biological Diversity declared.

“Unfortunately, it’s a very Trumpian approach,” said Douglas Bevington, forest director of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

Doomed, destructive, Trumpian--adjectives that inflame the leftist base. The WSJ doesn't often agree with a liberal governor, but when it's a choice between liberalism and environmental extremism that endangers people, the choice is easy.

The Train to No---re

HSR scale-back to Merced-Bakersfield (Chron graphic)

Since 2012 we've been commenting on the complicated design, pie-in-the-sky ridership assumptions, and cost overruns of the California high-speed rail project.

On Tuesday Governor Newsom effectively killed the project by announcing that he would only commit to completing the Central Valley line between Merced (pop. 83,000) and Bakersfield (pop. 376,000).

“There simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A.,” Newsom told a joint session of the Legislature. “I wish there were.”

He said the current project would “cost too much and, respectfully, take too long.”

But a link between Merced and Bakersfield, he added, could serve as a revitalizing force for the Central Valley, a region Newsom has promised not to neglect.

Don't call it the Train to Nowhere (WSJ)

Governor Newsom also asked everyone not to use a ready-made name for the project: [bold added]

“I know that some critics are going to say, ‘Well, that’s a train to nowhere.’ But I think that’s wrong and I think that’s offensive,” Newsom said. “It’s about economic transformation. It’s about unlocking the enormous potential of the valley.”

In a bow to ex-Governor Brown, Gavin Newsom didn't stop the entire project. Check back another year and we'll see.

Jerry Brown Turns 80

Jerry Brown at 41

In a mostly overlooked milestone, California Governor Jerry Brown turned 80 today. [bold added]

The leader of one of the world’s largest economies will become an octogenarian, the oldest governor in the land and the longest-serving governor of California.

I liked him during his first go-round as governor during the 1970's. He espoused a then-unusual combination of staunch fiscal conservatism and liberal social causes like environmentalism and gay rights. He mastered the symbolism of politics, eschewing the governor's mansion for a small apartment and a chauffeured limo for his own Plymouth sedan. (It didn't hurt that he dated rock superstar Linda Ronstadt while in office.)

In the past year California has become the vanguard of the so-called "cold civil war" being waged against the Trump Administration, with Jerry Brown as its leader. If anything, Jerry Brown at 80 has become even more outspoken than Jerry Brown at 40.

I disagree with many of his policies, especially high-speed rail, but I wish him a long, healthy, and fruitful life, tilting for windmills.

Jerry Does Jeremiah

The Drudge Report is known for the sometimes amusing, ironic placement of news stories on its home page.

On Saturday Governor Brown opined that President Trump doesn't fear the "wrath of God" while huge swaths of California burned.

Jesuitically trained Jerry Brown knows better than to presume how God will judge others ("judge not lest ye be judged", "why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"). Unfortunately, liberal Christians have shown that they are just as judge-y as those whom they deride. Their New Testament love, tolerance, non-judgmentalism, and kindness are cast aside (as in my Episcopal Church) when the political winds start blowing against them.

Time for some good ol' fire and brimstone.

Jerry Brown, Premier

Speaker Willie Brown and Gov. Jerry Brown, 1981
(California Museum photo)

Ex-SF Mayor and California Speaker Willie Brown says Governor Jerry Brown is America's unofficial Prime Minister: [bold added]

The governor just happened to have a trip to China scheduled for the day after Trump made his [exiting-Paris-Accords] announcement. Now he’s off to forge his own climate change deal with Beijing.

None of this would have happened if Hillary Clinton had been elected president. With an environmentalist-oriented Democrat in the White House, Brown would have been relegated to the choir singing her praises.

With Trump, Jerry is a reborn warrior with a cause that will keep him in the spotlight even after he leaves office.

Trump may be the president. But to those 194 other nations that agreed to the Paris Agreement and are looking for someone in the U.S. who gets climate change, Brown is going to be our premier.

I don't know if Jerry Brown be satisfied with an unofficial title, though. He's 79 (eight years older than Donald Trump) and fits right in with the current profile for Democratic Presidential nominees: white, coastal liberal, and eligible for Social Security, just like Elisabeth Warren (67), Hillary Clinton (69), and Bernie Sanders (75). Unlike the others, he has decades of administrative experience running the largest State in the Union and the City of Oakland.

Hey, I'd cheerfully contribute to his campaign.

Black Gold: Brown v. Green

Kern County: not as pretty as San Francisco (SF Gate photo)

Real news - deep blue, deep green California is the third leading oil-producing state behind Texas and North Dakota [bold added]:

Kern County alone pumps more oil than Oklahoma, accounting for more than 70 percent of California’s production and more than 90 percent of its fracked wells. While the miles of photogenic melon fields, almond orchards and vineyards get the magazine covers, for more than a century the county’s financial strength has been its place as California’s oil patch.

Since the 1890s, the county has been the epicenter of the state’s energy industry, with 44,284 active wells pumping some 144 million barrels of oil in 2015, according to the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources.

“In Kern County, oil and gas is a $4 billion industry with lots of well-paying jobs,” said Nick Ortiz, president and CEO of the Greater Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce. “It’s a huge part of our economy, and the taxes we collect are very important to Kern County and our residents.”

Here's the fun part: Governor Jerry Brown, well known for his strong views on climate change, refuses to move against the California fracking industry. His resistance has aroused the ire of putative environmental allies:

“It’s hypocritical for Brown to call himself a climate leader,” said Catherine Garoupa White of Californians Against Fracking, a coalition of environmental groups. The governor’s support for fracking “is a huge smear on Brown’s green record.”

The state needs to move to an economy with 100 percent clean energy and get out of oil,” said Dan Jacobson, legislative director for Environment California. “The governor needs to play a leadership role in getting us off oil.”

Governor Brown talks a good game, but he's too much of an experienced politician to embrace all the tenets of the green revolution.

since California residents now drive about 330 billion miles a year, most of it in vehicles powered by gasoline or diesel, there’s a long way to go.

“California is only producing 30 percent of its oil,” Brown said. “The rest comes in ships, mostly, but increasingly in trains.”

Cutting the state’s oil production without cutting demand just means that more of California’s oil will come from other states or other countries, which may not have the strong restrictions on fracking and oil production that California now has.

“I don’t believe that makes sense,” Brown said.

Keep talking like that, guv'nor, and people might think you are a climate-change (whisper) denier.