How do you solve a problem like California?
California was and should still be a great place, a great place to live, to work, to raise a family. It has a huge variety of beautiful landscapes, a salubrious climate, ample resources. California does, or should, have it all. There's just one problem that is keeping California from being everything it should be, could be, and once was:
California Democrats.
California has been run by the Democratic Party for years now. Not just the Governor's office, currently still afflicted with the impeccably-coiffed but essentially vapid and clueless Gavin Newsom, but also the Democratic supermajority in the state legislature. They have adopted every anti-energy, anti-commerce, anti-sanity stance the left has to offer, and now California's people are, literally, paying for all of it.
The Pacific Research Institute's John Merline and Kerry Jackson have provided us with a great look at three areas of self-inflicted scarcity in California.
The late, great comedian Sam Kinison once said that instead of sending food to starving nations, we should send U-Hauls because, he would scream, “there wouldn’t be world hunger if you people would live where the food is! You live in a desert, understand that?! Nothing grows out of here!”
It’s a classic bit, but also wrong. Famines these days are always and everywhere man-made – the result of misguided government policies.
So, too, is California’s constant moaning about shortages of gasoline, water, and electricity.
So, let's look at them in turn. First, oil/gasoline.
California is floating on a sea of crude says the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Yet, according to the American Energy Institute, California now produces only 2% of the nation’s oil down from 40%. The state is heavily dependent on imported oil –- with 61% coming from other nations. Just four decades ago, nearly two-thirds of oil refined in California was produced in-state.
Compounding the problem has been the state’s war on refineries, which has caused the number to dwindle from more than 40 in the 1980s to eight.
We admittedly have a similar problem here in Alaska, concerning refinery capacity, but thanks to the vastness of the Great Land and our low population, this is due to the fact that we have never had the refining capacity to meet all the state's needs. But California squandered its capacity. They have squandered their extraction capacity. The once-Golden State has oil, it has natural gas, right there under the ground. But in the name of "green" energy, they are ignoring the one solution to their energy cost woes.
Read More: Reality Check: Low Profits, High Burdens Explain CA Gasoline Prices
Next, electricity.
Californians might feel like the state has resolved its electricity problems since the rolling power outages of 2020, adding 31,000 megawatts of generating capacity. But the fact that the state has the second-highest electricity prices in the nation is a sign of scarcity, not abundance.
And that’s about to get much worse. Since roughly 2008, the state’s electricity demand has remained relatively stable, but the California Energy Commission predicts annual growth of as much as 2.3% a year over the next decade, driven by the push for EVs, the state’s war on natural gas, and AI data center growth.
I'll question that demand growth, with the productive citizens of California fleeing for greener pastures in places like Texas and Florida. California's population is actually declining, the state is losing Congressional seats, and that would presumably come with a decrease in electricity demand. But that's not the whole picture. Our increasingly high-tech lifestyle grows ever more energy-hungry month by month. California is home at present to over 40 massive, electricity-hungry data centers, with 22-24 more in the works. Why any private or corporate enterprise would want to build these in California, with its onerous regulations and skyrocketing energy costs, well, that's just baffling; but California won't be able to keep up with this increase in demand with solar panels and windmills. And the one technology that could help, nuclear power, has no friends among California's ruling Democratic Party. Oh, California's one remaining nuclear power plant, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, has been extended to stay open until 2030 - but what then?
Read More: New Report: California Energy Prices Could Cost Families Over $1,500 More in 2026
Finally, water.
California has not built a major water storage facility in nearly four decades and much of the rain that does fall is dumped into the ocean.
Rather than sharply focus on increasing supply, elected officials and the bureaucracy thwart progress. Projects that could ease the tight supplies are rejected.
For instance, the Poseidon desalination project desalination plant in Huntington Beach, which would have provided 50 million gallons daily to Orange County residents, was unanimously rejected by the California Coastal Commission.
Ask the residents of Pacific Palisades about California's water storage woes, and I'm betting you'll get an earful. Human society is energy hungry, but it's also thirsty, and California, despite its propensity to fires, has hamstrung any water storage efforts, burying any proposed projects under a mountain of red tape. California is slowly dying of thirst, and this, too, is self-inflicted.
Read More: California Burning: What Will It Take to Change California Politics?
California is, or should be, a great place. It was a great place, not all that long ago. I've stayed and worked in California, and yes, it's a beautiful place. I can see the appeal, even though I'm more than content to remain in Alaska. And there may be hope; the issues listed here, energy and water, are issues that California Republicans should be hammering the state's Democrats with, every day and twice on Sunday, right up to this year's midterm elections. Hammer the once-Golden State's Democratic Congressional delegation. Hammer the state legislators who have perpetrated this atrocity. Hammer whoever the Democrats end up putting forward to run for Governor. Never let up. Never let them take a breath. These are winning issues for Republicans, even in California, and the sooner the California GOP starts pounding Democrats on these things, the better.
