WTF? Winter Storm Warnings in Texas, Mexico. California on Fire. High Arctic Melting.

Think of it this way. You may not feel it but you are firmly in the grip of climate change. There's nothing you can do to make it go away. It has a firm grip and it is going to tighten. It may not have gotten around to you yet as it has to others but it certainly will and your government is not doing a damned thing about it.

A week ago I posted an item about Springtime in Greenland.  The high north, Greenland and the Canadian archipelago, were basking in temperatures 20 to 30 C above normal, well above the freezing mark.

Today there are winter storm and snowfall warnings across southwest Texas and into northern Mexico.

Jump a couple of states over and you're in fire swept southern California where, in some places, the only thing stopping the spread of wildfires is the Pacific Ocean.

Hmmm, above freezing conditions in December in the Arctic Circle, winter storm warnings in the Texas/Mexico border region, wildfires sweeping southern California.


There have been many victims of the ongoing wildfires in Southern California, the largest of which is the Thomas Fire, a 101-square-mile monster blaze north of Los Angeles. The L.A. Times reports that the fire jumped the 101 freeway and was stopped only by the Pacific Ocean, along the way burning 50,500 acres, destroying 150 structures, and forcing 27,000 people to evacuate. Californians are used to wildfires, but Miller says these ones are unseasonable. “We usually get crazy wildfires in October, and then the first rains come in November, and ground stays wet and more rains come, and there’s no wildfire threat,” said [climate change activist, R.L. Miller]. “It’s early December .... This is happening because there is no more winter rain. There’s not enough winter rain, ever.”

Climate science backs up Miller’s observation. The state’s wildfire seasons are lasting longer and burning stronger due to human-caused climate change, as rising temperatures make vegetation drier and causes states like California to whip between very dry and very wet seasons. These current fires are so bad because of a mixture of dry foliage and low humidity, but also because of hot, dry winds blowing up to 70 miles per hour. This seasonal high wind, known as the Santa Ana winds, is not unusual for this time of year, climate scientist Daniel Swain told the Verge. But some scientists believe climate change “may be making these strong winds drier,” according to the New York Times. 

...

Eventually everywhere in the United States, not just the coastal regions, will suffer from severe climate impacts. Climate scientists have documented how global warming stands will hit the rest of America, whether it be through more extreme precipitation in the northeast or crop failure in the heartland. But reality has shown it to us, too. Hurricane Harvey brought Houston, Texas, its worst rainfall and flooding in recorded history. The risks of sea-level rise in Florida was made more apparent by Hurricane Irma, which flooded city streets and destroyed sea-walls. This summer, in Oklahoma, the temperature reached 100 degrees in the dead of winter.

This year’s mind-boggling extreme weather has shown us that climate change will leave few Americans untouched. And yet, so many states refuse to do much about it. That angers climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University. “The other states—Florida, Texas, Oklahoma—are under the control of climate change-denying politicians who continue to bury their head in the sand about climate change as they do the bidding of the fossil fuel interests who fund them, with the people they are supposed to be representing paying the cost in the form of devastating climate change-aggravated damage,” he said.

Here's one way to tell if your provincial and federal governments are serious about climate change. What are they telling you about what you and everyone else in your particular region can expect in the way of climate change impacts? What specific recommendations are they passing along to help you prepare for what's coming in the short range, 10 years, 20 years? Are you hearing anything out of them? Chances are pretty good that you're not.

I find it a little odd that my provincial government is so good at warning my community and my neighbours about the earthquake peril that hangs over our head, the mega-thrust subduction zone earthquake that could arrive any time between this afternoon and a century from now. I get detailed lists of what to have on hand, the best emergency foodstuffs, first aid gear, communications and such. I know the best places to take shelter in my home and the worst.  Yet the "Big One" may never hit in my lifetime or even my kids' lifetimes. 

Climate change impacts, however, are a lot more certain and far more predictable. Yet we hear nothing from the federal or British Columbia governments beyond banal injunctions and platitudes. Instead they mutter on about carbon taxes while Trudeau continues to pimp for the bitumen barons. Did the Dauphin even read about the wildfires we had this year, fires so extensive that they formed a high pressure zone that sent the smoke from fires hundreds of miles inland out into the Pacific to blanket Vancouver Island. Wildfires from Mexico to Alaska and what's the Dauphin's response to that? Sweet f#@k all. Carbon taxes - yeah, right. That'll git 'er done, sure.

I'm sensing a window of opportunity that is at risk. If the Liberals don't really come to grips with climate change - both adaptation and mitigation (carbon taxes, etc.) it's a safe bet that, when their time has come and gone, we'll wind up with another Conservative government that will do even less. It's time Justin began giving the country as much attention as he devotes to the economy.

Let's Call It "Differential Migration"

If you want to see what climate change looks like, venture no further than the beaches of southern California.  There you'll find hundreds of starving and dead seal and sea lion pups, victims of what I call "differential climate migration."

Breeding adults still go to the rookeries where their species have given birth to their young for thousands of years.  Except that climate change has triggered a deadly shift.  The prey fish that have sustained the pups in the past, mainly sardines, have headed north for cooler waters as the local waters warmed beyond their liking.

Everything is migrating away from the equator, even plants.  The seals and sea lions will too even if their numbers are greatly reduced.  It's a matter of time.

An acquaintance who lives in the Los Angeles area tells me that the carcasses of the dead pups are being gathered up in black plastic bags and are making a trip to the piers and boardwalks very gruesome and wretchedly smelly.

And the band played on.

They Get It. We Don't.

California has set an ambitious target for greenhouse gas emissions.  Their target is to cut emissions 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.  That's an ambitious target but, let's face it, 2050 is a long way off in the world of politics which means there's lots of time to duck any meaningful action, enough that it can be left until it's simply too late.

Apparently California governor Jerry Brown knows the best way to make that 80% of 1990 by 2050 target a reality is to trim the lead time.  What better way than to order an interim emissions reduction target.  And so he's ordered the state to cut emissions from 1990 levels by 40% by 2030.  

2030 is not that far off for reductions of the magnitude governor Brown has ordered.  Analysis, planning and implementation have to get underway almost immediately.

Mr. Brown’s order marks an aggressive turn in what had already been among the toughest programs in the nation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Under the law put into place by Mr. Brown’s predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state was required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 on the way to reach the 2050 target; California is already well on its way to meeting the 2020 goal, and may exceed it, officials said Wednesday.

So California is just five years away from reducing its emissions to 1990 levels and they might exceed that target.  Ten years after that, they have to cut their emissions a further 40%.  

Now remind me, what are Canada's targets?  What are we aiming for?  Oh yeah, a 17% reduction below 2005 levels by 2020.  And, what, we're not going to make even that?  Even as Ontario and Quebec make inroads on cutting their emissions, Alberta's are already far more than those two provinces combined and are set to soar even further.  Price of progress, I guess.  

California Down to Its Last Year of Water

A report in the LA Times claims that California has freshwater reserves for but one more year.


As our “wet” season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows. We're not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we're losing the creek too.

...As difficult as it may be to face, the simple fact is that California is running out of water — and the problem started before our current drought. NASA data reveal that total water storage in California has been in steady decline since at least 2002, when satellite-based monitoring began, although groundwater depletion has been going on since the early 20th century.

Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.

In short, we have no paddle to navigate this crisis.

Will British Columbia be the Last Pacific Jurisdiction to Legalize Pot?

Washington took recreational marijuana off the state criminal books two years ago.  Last night voters in Alaska and Oregon followed suit.  California is expected to do the same in 2016.

Imagine.  British Columbia, the province once known for "B.C. Bud", could be the last jurisdiction on the Pacific Coast to have a criminal prohibition against marijuana growing, possession and/or sale.  And that, like so many other things that grate on British Columbians, is because the power to change is held by Ottawa - and held over our heads, as usual.

Ottawa has final say, sort of.  Law enforcement agencies in British Columbia normally can't be bothered to arrest individuals for simple possession.  Even growers rarely do prison time.

The greatest hit British Columbia's marijuana industry has suffered has not come from the feds or from law enforcement.  It's come from the loss of markets due to the legalization spreading through the US.

It could just be me but I've noticed a real increase in the Harper government's anti-pot TV ads lately.  I sense they're targeted at Harper's base - angry, fearful old white people.

It's Called "Virtual Water"

Water-stressed Israel realized this year ago when it recognized that its exports of Jaffa oranges were really exporting "virtual water."  It took scarce water to grow the orange and when it left the country for overseas markets it was full of water.

Fast forward to 2014 and drought-stricken California.  The BBC reports that California farmers are using billions of gallons of incredibly scarce water to grow alfalfa hay destined for China.

The southern Imperial Valley, which borders Mexico, draws its water from the Colorado River along the blue liquid lifeline of the All American Canal.

It brings the desert alive with hundreds of hectares of lush green fields - much of it alfalfa hay, a water-hungry but nutritious animal feed which once propped up the dairy industry here, and is now doing a similar job in China.

"A hundred billion gallons of water per year is being exported in the form of alfalfa from California," argues Professor Robert Glennon from Arizona College of Law.

"It's a huge amount.  It's enough for a year's supply for a million families - it's a lot of water, particularly when you're looking at the dreadful drought throughout the south-west." 

Why China?  It's because of China's one-way trade with the United States. Chinese goods reach the American mainland in ocean shipping containers that then have to go back empty.  The glut of empty containers makes alfalfa exports to China cheap, cheap, cheap.  It's cheaper to ship Imperial Valley alfalfa to China than to transport it to California's central valley ranchers.

Well, kids, welcome to globalization.

Floods Come and Go But Drought Likes to Climb Onto Your Back and Stay There

We hear lots about California and it's three-year-running drought that has left the State in severe water stress.  Wells are running dry, emergency bottled water has to be brought in to help the poor survive, orchards are being bulldozed as the trees die off, Nestle keeps plundering the state to bottle water for other places, municipalities are finally preparing to recycle waste water, etc., etc.

The "exceptional" drought zone is spreading ever northward, nearing the Oregon border.  Officials from Humboldt County say the Eel River levels are at unprecedented lows and people along the coast are not ready for what's coming.

Coastal areas of Humboldt County have not see the impacts of the drought as directly as inland portions, leading many residents to be unaware of the critical situation, said Dan Ehresman, director of the North Coast Environmental Center.

"People are disconnected from where our water comes from," Ehresman said. "It is easy not to think about the conditions in the rest of the county."

In the wine country, growers have cut back on drip irrigation but still hope their vines will make it through the summer.  It's next year that's on their mind.  They need relief in the form of rainfall over the winter.

Bad as a 3-year drought may be, a report from Cornell University, the University of Arizona and the U.S. Geological Survey concludes that America's southwest is at risk of a 10-year drought this century.

The researchers found that when accounting for climate change, there is a 20-50 percent chance of a 35-year long megadrought in the next century, depending on the region. There is a 5-10 percent chance of a 50-year megadrought, they reported.

The computer models also found that California, Arizona and New Mexico will be at increased risk for drought, but that the risk could decrease for parts of Washington, Montana and Idaho.

Apparel companies are looking for alternatives to replace cotton.

VF Corp. (NYSE:VFC), which makes Lee and Wrangler jeans, Timberland shoes and The North Face fleece jackets, said it started looking to diversify its raw materials several years ago, after bad weather events in China and Pakistan -- two of the world’s largest cotton growers -- hit the company’s cotton supply. While the crop grows especially well in hot climates, it is extremely sensitive to water. Not enough H20, and cotton chokes at the vine; too much, and its roots rot.

In the coming decades, water scarcity spurred by climate change will likely hit cotton the most in China's Xinjian county, Pakistan, Australia and the western United States, according to the International Trade Center, a joint agency of the World Trade Organization and the United Nations. Extreme heat waves could also harm cotton crops, as will an abundance of insects, which are expected to adapt and thrive in new environmental conditions.

It's hard to imagine how a modern society like the American southwest could endure a 10-year drought.  A 35 or a 50-year drought would likely render the area uninhabitable.

This Is What Happens When You Run Out of Water.

Could you get by for three weeks with 12-gallons of water?  That's a smidge over 45-litres which works out to about 2 litres per day.

In Porterville, California, the county Office of Emergency Services, has delivered bottled water to 182 households where wells have now run dry.  12-gallons of water per head.  Three weeks rations.  Two litres per person per day.

East Porterville resident Angelica Gallegos fought back tears as she described being without water for four months in the home she shares with her husband,, three children and two other adults.

"It's hard," she told The Bee. "I can't shower the children like I used to."

Farmworker Oliva Sanchez said she still gets a trickle from her tap, but dirt started coming out with the water about a week ago.

"I try to use the least possible. I'll move if I have to," she said.

Along with experiencing inconvenience and thirst, some residents have been reluctant to speak up about being waterless because they are afraid their landlords will evict them or social workers will take their children away.

Minimum daily requirements for basic hydration are about 3-litres per day.  The UN says the daily minimum requirement per person for drinking, cooking, hygiene and sanitation is 20-litres per day.

To put that in perspective, the per capita water consumption for domestic purposes in Canada is 329-litres per day.

Meanwhile Texas is still holding out hopes for a long overdue El Nino to develop to bring "drought buster" rains this fall.

Update -

I somehow stumbled across an editorial in the Porterville Recorder dealing with the drought relief programme.  The op-ed laments that the local municipal council is using the emergency as a political football.  It seems there's an election campaign underway.

I was also struck by the libertarian views of the editors to a situation they describe as a "humanitarian crisis."

"While we strongly support efforts to help those residents who are without water, we do not feel taxpayer money should be used.  This needs to be a community effort and the city's role should stop at helping to coordinate all efforts, especially by volunteers."  

The disconnect between the municipal government and the "community" is bizarre.  The municipal government surely is the political embodiment of the community and it acts on behalf of the community.  If "the community" was going to respond to this "humanitarian crisis", chances are it would have done just that long before the muni had to purchase and distribute bottled water.

Then again, this ad appeared just beside the op-ed.

The Mystery of California's Vanishing Groundwater

You may have already heard about it.  California, the Golden State, is reeling from three years of continuous, severe drought.

Of course you've heard about it.  The California drought is in the news almost daily.  The problem with an event like this is putting it in perspective.

Here's a new way of looking at it.  The drought is now estimated to have claimed 63-trillion gallons of groundwater across the Western United States.  That water loss is said to have caused the surface levels in the region to rise 0.16 of an inch over the past 18-months.

The estimates come via the Scrips Institute of Oceanography and the U.S. Geological Survey.

In California's Sierra mountains, the loss of annual snowpack has caused a surface rise of 0.6 of an inch.

But something doesn't add up.

The report doesn't appear to mention where, exactly, that missing groundwater is to be found.  Some of it has been added to the warming atmosphere but evaporation and transpiration are components of the hydrological cycle that carries water vapour into the atmosphere where it is transformed into clouds and returns to the surface as rain.

So, yes, it's believable that the Western U.S. has suffered a massive loss of groundwater but that moisture has to be somewhere, in some form, adding its weight to someplace else.  That could be in the form of flash floods sweeping so many places east of California.

Another impact of the drought is power generation.  California's hydro-electric capacity has been hard hit causing the state to fall back on natural gas for generating electricity.  That could be a blow to California's carbon emissions reduction targets.

Range Wars, 21st Century-Style

It's a classic theme of the 'wild west' - range wars where free-range cattle ranchers clashed with farmers whose fenced fields blocked their way.  Today it's a struggle between farmers and frackers and this time the struggle is over water, more specifically who gets it and who goes without.

This has been going on in Texas for some time and, generally, it's the frackers who win.  Now the same thing has flared up in drought-stricken California, especially in the rich agricultural area of the Monterey Basin beneath which lies an awful lot of fossil fuel just waiting to be fracked.

Despite several polls indicating that a majority of California residents are opposed to the “water-intensive extreme oil and gas extraction process” known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the state’s Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has continued to pledge his support for pro-fracking legislation.

 

As Brown gets closer to signing a piece of legislation that would allow for the expansion of fracking and other controversial forms of oil extraction in California’s Monterey Shale formation, located beneath California’s “most prized” farmland, opponents have boosted their work to ban fracking in the state.

 

On this one, Jerry Brown is dead wrong.  Those oil and gas reserves have been securely sequestered underground for millions of years.  They're not going anywhere.  They'll still be right where they sit when the drought ends.  It's the farmers who have long contributed to California's prosperity that are at mortal risk if they're not given priority access over frackers to the limited water supply.

The Relief of California

Desperately needed rain may be enroute to northern California.  With any luck some agricultural production may be saved.  There's hope that an El Nino believed to be building in the Pacific will indulge California with a good drenching next winter.

In Southern California - Better Dead Than Republican

Southern California voters last night re-elected a dead Democrat over a living, breathing Republican.

 Democrat Jenny Oropeza swept a Southern California district in the race for Senate on Tuesday with 58% of the vote.   Unfortunately, Jenny passed away two weeks ago but her name remained on the ballot.

The Repugs are naturally crying "foul" as though their candidate ought to have won by default.  The Dems contend that the vote for dead Jenny merely means the voters have endorsed a special election with a new Democratic candidate in four months.

Remember Bush's minion, John Ashcroft, also lost a Senate election to a dead man?  After that resounding vote of confidence, Bush brought Ashcroft into his cabinet.  Oh well.

 

California At the Abyss - Aahrnold Wants State Employees on Minimum Wage

We tend to think of America's debt crisis as Washington's problem but a lot of state governments are as deeply in the red - or worse. Arizona and California are real fiscal freak shows right at the moment.

The latest spectacle comes from California where outgoing governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has ordered state Controller John Chiang to put 200,000 state employees on minimum wage - bread and water - this month. That would drop them down to the federally mandated $7.25 an hour.

Chiang says he won't do it without a court order.

Six bargaining units, representing 37,000 workers, that have already folded to the governor's concession demands won't be affected. The big six holdouts, however, could be in for a rougher ride.

The First Failed State in America - California

It's the stuff of legends - magnificent beaches and mountains, movie stars and Rodeo Drive, exotic cars and perfect tans - and now it's virtually broke. According to The Guardian, California is on the verge of becoming America's first failed state:

From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave. In a state made up of sprawling suburbs the collapse of the housing bubble has impoverished millions and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. Its political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster – his approval ratings having sunk to levels that would make George W Bush blush.

California's Constitutional Crisis - Popular Revolt?

California's state government has ground to a halt, utterly dysfunctional. The state that proudly proclaims it has the 7th largest economy in the world can't pay its bills. A very small group of taxpayers have pushed the legislature over a cliff.

The state's constitution is booby-trapped. If the government needs to raise taxes, it takes a 2/3rds vote of the legislature to approve the budget. In a sharply-divided and intensely partisan legislature, that's left the state with a $23-billion revenue shortfall. If the legislature won't approve a tax hike the government can go to the voters in a "special election." That's what it did. 19% turned out. A majority of that 19% said no tax hikes. Paralysis.

Let's face it. It's really hard to get people to get out to the polls to support a tax hike but it's an awful lot easier to get people to the polls to reject a tax hike. You're almost guaranteed to get more to say no than to say yes. And, as this case shows, even 10% of the electorate can bring the state's government to a standstill. Right over the cliff.

But now there's a popular revolt underway. Left and right, voters are fed up with their legislature and their constitution. As the LA Times reports, the public are beginning to take matters into their own hands:

The unraveling budget has spurred groups of the political left, right and center to press full speed ahead with campaigns for what each considers the remedy for dysfunction.

A bipartisan organization sponsored by several foundations is finalizing a menu of potential solutions. Those are expected to include a change in budgeting practices and a possible shift of state-run programs such as health, education and welfare to local governments that may enjoy more public trust.

A deep-pocketed Bay Area business group that includes Google and Yahoo is pressing ahead with plans for a constitutional convention. In that scenario, 400 California residents of all stripes would ponder the state's problems in a months-long session and draft a new blueprint for government that presumably would land on the statewide ballot.

...The last true constitutional convention took place in 1878. Progressive-era reforms meant to overcome the power of railroad barons led to changes in 1911 that ushered in the initiative process. And a commission toiled for more than a dozen years in the 1960s and '70s, enacting a slew of constitutional revisions that included the birth of a full-time Legislature.

..."People are going to be looking for reforms at least up through next year's election," said Thad Kousser, a UC San Diego political scientist. "That will keep the pressure on the Legislature to do something."

Ideas for change abound: a more business-like budget process, election adjustments to lure more moderates, modification of term limits, a higher bar for approval of initiatives.

As a foreigner with a genuine fondness for California, all I can say is "amen."

Arnie - California's Real Life "Terminator"

Arnold Schwarzenegger's legacy as California governor may be written by events to unfold in the coming months. The Governator is determined to reform California's hapless political system and is willing to take the state down trying.

It's Arnie versus the California legislature in a game of high-stakes, Russian roulette. The latest budget leaves the state facing a $24-billion deficit, money that is nowhere to be found. When the government failed to get the necessary super-majority required to pass the budget, it was left to voters to say whether the government could borrow the shortfall. All it took was a ridiculously small percentage of the electorate, a bare majority of the 19% turnout, to say "no." As a result, California's government runs out of cash next month.

Legislators are looking to issuing IOUs rather than permit the state to default on its bills but the governor isn't buying it. Schwarzenegger says he'll veto any measure that fails to close the state's deficit. From the LA Times:

In doing so, Schwarzenegger has sent the message that he would rather allow the state to begin shutting down than let lawmakers push its troubles off for months by closing only part of the shortfall. The latter prospect could swallow up the rest of his governorship.

"Whatever needs to be done," Schwarzenegger told reporters outside his Capitol office Friday when asked why he would be willing to delay payments to needy Californians. "I know that there is a history in this building of always being late with the budget, to drag it out and to kick that can down the alley. . . . I don't think we have this luxury this time."

The governor readily admits that he sees the crisis as a chance to make big changes to government -- to "reform the system," he said Friday -- with proposals he has struggled to advance in the past.

Among them: reorganizing state bureaucracy, eliminating patronage boards and curbing fraud in social services that Democrats have traditionally protected. The governor also would like to move past the budget crisis to reach a deal on California's water problems that has so far eluded him.

...if his strategy fails, he could be blamed for unnecessarily subjecting state residents to misery.

"I don't believe the governor wants his legacy to be that he had the opportunity to avoid IOUs for Californians and that he failed to take it because he wanted to play a game of chicken," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said last week.

...Gary Jacobson, a professor of political science at UC San Diego, said Schwarzenegger has put himself at risk of antagonizing the public by holding out for some of these ideas while forcing deep cuts and forswearing new taxes that could alleviate some of the pain.

"When it hits people how much damage this budget has done, they are going to say, 'So what that he got some of these things through? Look at what he has done to us in the meantime. State parks are closed. Classrooms are huge. People are being thrown out of the hospital. Medical clinics are shutting down,' " Jacobson said.

"When all this hits," he added, "it is going to be hard to imagine people will look on him favorably because he got some of the structural reforms he wanted."

In fact, the structural changes California desperately needs are constitutional. In a tightly politicized legislature it can be impossible to get the 2/3rds majority approval required to pass a budget. The safety valve for that was to have been a plebiscite called a "special election" to let the public decide whether to allow a tax increase. It's a situation guaranteed to raise more turnout from the "no" camp which is how 10% of the electorate was able to bring their state to the edge of catastrophe.

Who Gets Tossed From the Lifeboat Says Everything

It has happened in the past. The lifeboat is overloaded. Somebody has to get thrown overboard lest the boat capsize and everybody die. In school we read a case from the early 1800s where the skipper stood trial for just this and lost - not because he threw someone over the side but because he didn't toss the black porter first. California isn't about to make the same mistake.

California is a fiscally overloaded lifeboat in danger of being swamped by far too much debt. The state budget process is such a political football that Governator Arnie can't get consensus on a deficit deal that would save the state. Stuck with a $21-billion shortfall, something obviously has to give. Teachers, firefighters, even cops - sure their ranks will be cut but wait, what about the black porter up in the bow? Doesn't he go first?

In this lifeboat, the black porter is California's poor and the state's needy students and they're headed straight for Davey Jones' locker. According to the LA Times, California is about to indulge in a bit of budgetary Darwinism:

To balance the books, Schwarzenegger is eyeing the dismantling of the state's CalWorks program, which serves more than 500,000 poor families with children, as well as the elimination of Healthy Families, which provides medical coverage to 928,000 children and teens. Mothballing the two programs would save the state about $1.4 billion in the coming fiscal year, officials said.

If the proposals to slash the safety net come to pass, they would completely reshape the state's social service network, transforming California from one of the country's most generous states to one of the most tightfisted in aiding the poor.

Also potentially on the chopping block is CalGrants, a financial assistance program that offers cash grants to lower- and middle-income college students each year. The governor's proposal would eliminate the 77,000 new grants awarded each year at a cost of $180 million, but that saving would eventually grow to more than $900 million as students graduated and the program was phased out.

In so many ways California seems awfully progressive but its willingness, in tough times, to turn on the weakest and most vulnerable, especially those kids, puts all that in a much less flattering perspective. Eliminating health care for a million poor kids? I guess in California, poor is the new black.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget22-2009may22,0,4603538.story

California's Fiscal Wildfire

California has four seasons - earthquakes, mudslides, droughts and wildfires and, right now, the state is facing a fiscal wildfire - a $21-billion deficit that state voters have rejected.

That leaves governor Schwarzenegger and his legislature to slash spending and the obvious targets are policing and education. Thousands of cops and teachers will be getting pink slips which, in reality, is only good news for criminals and truants.

California is beginning to become a bit like Waziristan - ungovernable. State budgets need a two-thirds vote to pass the legislature which is a formula for gridlock rather than compromise. If the legislature won't pass the budget, the governor's last resort is to call a 'special election' which is basically an invitation to voters to stop by and indicate if they want an increase in their tax bills. The 'nays' have a lot more incentive to show up at the polls. Only 19% turned out for yesterday's vote.

Faced with a deadlocked legislature, Arnie is going to have to start cutting. 5,000 state employees are going for starters. Funding to municipalities will be slashed meaning fewer firefighters and police officers. And tens of thousands of California teachers will likely be thrown out of work.

That's the sort of mischief that ten percent of the electorate can cause a government when direct democracy translates into mob rule under a dysfunctional legislature hatched by a deeply flawed constitution.

I wonder how long it will be before all the 'law and order' types who couldn't be bothered to vote yesterday start screaming about runaway crime on the streets?

Kalifornia Krunchtime

Even the Governator can't save California.

The world's seventh largest economy is teetering on the edge of financial collapse. It's the price to be paid for getting a little too carried away with illusions of democracy. California's constitution requires two-thirds majorities to pass budgets or to increase taxes. The natural result in a fiercely partisan legislature is gridlock with budgets not getting passes and taxes not raised to meet the state's basic needs.

Despite all their dire problems, Californians don't like turning out to vote. That leaves most elections decided by older, established white folks who (this is California after all) tend to be either far right or far left. That, in turn, translates into very little middle ground in the state's legislature or, put another way, a huge no-man's land between the trenches on either side.

And then there's the sorry business of binding referenda. It isn't hard to get a particular proposition on the ballot for the next election and the results are binding on the legislature. Dumb, dumb and dumber. It resulted in the controversial Proposition 8 that banned same-sex marriage in California. In Louisiana, a state known for its barrel-bottom educational standards, voters were given the opportunity to choose tax cuts or education funding. Guess which option won?

In other words, direct democracy in the form of binding plebiscites breeds dysfunction. California is facing real problems in the very near future. If it can't reform its governance, it's toast.

California - Running on Empty

The southwest has run dry. Years of drought and over-dependence on dwindling groundwater stocks has brought the Day of Reckoning to California and other states in that region.

Mother Nature played a dirty trick on us. When we came to settle the West (including our own Alberta and Saskatchewan), we thought that the rainfall patterns were normal. We grew our cities, states and provinces on that core assumption. We didn't know that the white man's arrival sort of coincided with what would be a century of unusually wet conditions. We didn't know that drought is normal in the West with mega-droughts of up to 60-years being the history of the region.

Then along comes global warming and the disruption of normal precipitation patterns. It's now become feast or famine - either too much rainfall causing floods and mudslides, or too little. California, America's market garden, has been especially hard hit. From Reuters:

Water raised leafy green Los Angeles from the desert and filled arid valleys with the nation's largest fruit and vegetable crop. Each time more water was needed, another megaproject was built, from dams of the major rivers to a canal stretching much of the length of the state.

But those methods are near their end. There is very little water left untapped and global warming, the gradual increase of temperature as carbon dioxide and other gases retain more of the sun's heat, has created new uncertainties.

Global warming pushes extremes. It prolongs drought while sometimes bringing deluges the parched earth cannot absorb. California Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow says two things keep him up at night: drought and flood.

University of Arkansas Ecological Engineeering professor Marty Matlock warns the essence of climate change is greater swings in precipitation -- and thus food production. At times of peak demand, prices can skyrocket, he said, as happened to food prices last year.

"There's no slack any more. The rope is tight, and if you give it a tug, it yanks on something," he said.

While farmers suffer, cities continue to grow. The sunny, warm American West remains a magnet.

"Add water and you have the instant good life," said James Powell, author of "Dead Pool," a book about global warming and water in the U.S. West.
"For the last few years, the driest states, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, have been the fastest growing. And you know that can't be sustained," he said.

California is looking at a basket of measures including conservation, groundwater rehabilitation, storm sewer water reclamation, new dams to catch torrential runoffs and desalination. California is actually luckier than many inland states but one thing is clear - its days of cheap water are just about over.

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE52900820090310?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0