THE FEED
ANALYSIS BY WALTER RUSSELL MEAD & STAFF
May 13, 2014
Imagine if cumbersome regulations started preventing people from making wine in France or electronics in Japan. That’s what the drama surrounding Tesla’s “gigafactory” is like for California. Billionaire green inventor Elon Musk is holding a lottery to determine the location of his California-based electric-car company’s new lithium-ion battery plant, worth 6,500 jobs and $5 billion in investment. At the bottom of the list of possible hosts for the new plant is California itself. The timeframe for breaking ground on such a project in the Golden State, explained Musk, is simply unacceptable.
Not surprisingly, the other four states in the running are all red: Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and, of course, Texas…..
Savor the irony: California’s environmental review laws are so unwieldy and burdensome that a successful green company must take its business elsewhere. The lesson seems to be that if you come up with realistic, market-based solutions to environmental problems, stay away from California.
No doubt greens will continue to pillory red states for denying climate change and praise blue states for continuing the good fight against it. Yet it remains far from clear that the blue model is actually capable of creating the right conditions for a greener future.
ArchitectGuy on Israel 