I often get questions from others as to why I seem negative on California. I’m not. I have lived here for nearly a dozen years, and have loved living in many areas throughout the southland. I believe strongly in the positives of the state. I have had opportunities to leave and not taken them.
However, focusing our entire energy on the positives means that we cane easily forget what we need to improve. A great leader has the ability to both celebrate the successes while not forgetting the risks and failures. One of the great potentials of this state is its ability to adapt; and many long-time readers know that I follow alternative energy very closely. In particular, I love the ideas of small-scale energy production. Not only because of personal independence, which I greatly favor, but mostly because so much waste and risk is created in large-scale generation and transmission. Distributed energy grids mean that local generation can be more adaptive and reduce the possibility of large-scale outages (like during the California “brown-outs”) and grid cyber-attacks.
I see hope in California through emerging technologies. Technologies that answer the problems of today. If you haven’t yet heard of the “bloom box”, I recommend the below video.
Long-term California is a great place to be. We only need to fix what is wrong with our present problems, and everyone can share in the prosperity together.
By staying current on emerging trends, you might also be able to increase your investments. I know that my personal accounts more than doubled last year (2009) due to some timely purchases of energy-related investments. Let’s all hope more come from our state.
I enjoy your blog and agree that California is a great place — I was born here. We had a discussion at work (yes I have a job!) about the bloom box. Small neighborhood networks of these units would be great. 1/2 the energy in conventional centralized powerplants is lost in the distrubution.
The greater problem about living in populated areas of California are well know to readers here. Its hard to imagine making any changes in the housing infrastructure with entitled government, realtors, lenders, and homeowners associations.
I think you need to look elsewhere (at least in rural California) for the experimental results that would encourage a change in the way we do things.
You might look toward the rural studio http://www.cadc.auburn.edu/soa.....al-studio/
for a direction out of our current mess. We should be looking for a way to save and build for cash. Eliminate all the middlemen who make housing so expensive.
California has nice geography and some brain centers of info tech and biotech, but our politicians are doing everything in their power to drive businesses out of state.
I think we’ve hit the tipping point where any incremental taxes will drive more businesses out of state so they actually decrease revenues.
On the bright side, we’re definitely Too Big to Fail. Bailout, please, Barry O!