Enlightened Self Interest

In what is part of a growing trend across Democratic America, California has once again decided to take advantage of its right to enact policy independent of that of the federal government. The matter at hand is emissions ceilings, specifically the fact that they are not low enough. The old arguments for both sides of the environmental debate were on display as California moved to cut its emission by 25% by 2020. But there was a very strong argument on the side of the environmentalists: the fact that California's water supply depends very much on the rate at which the state's mountain ice-packs vanish in this coming century. California is no stranger to environmental ills. Even the tribes who inhabited the Los Angeles area before the arrival of the missionaries had to deal with smog from their fires being trapped by the mountains which surround the area. So it is somewhat fitting then that California enact some of the most stringent emissions regulations in the nation. And as the old maxim states, "as California goes, so goes the nation." Well, perhaps that is not such an old saying. On the surface this seems ludicrous. California? California can seem so different from the rest of the nation that we forget that it's just ahead of the curve. Culturally this is immediately obvious if you think about it. Fast food, surfing, (and by extension board sports of all types) Hollywood, agribusiness, Disney, megachurches, several different types of music in poor taste, (sorry, but good music mostly comes from the Southeast) highways (actually we got these from Germany) sprawl, strip malls, and, of course, politics. It is that last one that I am concerned with. For the past few decades, California has indeed led the way. Think of Proposition 13, or Proposition 187. The modern conservative movement is based out of Orange County. (And you thought the worst thing they produced was extremely bad television!) The issues that matter in California become the issues that matter for the country in a few years time. That is why I am optimistic about recent trends in the Golden State. Although, to be honest, I think they should have kept Richard Nixon to themselves.