On Jan 18, 1:58*pm, John David Galt >
wrote:
> Jeff wrote:
> > Certainly, the price of buying houses in the Silicon Valley Area and
> > San Fransisco are amoungst the highest in the nation. But this has
> > very little to do with the environmental regulations. It has a lot
> > more to do with people love the climate and people like to work for a
> > lot of money in the electronics and biotech industries as well as at
> > some world-class universities.
>
> Bull. *There's still plenty of vacant land there; the only reason
> housing is expensive is that the eco-nut movement "protects" most of
> it in order to MAKE it expensive.

No, they preserve the land so that there will be nature there in the
future, like a national forest is preserved to keep the forest.

> > The cost of electricity in CA is less than the cost in New England
> > states.
>
> Both areas have adopted so much eco-nut regulation that it's next to
> impossible to build or expand power plants. *Thus it's a race to see
> which area will outgrow its installed capacity first. *Up to last
> year I would have bet on CA, but now that Schwarzenegger (a Democrat
> in sheep's clothing if there ever was one) has managed to ruin CA's
> economy even more than Gray Davis did, New England may get there first.

Certainly, with so many companies making do with the technology they
have, the economic slowdown has greatly affected many companies in the
Silicon Valley area, causing many lay-offs. The state universities
have limited the number of students in attendance and cut budgets,
which affects the communities in which the universities are based. The
economic problems have limited biotech R&D as well as biotech and
technology IPOs as well as start-ups. Clearly, these problems were not
caused by the gubinator.

> > I don't know how much of this has to do with environmental
> > regulations. Much of the cost might have to with the free market
> > system where utilities bought electricity from companies like Enron.
> > California now gets a lot of its electricity from burning natural gas.
>
> California has put off the problem for a few years by building wind
> power plants (and forcing utilities to subsidize them), but the sites
> where they'll work are pretty much exhausted (unlike New England, where
> I hear Ted Kennedy still prevents them being built where they would
> spoil the view from his beachfront house).

Not to mention by using other forms of solar energy (the winds are
created by energy from the sun).

> > However, I don't consider environmentalists nuts. Rather, they are
> > people who like the environment that we all share to survive. I don't
> > see what is so nutty about that.
>
> Two things are nutty about the environmental movement. *One is that it
> is based on assertions of emergencies that just don't exist (and the
> fact they don't exist is obvious to anyone who knows what he's talking
> about).

I have to disagree with you here. There are major environmental
problems, like the lowering of thee water tables and water shortages
in many parts of the world, including US West, global heating,
disappearing forests, decrease ocean pH (as result of CO2, which is an
acid) and a generally degraded environment.

> The other is that the movement explicitly rejects the only
> two mechanisms that could solve such a problem if it did exist -- the
> free market and new technology.

The free market system doesn't work properly unless the enviornmental
cost is included. I see what you mean. It is not like any
environmentalists are suggesting people use electric cars, hybrid
cars, solar power, wind power, nuclear power, power from waves,
improved computer efficiency, flourescent lights or anything like
that.

> You need to read the works of Julian Simon, especially "The Ultimate
> Resource 2".

Jeff