Gov. Jerry Brown is on a political roll. He won re-election and passage of an historic $7.5 billion water bond that contains funding for the first surface water storage projects in 50 years.

But that hasn’t deterred the Little Hoover Commission, an independent state oversight agency, from sending a letter to Brown asking: “In enacting the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard in 2011: how much is it going to cost”?  California’s Renewable Energy Portfolio mandates that one-third of all retail electricity sales must come from renewable energy by 2020.

The apparent answer to this question is that nobody knows for sure because there is no comprehensive state energy plan in place, even though California touts itself as the world leader in renewable energy and energy efficiency.

The Commission was blunt:

“The Commission’s 2012 review focused on ensuring that California succeeds in transforming its electricity system while simultaneously implementing greenhouse gas emission reduction goals and water quality policies that affect electricity. In enacting its ambitious renewable energy goal, California lawmakers neglected to ask how much will it cost? An essential component of implementing the renewable portfolio standard is a firm commitment to fiscally responsible stewardship. 

“Thus, in its 2012 report, the Commission requested that the administration examine how much, in the aggregate, will recent major policy changes related to energy affect electricity reliability and rates, and are these policies achieving California’s stated energy goals? We are deeply concerned that insufficient attention has been paid to this issue. Despite the Commission’s request in 2012 and in subsequent inquiries, Californians still lack the measuring tools to evaluate the full costs of implementing the renewable portfolio standard simultaneously with other major energy policy goals. Given the positive record of California relating to affordable electricity through energy efficiency, we are disappointed that the cost side of the equation has received inadequate or incomplete attention.”

Higher rates

The commission found, “California residential electricity bills were nearly 20 percent lower than the average U.S. electricity bill,” but the state has higher-than-average electricity rates.  But according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, low electricity bills are a fluke mainly due to California’s moderate climate, not its energy policies. Most of the state avoids the harsh winters of the U.S. Northeast and the hot, humid summers of the South.

The U.S. Energy Information Agency reports California residential electricity rates are 35 percent higher than the U.S. average. Even worse, commercial and industrial power rates are 60 to 85 percent higher than the national average.

              California Electricity Prices October 2014 – U.S. Energy Information Agency

California, a basin state, can tout that it has reduced carbon dioxide (C02) emissions by 30.9 million tons, or 8.2 percent, since 2000.

But Texas, a plains state that relies less on renewable energy than California, reduced its C02 levels by 64.8 million tons, or 9.0 percent over the same time.

According to the American Lung Association’s list, California has nine of the worst 25 cities for air pollution in the U.S.: Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Visalia, Fresno, Sacramento, El Centro, San Diego, Hanford and Merced.  Texas has no cities on the list.

Why? The answer is topographical. Most Californians live in nine topographic basins along the coastline that serve as traps for smog in an inversion layer. Texas is a Plains State with no smog traps and high humidity along the Gulf of Mexico.

Where’s the social dividend from renewable energy? 

The concerns about California’s renewable energy standards go beyond cost, however.  An issue not raised by Little Hoover is: Where is the social and environmental dividend from the high costs of renewable energy?

Texas relies on imported dirty coal for 35 percent of its electricity generation, while generating only 0.1 percent of its power from hydroelectricity and 6.7 percent from renewable energy. By comparison, California depends on 0.6 percent of its electric generation from coal-fired power plants, 11.0 percent from hydropower, and 20.8 percent from renewable energy. Yet Texas has reduced C02 more than California, while California has no health gains to show for it (see table below).

The Little Hoover Commission is requesting greater accountability and transparency about the costs of California’s renewable energy portfolio.  Perhaps the commission should extend this effort to the expected social dividends from green power as well?

So far, voters have not punished elected officials for this lack of accountability. Until the politicians are made to pay at the ballot box for high power rates, they can continue to ignore the concerns over accountability.

Can California’s zero-sum water wars only be resolved by a system of stern water conservation?  That’s what California U.S. Senator at large Barbara Boxer left as an unanswered question at a March 20 Palm Springs water symposium on the theme “Running Dry.” Video here.

Boxer quoted President Obama from his February visit to drought-plagued California. He said Americans should stop thinking of water as a “zero-sum” game.

A zero-sum game is one in which there’s only one winner, and everybody else loses. By contrast, a “win-win” game is one in which, potentially, everybody could win.

Boxer said we’re going to have to think about a different kind of game.  The only other game Boxer talked about is where everyone sacrifices by conserving even where it may be unnecessary.

In her speech, Boxer praised the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California for spending $3 billion in groundwater storage and recycling projects since 2009.  According to Boxer, MWD serves 5 million more people with the same amount of imported water.

But this doesn’t answer the question of whether conservation can equip California, especially state farmers, for severe droughts, and can grow local economies. California has had mostly voluntary water conservation policies of curtailing water usage by 20 percent.

However, some local governments have taken conservation further by policing and fining those who water lawns on certain days or hours of the day.

And Gov. Jerry Brown’s emergency drought legislation proposes to use state law enforcement powers for the first time ever in California to crack down on those farmers who overdraft local groundwater basins. Until now, self-policing, adjudication and local regulation have worked.

Yet farmers are also the rechargers of groundwater basins, not mere scofflaws.

Enforced conservation

Should Boxer and Obama’s call for enforced water conservation be implemented, ironically it would be her neighbors in Northern California — she hails from Marin County — that would suffer the most. They mostly have not even had to install water meters.  Now, the City of Sacramento is already in the process of installing 110,000 water meters by 2025.

Many Northern Californians oppose the $11.1 billion water bond on the November ballot, Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to construct twin water tunnels in the Delta, and even the Bay Delta Conservation Plan.  But even if Northern Californians could stop such projects, they could end up the biggest losers anyway under a strict water conservation regime that forces them to give up their local water resources by forced abstinence.

Palm Springs oasis made from dams and water transfers 

Palm Springs is a paradoxical setting for the drought symposium promoting more water conservation.  It gets just 5 inches of rainfall a year on average and depends on groundwater for 30 percent of its needs in an average year and 60 percent in a dry year.

Its famed golf courses mainly depend on groundwater, not expensive imported water.  The local groundwater basin had 1,312,440 acre-feet of water storage as of 2012, but was in overdraft of 3,400 acre-feet for 2013 and 2014 due to decreased state water allocations.

Palm Springs gets the remainder of its water in a roundabout manner from the State Water Project.

Instead of having to build a pipeline from the state-owned Perris Dam in Riverside County, Palm Springs exchanges its state water allocation with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.  So MWD gets Palm Springs’ state allocation of Northern California water. In turn, MWD provides an equal amount of water to Palm Springs through its nearby Colorado River Aqueduct.

The water transfer of state water for Colorado River water avoids having to build a 35-mile pipeline between Lake Perris and Palm Springs. (See the circled areas in the nearby map.)

However, Palm Springs paid the standard cost of $159.88 per acre-foot of water for 2013 from the State Water Project even though it gets Colorado River water.  Colorado River water has a high concentration of calcium carbonate requiring additional treatment.

Palm Springs is an example of how building dams, reservoirs and aqueducts; and making water transfers, not water conservation, have brought about economic growth in Coachella Valley. Bringing imported water to Palm Springs has allowed the development of a large retirement economy from people all over the United States and Canada. Many other cities in the Coachella Valley have struggled because they have no local economic base.

In accordance with state policies, Coachella Valley has enacted a 20 percent per year voluntary water conservation target.

Waterless Water Conservation Bonds 

After spending almost $24 billion on water conservation projects and programs since 2000, California’s water system only has about six months of real water storage. That large amount of money could instead have built the proposed $24 billion Delta twin tunnels to assure water supplies for farmers and cities south of the Delta.

Water conservation is the only policy option in a drought when there is thin water storage.  Otherwise, massive funding of water conservation projects in California has failed to prepare it for a prolonged and deep drought.

This is an election year, so not much likely will get done. Even the $11.1 billion water bond, mentioned above, likely will be delayed again by the Legislature because of almost certain voter disapproval. It already was pushed off the 2010 and 2012 ballots.

But 2015 will determine if California is going to abandon the water conservation policies it put into place after voters rejected the proposed Peripheral Canal in 1982. The canal was pushed by Brown during his second term as governor. The new Delta tunnels, assuming he wins re-election November, would be pushed during his fourth term.

Since 1982, California’s population has increased by 15 million, to 38 million. That’s a 65 percent boost. Eventually, the state’s drip-drip inadequate increase in water will have to be solved. Residents will have to decide whether to use Boxer’s mandated conservation — or an expanded system of reservoirs and canals combined with more voluntary conservation.

And no, it’s not a car.

Liberty is something we often hear about, but isn’t exactly a topic of discussion at dinner parties. If we don’t really know what liberty is, how will we know when it is taken away, or if it is being taken away? Unfortunately, it often takes tyranny to make liberty more precious.

The purpose of liberty is to allow human life to flourish. Are we flourishing in California and the rest of America in 2013? What will liberty look like in 2014?

Are Americans prepared to fight for liberty?

Government serves the people

John Locke, a 17th century English philosopher and physician, regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers, said government is morally obliged to serve people, namely by protecting life, liberty, and property. He explained the principle of checks and balances to limit government power. He favored representative government and a rule of law. He denounced tyranny. Locke insisted that when government violates individual rights, people may legitimately rebel.

Locke said the only legitimate governments are those that have the consent of the people. Therefore, any government that rules without the consent of the people can, in theory, be overthrown.

These views were most fully developed in Locke’s famous “Second Treatise Concerning Civil Government.”

Locke said that if, either through an abuse of power or an impermissible change, these governing bodies cease to represent the people and instead represent either themselves or some foreign power, the people may–and indeed should–rebel against their government and replace it with one that will remember its trust.

“All men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man,” said Locke.

What Locke identified are the three but interconnected keystones of a society of free men: Liberty, Rule of Law, and Legislative Power by consent of the governed.

The people work for the government

Americans are burdened by a labyrinth of government policies, procedures, rules and regulations. Our federal government, once limited to basic core functions, now dominates virtually every area of American life. States, local governments and municipalities, and private businesses are increasingly overwhelmed by federal programs and influence. And as government expands its influence, our liberties recede.

The Left has been engaged in a century-long attack on the first principles of America, the Constitution, and the culture that supports liberty and freedom. However, the Left, steeped in ideology and control, always eventually oversteps, and has done so once again.  The recklessness of government, and the arrogance of officials, appear to have finally awakened a sleeping giant, in a nation that has been too long asleep. Many Americans have been jolted awake and are beginning to recognize the imperative to save our Republic.

Compared to the Founding era, more and more power is now being centralized in the national government. Today, for example, many policies that affect local public schools are made in Washington. As creeping centralization slowly overcomes the Constitution’s federal design, the national government has begun to restrict the freedom of religion that is an indispensable element of the American founding.

The Constitution, the supreme law of the United States, is under assault. First Amendment speech rights are being challenged by Congress. Some members of Congress want to limit the definition of the press to only those who work for large, established news outlets. They want alternative media and bloggers quieted.  Yet the First Amendment is very clear: Congress cannot interfere with an individual’s religion or speech. It cannot restrict a citizen’s communication with others to form community by worship, publishing, gathering together or petitioning the government.

President Obama and the Constitution

In 2013, President Barack Obama targeted Second Amendment gun ownership rights, and tried to impose sweeping federal gun control legislation. It failed, but he and the Left have made it very clear, they will attempt this again. Yet the Second Amendment guarantees the right of citizens to keep their own weapons.

One of the most egregious centralizations of power in U.S. history was ushered with President Obama’s health care overhaul in 2010. The law dictates what patients must buy, what insurance companies must offer, orders employers to provide health care coverage for employees, and and what the insurance must cover. Obamacare offers no way out, and no choice. This is a staggering loss of liberty.

Religious freedom under assault

“Religious freedom requires that the government does not interfere with religious faith and the charitable works it inspires,” the Heritage Foundation explained. “If a government is truly limited, friction with religious institutions and individuals will be rare. Of course, occasionally, tensions between faith and state may arise even under a limited government. The Founders counted on these tensions to keep the state in check.”

While we still have religious freedoms in America, the Left continually wages attacks on religion, and specifically Christianity. And they do it legislatively.

Attacks on the Boy Scouts of America are based on the Scouts’ inclusion of religion in their scouting practices and oath.

Public schools across the country are no longer allowing school facilities to be used by groups with religious affiliation.

Catholics have come under assault for standing their ground on the Obamacare contraception mandate. Religious employers are going to be forced into providing contraception, abortions, and sterilization procedures to their employees.

A judge recently ruled that a bakery owner violated the law when he refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.

As government grows, liberty decreases

It was Thomas Jefferson who warned, “The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground.”

Jefferson also had plenty to say on liberty: “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

What will you do to save and restore liberty in 2014?