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[–] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because Newsom is a traitor who is more concerned with protecting the profits of the utility monopolies. When will people realize that we cannot trust these Corporatist Democrats? They merely wear the disguise of leftism to trick you into voting for them. Still better than MAGA, but not by much

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    I think the issue of too much solar is real, but I don’t think the answer is to punish people willing to invest in better energy production.

    I also don’t think that it’s fair to charge people that don’t have solar more.

    Is the answer increased baseline/transmission costs? Or maybe energy generation isnt profitable and should be handled like roads?

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Why is too much solar real? I've never understood how too much consumer solar generation can be a bad thing for anyone or anything other than utility companies’ profits. The financial incentives that used to exist meant people generating more power than they needed could make a tidy profit by selling it back to the grid. I can see how that might have been unsustainable in the long term, but that’s irrelevant now that the subsidies have essentially been eliminated.

    I have absolutely no sympathy for utility companies, especially here in CA, since all the ones I can think of are felonious companies responsible for countless deaths due to their terrible wildfire mitigation strategies and lack of investment in sustainability.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Because the business model is designed around everyone paying the utility for consumption of energy when the should be paying for the availability of a service.

    When 50% of the people no longer pay, it’s not like the utility can deal with that. They still have poles to maintain and generation plants sized for peak load.

    To fix this we would need to pay a baseline service fee for the size of the panel. A home might have a 200 amp panel while a laundromat might have something much larger.

    Then, some nerds would need to figure out how to charge for consumption.

    But like I said, it’s not designed like this today. It’s designed around consumption only.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Because a solar home (without batteries) is producing excessive power during parts of the day, relying on the grid to accept it, while using power from the grid the rest of the day. While those times may balance, you’re still relying on that power grid for both. That’s hugely expensive infrastructure that you’re no longer paying for. If something happens to your solar, your home can still use grid power: that’s hugely expensive infrastructure for “just in case” that you’re no longer paying for

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    PG&E needs to be broken up and turned into small regional utilities owned by the communities they represent.

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  • 13 comments in c/climate@slrpnk.net view that post
    [–] 41 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Newsom is starting to look a whole fucking lot like controlled opposition, tbh. Theatrical (and sometimes, incidentally effective, but that doesn’t appear to be the root motivation) pushback on right wing stuff for the most part. And quiet acquiescence to a LOT of stuff that someone who actually gives a shit about lefty things would not tolerate.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    Newsom is starting to look a whole fucking lot like controlled opposition, tbh.

    Not from your country, but after watching one of his speeches and reading a few articles, you would have to be fuckin' braindead to not see this. It was obvious as fuck.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Trump took the Republican to the far, far right. The Democrats moved to take the place the Republicans left open. So now Newsom is no better than 2016 Republicans. Wonder that Trump now taking ttem even further this go around that Democrats haven't gone full nut Republican. Why do you think Democrats always trying to cort Republican voters then try win over the left.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Well I think they try courting the tight because they vote more consistently then the left. Not voting isn't a protest it just means nobody cares about your opinion, because politically you don't matter.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I can already hear the vote blue no matter who people in 2027/8 calling me a Russian shill for pointing out he abandoned trans people the second it became politically expedient 🫠 Or if I’m really lucky, arguing with me over how abandoning trans people is actually necessary or not happening or whatever else.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    That was definitely a red line for me, too. I gave him credit for being incredibly vocal about equal marriage in 2004, way ahead of other politicians, but something seems to have drastically changed and moved him to the right.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Or if I’m really lucky, arguing with me over how abandoning trans people is actually necessary or not happening or whatever else.

    The centrists are already deep in that territory. They've always wanted to trade sexual/gender minorities for more conservatives. Harris shitting the bed is just the convenient excuse.

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  • [–] 54 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Because Gavin Newsom is not on our side, he is a useful villain/punching bag for the right. That is his role, he pretends to be on our side so he can create the media moments for conservatives to clip when they dunk on him while he simultaneously fucks over Californians for power and profit. Gavin Newsom is perfectly groomed to be the most insufferable and ineffectual Californian liberal politician possible, that is the point.

    How well this works on liberals is terrifying but unsurprising.

    Gavin Newsom is NOT on our side, please get this through your head, he is your enemies best friend.

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  • [+] 26 points 1 year ago* (1 child)
  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    If Newsom was acting the part of the most "insufferable" California liberal possible, he wouldn't be attacking trans girls in sports, or jailing homeless people for being homeless, or crippling environmental regulations to build more subdivisions, to name just three of his shitty conservative policies.

    I disagree, I mean I agree that all of those things are shitty and that Gavin Newsom has done them but all I hear from liberals is "Oh look at Gavin Newsom standing up to Trump!". What I am saying is that by and large liberals are so unserious about their political beliefs that they will easily brush aside all of those clearly conservative things happening as lies told by leftists whining about wanting to instead try unrealistic idealistic solutions that will never work and thus liberals allow a figure like Gavin Newsom to be unironically conservative while retaining a voting liberal base loyally as the Bulwark Against Trump.

    I disagree because this is exactly what an insufferable liberal looks like they don't actually give a shit about policy or improving people's lives, they just like the aesthetics of these things without any substance.

    Liberals only care about trans people so far as it is a talking point to set up two sides to argue about politics on, as a demographic they accept wherever Conservatives set up the goal posts and dutifully take the opposing side as a way to virtue signal they are different without having to actually take a hard look at their lives.

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    [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    A series of policies that ranged from disincentivizing to straight-up penalizing homeowners who have embraced rooftop solar. “Everybody likes to talk about how Florida and Texas are out-competing California right now on renewable energy,” says Bernadette Del Chiaro, a VP at the Environmental Working Group. “And there is a whole lot of truth to it, because California is totally getting in its own way.”

    I mean, tap the breaks. Texas and Florida are also working to undermine rooftop solar.

    But the incentives for the rollout are often too strong. The Texas electric grid - loosely managed by ERCOT in order to maximize revenues for gas electric power utilities - have resulted in a blowback of routine brownouts and sky high seasonal bills. Florida's own utility mismanagement, worsened by sever weather and routine major flooding events, has resulted in a DIY home electricity approach.

    California's own degraded and dysfunctional state grids have produced the same perverse incentives, even as wind and solar farms flourish thanks to the sub-fossil fuel price for installation by the MWh. This is unfortunate because rooftop solar simply isn't as efficient as the industrial scale utility-level projects that power the grid as a whole. Rooftop solar is a backstop against price gouging and grid malfunction, but it isn't in any way cost-efficient relative to a public sector wholesale rate for electricity.

    Green Energy should be a windfall for electricity consumers, but it is turning into a price ceiling for greedy privatized utility companies, instead.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    same as the Oldsom

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