Finest City Bureaucrats and Activists Play Stupid Games [Resend]
And it's the Taxpayers who win Stupid Prizes
[The last copy of this piece was sent out behind the paywall as Substack unfortunately automatically marks posts by default as paywalled, nothing so far here at GLF is intended to be paywalled]
GLF has written several pieces about the “version 2.0” of the Climate Action Plan (CAP) adopted last year by the City of San Diego starting with the piece “America’s Finest Magical Thinking” which covered most of the document. Our eyes have not recovered since then from so much rolling.
The single most popular piece on the site so far has been “The Racism of Natural Gas Bans” which centers on the city’s uber fast and nearly impossible to achieve ban on effectively all natural gas appliances - based on, guess what?
GLC poked at the Climate Action Plan in several other pieces too.
The increasing unreliablility of the electrical grid especially in California was covered several times with one piece being “The Fatal Trifecta: The Achilles' Heel to much of the San Diego Climate Action Plan.” The fantasies demanded by the Climate Action Plan are dependent on unreliable, weather-dependent renewables as opposed to cleaner burning hydrocarbons such as natural gas and nuclear.
Among others, “Cracked Pipes” and “The Golden State's Progressive Pig Iron Power” mention the Plan extensively as well.
We hope much of the content on this one city’s climate politics provides a cautionary tale as to why competent, preferably energy and reality literate people should be voted and appointed to positions of power. While San Diego has not declined as heavily as other West Coast cities, it’s sadly on that projectory. (To get a start on how to push back on a larger level, see here.)
Anyways, next layer of nonsense is about to hit the city, and the taxpayers will be fronted the bill. Now (as predicted) the City is finding itself in a lawsuit over the Climate Action Plan. The reason? As typical with the elite woke progressive nonsense that’s slowly taken over the region: it’s not enough. Or part of it at least is not.
The local journalism outlet Voice of San Diego reports the details of the likely upcoming lawsuit.
For a bit of background since this page is read by people all over the world - the City of San Diego has a General Plan for growing and developing the city which is split into several areas. Each area is required to come up with a Community Plan which highlights the growth and development goals for that particular area. As part of the new Climate Action Plan, each areas has to revise their Community Plan to ensure it works towards meeting those goals.
The first Community Plan to be submitted to the City and approved was that of Mira Mesa. It’s one of the areas known not only for its car-centric development, lower transit penetration, low residental density (eg. mostly single family housing), and massive commuter draw. The commercial property in the area is largely massive office parks. Qualcomm’s HQ is located in the area as are many biotech firms, and even small Google and Apple Campuses. Mira Mesa’s presence inland has not stopped the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation, who appear to be mostly an activist law firm, from stating their intent to sue the city over the latest Mira Mesa Community Plan under the assertion that their plan does not do enough to shift commuters and residents out of cars and onto transit, walking, or cycling.
Considering that approximately 90 percent of the community’s commuters use personal automobiles according to the Voice of San Diego article, the unrealistic tasks of the Climate Action Plan are next to impossible for that area without some serious sticks, and not the kind to beat people with (although the state has plenty of wannabe authoriarians) but the magic wand variety.
Things could have gone very differently for the city had the people who created this plan actually been trained in something resembling reality. If both the elite managerial bureaucratic class and their enablers were required to have some skin in the game, things would go differently as well.
Twitter user DriveBikeWalk below provides further analysis what led to the City being so open to this particular lawsuit.
As for another - likely upcoming example - of potential litigation may be from other transportation activists. This individual is a “journalist” for the San Diego area NPR affiliate already likely laying the ground for a potential lawsuit because the city is realizing it’s not practical or cost-effective to install Class IV bikeways (which are not bike lanes per. CA law) in most locations. Bowen is either being obtuse or fails to understand there is not only noticeable backlash among the majority of the population for removing general-use travel lanes (or parking) to build these Class IV Bikeways (incorrectly called “protected bike lanes”) but they are also less safe for the intended user (most bike activist groups try to hide this fact) and they’re a means to provide more of the people’s money to unaccountable bureaucracies and a handful of parasitic consulting firms.
I lived in SD until 2011- man how this city has fallen. It is just sad.
Working in Sorrento Valley, I went to lunch in Mira (aka “Manila”) Mesa almost every day. It is a concrete jungle there- definitely not a costal paradise...
If Tofu House is still there that is the best bibimbap I have ever had- and I have been to Korea a bunch!