The New York Times has something of an obsession with the supposed link between the alleged surge in bad weather and rising insurance costs that obscures their vision of more obvious things. And so in “Climate Forward” David Gelles warned that “Just months after fires devastated parts of Los Angeles, one of the leading home insurers in California, State Farm, is temporarily raising rates 17 percent…. It is also just the latest example of the indirect but increasingly costly ways that climate change is affecting the American economy.” But they can’t blame climate change for the astounding news that, in the wake of the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles county and city in January, in Pacific Palisades and Altadena as of the morning of May 12, “the county has issued... seven building permits.” An estimated 12,000 properties were destroyed or damaged, and it’s giving permission to people to repair their own stuff at the rate of barely two a month Competence? We don’t have no stinking competence.

There’s a lot of other news out of California that points in the same direction, as did our video on the LA fires released just as the last blazes were finally being suppressed, namely that the cause of the devastation was public-sector ineptitude. That ineptitude didn’t cause the fires, at least not entirely, as Los Angeles is built on grasslands that have always burned, often spectacularly. But left-wing politicians and bureaucrats did fail to foresee such fires, even while blaring that climate change was making them more common and more severe, then failed to prepare for them, and now can’t even let people rebuild.

What’s particularly striking here is that it’s not a case of bureaucratic sabotage of an agenda not shared by those inside. Those in the public sector in Los Angeles and California more generally do want LA to rebuild, not least to avoid a backlash against progressive policies and politics including from high-profile liberal celebrities.

The problem goes beyond wildfires. Indeed California governor Gavin Newsom, thought to harbor presidential ambitions, is suddenly trying to get cities and counties to ban homeless encampments and crack down on Medicaid payments to illegal immigrants that were dramatically increased by… um… California governor Gavin Newsom. And whatever one thinks of his positions on those issues, when it comes to climate, he’s doing the hotfoot dance in a revealing way.

As Jessica Karl jeered on Bloomberg, Californians actually might be looking at $8 per gallon gas. Which would be expensive even by Canadian standards. Currently it seems to be around $5 per gallon which is around $1.30 per gallon more than is typical in the U.S. and is above what Canadians are paying, even in our version of California, British Columbia, even after suspension of the vitally important but unnecessary consumer carbon tax. And

In her colourful phrase:

“No way am I filling a 14-gallon tank with a week’s worth of Erewhon smoothie money.”

Huh? you may say. And if so we confess that we too apparently do not get out enough. But according to the interwebs, Erewhon is no longer just a satirical novel by Samuel Butler in which all normal social conventions are inverted so that, for instance, crime is considered an illness and illness a crime.

Instead satire has become reality and Erewhon is a California lifestyle company (no, really: “We believe that nutrition is the key to a radiant lifestyle”) that sells things like the “Organic Peanut Butter Protein Smoothie” or “Bohemian Raspberry Smoothie”, both $14, or the “Magic Mind Productivity Shot” for a bargain-basement $4.99 for two full ounces of “12 Magical Ingredients” including, we venture to suggest, gullibility. But we digress.

As Karl said, Newsom knows he’s in trouble:

“Despite calling the fossil fuel industry the ‘polluted heart of this climate crisis’ a mere year ago, he’s ordering officials to work with oil refiners to ‘ensure that Californians continue to have access to a safe, affordable and reliable supply of transportation fuels.’”

Interesting that he shares the obnoxious Canadian progressive habit of saying “continue” to describe not things he’s actually doing and has been but things he would have no idea how to do even if he tried. Which brings us to the nub of the gist.

Like many others who blithely promised a green energy transition that would be painless, nay pleasurable, with everyone getting clean, green, fulfilling lucrative work in a pastoral setting, Newsom is discovering that his policies are creating a disaster. Now he wants to keep the policies but lose the disaster, and has no idea how to do it, and doesn’t even know he doesn’t.

Among other things, a flurry of bills in the California legislature aimed to increase the number of firepersons and to improve their pay. Alas, the San Bernardino Sun reports:

“as officials brace for tough financial times ahead, the harsh realities of a cash-strapped state could make it harder to bolster the firefighter workforce and increase pay, both of which come with price tags. On Wednesday, May 14, Gov. Gavin Newsom released his revised budget proposal, which showed a $12 billion shortfall for the 2025-26 fiscal year.”

Newsom being, of course, the kind of politician who spent as if there were no tomorrow and then it came. As he also charged ahead with all kinds of virtue-signaling policies, generally with a very nasty snarl for anyone who tried to object, that overlooked the obvious role of incentives in human affairs.

There’s a certain Schadenfreude in reading the AP story on his homeless initiative saying:

“Critics say punitive bans make it even harder for homeless people to find stable housing and employment.”

And when critics say, it’s almost as conclusive as when experts do. But the irony is that, of course, Newsom himself was one of those “critics”, even after gaining power in a very progressive state where the legislature was aligned with his vision, implemented it, and had fiscal and social disaster result as actual critics predicted. As he was, and is, on this green energy thing that must continue while coming to a stop, and apparently can’t do either.