It’s no surprise that the New York Times, the progressive Pravda on the Hudson, ran a piece recently chastising the Trump administration for trying “to crush California’s environmental policies”. Just as predictably, the piece — except for a brief statement by the White House — never mentioned the associated costs that this green zealotry has placed on most Californians.

To be sure, California’s environmental policies are supported by the vast majority of Californians, as a recent Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) report suggests. When it comes to embracing clean air, water, more parks and action on climate change, the vast majority, including Republicans, are favorable.

But when it comes to actually paying the price for these policies, the PPIC study finds far less support. Almost three-quarters favor reducing environmental roadblocks that have been weaponized to stall development, including 80% of Democrats. Roughly half favor action to reduce greenhouse gases, but two-thirds, including a majority of Democrats, oppose Gavin Newsom’s 2035 ban on gas-powered cars. Crucially, roughly two-thirds also bewail the state’s high energy prices.

These seemingly paradoxical results illustrate the gap between support for environmental goals and willingness to bear their costs. Republicans try to draw attention to this disparity, but they are so underfunded, demoralized, and marginalized that their side has little impact on political debate.

Nevertheless, the link between ultra-green policies and economic pain is pretty clear. Since the early 2000s, governors and legislators from both parties have signed onto a climate agenda that has contributed to a rise in California’s gas prices to around $5.55-$5.59 per gallon, compared to a national average of about $4.02. The cost of electricity is among the highest in the continental US.

Gov. Newsom’s response has been to blame Big Oil for price gouging. But that’s a convenient excuse. The truth is that California’s high energy prices are better understood as a self-inflicted wound, traceable to the state’s quixotic green energy policies.

Energy analyst Robert Bryce notes that wherever governments have tried to base their energy supply on a swift shift to renewables — the UK, Germany, California — the result has been huge spikes in energy prices. Germany’s vaunted industrial economy has been devastated in large part because of the high cost of renewable energy.

These costs undermine California’s prosperity, while expanding the state’s already extreme divide between the haves and have-nots. The Air Resources Board’s most recent “scoping plan” — the state framework for achieving carbon neutrality — projects that the shift to renewable energy will result in significant income declines for households earning less than $100,000 annually, while boosting incomes for those above this threshold.

These high costs make it difficult for California to cash in on its still remarkable innovation economy. This is one reason expanding tech firms — many of them funders of green NGOs — have set up new facilities in Arizona or Texas rather than California. Electricity costs are a major factor in chip-manufacturing and high-intensity computing.

To assure its economic viability, California needs to stop genuflecting to the fantastical notion that wind and solar will soon produce oodles of cheap, “clean” energy. They can holler about the Trump administration’s “drill baby drill” approach, but in the real world — short of an unexpected boom in emissions-free nuclear power — most experts project continued dominance of fossil fuels well into the future and even in California.

It will be fascinating to see how the two Californian front-runners for the presidential nomination, Gov. Newsom and former vice president Kamala Harris, handle this record on the hustings. Newsom has shown some signs of flexibility when the policies seem to be courting disaster. He has even sought to keep oil refineries in the state from shutting down.

But the party’s dominant progressive faction continues to rule the roost in California. It is increasingly hostile to the energy-intensive industries that could power the state’s next economic boom, from data centers to AI, while remaining wedded to some of the country’s most ambitious climate policies. That creates a growing tension for Democrats: how long can they impose higher energy costs and tighter regulation while expecting the tech and business interests that have helped bankroll the party to keep footing the bill?

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Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, the University of Texas at Austin.

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