BALANCING ENVIRONMENTALISM, PRAGMATISM
A strong case can be made that modern environmentalism was born in California. In 1864, Yosemite Valley and a nearby grove of sequoias became the nation’s first publicly protected wilderness area. Exactly 100 years later, after many other environmental landmarks, the state issued the world’s first tailpipe-emission standards. This history is and should be a source of immense pride. But sometimes that environmentalism must be tempered with a touch of pragmatism. This essentially is the argument that Gov. Gavin Newsom has made of late about opposition to desalination and nuclear power.
At a time when much of the rest of the state faces severe water conservation rules because of the latest drought, San Diego County has been exempted because of the exceptional wisdom shown by the county Water Authority in diversifying supplies — most notably by shepherding to construction the nation’s largest, most technologically advanced desalination plant. The $1 billion Carlsbad facility delivers enough fresh water for 400,000 people a day.
Now Poseidon Water, the same company that built the Carlsbad plant, is seeking final approval from the California Coastal Commission next week to build a $1.4 billion desalination facility with a similar capacity in Huntington Beach. The commission’s staff, echoing virtually every claim made by environmental groups, opposes the project because of its potential damage to marine life and wetlands and a list of other concerns. This incensed the governor, who told editorial writers from the Bay Area News Group that the state needs “more tools in the damn tool kit” to deal with the severe drought.
The governor also told the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board that he was encouraged by the Biden administration’s offer of financial support to help keep open two reactors at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant and is reconsidering his stance on plans to close the plant by 2025, a change that would anger environmentalists. The coastal facility in San Luis Obispo County provides 6 percent of state electricity and is one of the largest single sources of clean, reliable energy in the nation. The Diablo plant doesn’t have the severe safety issues that led to the closing of the San Onofre plant north of Oceanside a decade ago — and now Pacific Gas & Electric’s 2018 claim that it was shutting down Diablo because it would no longer need the reliable power it provided seems silly as California avoids summer blackouts in part by relying on fossil fuels.
Yes, desalination and nuclear power have downsides, which Newsom doesn’t deny. But they can also pragmatically help address the climate emergency’s life-changing effects and reduce its causes.