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["saundrakaerubel.com" <saundrakae AT saundrakaerubel.com>]

froM:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/opinion/gmsv/archive01/morn05302001.htm

Californians seem surprisingly slow to grasp why the rest
 of the United States doesn't like them very much. Here in
 Arizona, Californians are regarded as something akin to
 pests or vermin. No exaggeration! (Of course I do not
 subscribe to this personally. Some of my best friends live
 in California. The magazine for which I write has its
 editorial offices in California. Ahem.)


Here's the basic problem. The environmental movement is
 widely perceived to have its deepest, oldest roots in
 California, and is viewed with dismay by land owners in
 other states who fear copycat legislation -- which is
 quite a legitimate fear, bearing in mind that the Sierra
 Club tries actively to pass ballot initiatives in places
 such as Arizona, based on initiatives that already
 succeeded on the West Coast. People who live in areas of
 scenic beauty (unlike most Californians, who live in
 suburbs) have a much more rational attitude toward the
 wilderness. They argue that a few roads into wilderness
 areas -- which otherwise will benefit no one -- are an
 entirely appropriate means of allowing people to enjoy
 them. They are appalled bylaws that protect (for instance)
 prairie dogs -- those lovable little rodents who carry
 bubonic plague, which kills about four people per year in
 Arizona.


While promoting its heavy-handed and indiscriminate
 environmental policies,California has been smug about its
 wealth. That's a sure-fire way to get yourselves on
 everyone's s---list: Pass a bunch of onerous laws which
 a reliable to be imitated elsewhere, while flaunting your
 high standard of living and paying lip service to the free
 market!


Worse still, Californians are widely observed to drive
 their German-mad eautomobiles into neighboring states,
 where they build vacation homes in an attempt to escape
 from high prices, overpopulation, and, yes,
 excessive regulation. These California refugees have an
 unfortunate habit of demanding new laws that will create a
 higher financial burden on the locals, whose incomes are
 pitifully inadequate. Typically Californians want paved
 as opposed to dirt roads, better schools, sewer systems
 rather than septic tanks, and other public services which
 will raise property and state taxes -- ultimately
 recreating the same overtaxed environment that they
 supposedly were fleeing from.


There was a great deal of barely smothered mirth when
 California started  suffering power outages as a result of
 incompetent government andenvironmental regulations that
 had stopped power utilities from building new power
 stations. And now the state goes crying to the Federal
 Government, in a pathetic attempt by legislators to shift
 blame and salvage their future chances of re-election!
 Well, good luck!


As for turning Alaska into a new superfund site, I have two
 questions:


1. Did the Alaska pipeline, and Alaska drilling operations,
 ruin the portions of the state where oil exploration is
 currently allowed?


2. Even if an expansion of energy mining in Alaska does
 cause environmental damage (which I do not believe), who
 cares? Northern Alaska is not an environment that anyone
 shows much interest in visiting, other than an occasional
 photo team from National Geographic. If those Sierra
 Club romanticists really have an interest in "wilderness
 areas," why don't they spend more time in them? The fact
 is, Northern Alaska is remote,inconvenient, cold, and
 boring. It could disappear tomorrow, and virtually no one
 would notice. By all means let us preserve natural wonders
 such as The Grand Canyon; but if there's a wilderness area
 that no one visits, what use is it?


So, here's the take-home message from other states to
 California. If you want the comforts of civilization, pay
 the price. Don't pretend you can cause zero impact and then
 go crying to the Feds when your castle in the sand gets
 washed away by the cold water of basic economics!


I'll miss your columns. Have a good vacation. Just keep yer
 cotton-pickin' BMW out of Arizona! (Only kidding.)


--Charles Platt


My God, Charles...


I really wish you'd sent this to me earlier. I would have
 much preferred to have spent my day working at a response
 to your letter, rather than answering messages from a
 number irate readers who chose to demonstrate their
 typically "non-Californian" viewpoint with a well-crafted
 insult or two. I still shudder to think that someone out
 there believes me to be a "tree-hugger with my head stuck
 deep in that darkest valley of them all."


Were I not going on vacation tomorrow, you can be sure I
 would have taken issue with at least a few of the
 assertions you made below. Californians
 German-cars-driving vermin? One of the greatest sport
 fisheries in the world "remote, inconvenient, cold, and
 boring?" Clearly you must live somewhere in which the
 continual threat of bubonic plague ill-affects your
 thinking... Arizona perhaps.


I'll not debate California's lack of foresight in assessing
 energy issues. Clearly, CA and Governer Davis ARE at fault
 here. But the "unjustified profits" to which Davis often
 refers are unsettling and, I think, a decent reason for
 "the state to go crying to the Federal Government." I
 can't seem to find the statistic right now (it's somewhere
 in here though), but I'm certain that the mark-up on
 electricity being sold to CA is an extraordinary one. It's
 certainly true that in the spot market for electricity,
 supply and demand set the price, and that those who fail
 to properly assess their need for electricity should be
 punished to some extent for their folly. But these
 prices...What's been occurring recently really appears to
 be price gouging to me. And that's something that FERC
 could easily address.
   http://www.siliconvalley.com/hottopics/energy/archive.html


As for turning Alaska into a new superfund site, well...I
 suppose I was being somewhat inflammatory when I wrote
 that -- so your point is well taken. Still, there's no
 accounting for human fallibility and while Alaska drilling
 operations likely haven't yet ruined those portions of the
 state where oil exploration is currently allowed, there's
 nothing to say that they might not harm them at some
 unforeseen point in the future. Remember, Prince William
 Sound was once an uneventful body of water largely
 unaffected by the by-products of oil exploration...


I suppose, what bothers me the most about this whole
 debacle is that few of those involved seem willing to use
 this crisis as a jumping off point for an effort to
 investigate alternative sources of energy. Given recent
 events in the Middle East and California's woes, it seems
 to me it's about time we really started looking ahead to
 sources of power other than those housed within areas
 specifically designated as wildlife refuges.


But that's just me. A former New Yorker with a typically
 Californian view of things...



Saundra Kae Rubel
Web Law Manager
http://www.saundrakaerubel.com
(listed on the Wall Street Executive Library, CIO Career Sources and The 
Back Room)