~30 miles to Lake Tahoe.
And according to https://www.reno.gov/home/showpublishedimage/4088/6351980817..., it's about two miles from the watershed that feeds it.
Even if the bureaucracy didn't exist and everyone voluntarily followed the regulations, you could not run a globally cost competitive business without some sort of subsidy when competing with places where rampant pollution is allowed.
It's a real problem without an obvious long term solution that I am aware of.
First: we may have gone too far toward anti-pollution. China has more naval vessels than the US. Everything changes when peace isn't a foregone conclusion, as it has been for the past 30? 50? years.
Second: it's not the regulations per se, but the difficulty of dealing with the bureaucracy, particularly (a) long delays and (b) uncertainty.
I run an electrical contractor, so this is not the least bit theoretical to me. The hassle of dealing with local government and PG&E for what should be routine things adds tremendous cost to doing business. Recent concrete example: it cost over $1,000 and two months to process a minor change to an electrical permit set, in Alameda (City). The actual change was moving some panels outside, a small revision to a plan that had already been checked and permitted. This required $1,400 in engineering fees, plus a ~$200 application fee to the City, and then the actual plan check and review charge of $650-700. It was probably one hour of actual work. The worst part was that Alameda outsources its plan check to a third party and I'm pretty sure the plans sat for two weeks on someone's desk at the City, before I asked for status, and then, an hour later, by "complete coincidence", it was sent to the outsourced plan checker.
If we could put a precise price on pollution, it would be a different story. It's a collateral damage of all the (even well-intentioned, good) regulation that drives business away.
I keep hearing this, but it never happens. Despite attempts to get jurisdictions to race to the bottom, businesses simply follow the money/markets: I can bet you a hefty sum that Alameda will never go without electrical contractors.
You *really* don't understand the issue then because no one is saying that there will be 0 electrical contractors.
Electrical contractors will continue to exist because demand will continue to exist, but the wait time to get the work done will increase due to not enough electrical contractors.
Or the work will be left undone because the owner doesn't have enough money to pay the few electrical contractors that remain.
Or the work will occur but will avoid all regulations because the cost of complying relative to the odds of being caught don't justify paying it.
The tension you may be blind to, is that society wants to maximize safety in an area - and any work done should be in service to that goal, and not an end unto itself. We shouldn't blindly maximize for work done in an area, we have to make sure the result is safe: this introduces rules and regulations, and the time and monetary costs tag along.
No two people will agree where the balance is, but generally there's regional culture. Hell, Texas allows home-owners to do their own electrical work - does that "drive business away" since some people won't pay for small DIY fixes in TX? I can't say I've ever heard that argued, but I hear it deployed a lot in response to regulations.
Half my house was built less-than-safely by the previous owner because getting the permits for the structures would be too expensive, time-consuming, and maybe not even possible.
The increased costs (time and money) of permits really changes the risk-reward.
... what?
There is a large opportunity to simplify and rationalize the regulations. This would dramatically reduce the cost of both bureaucracy and compliance. In addition to massively reduced cost, it would enable people in CA to do more cool stuff faster!
But simplification, rationalization, and acceleration is not in the interest of the bureaucracy or the incumbents... so we are very unlikely to see change until there is an existential crisis.
China's system is authoritarian state-capitalism. It is precisely the bureaucracy that steered it's industries toward this outcome.
that is literally nonsense .. lazy nonsense, ill-willed nonsense.. Ignorant nonsense.
literally four seconds to search " history of us environmental law"
This is the biggest lie we are told, and the most heinous. The only thing that will fix it is when people like you (and me!) stop purchasing things which were made in those regulatory environments. If you continue to purchase them under the premise that "I have no choice, I have to participate in this fallen world," so does the state of California. Banning these activities when there are alternative regulatory environments just pushes the problem to someone else.
A great example of this is the Obama-era fuel efficiency laws. No one actually wanted a more efficient truck, so to get around the laws, the manufacturers just made larger trucks, which caused more problems than they solved.
Outlawing something, then doing nothing to stop demand for that thing, that's just irresponsible.
Maybe by then we'll have returned to building products which last (although I'm not holding my breath).
We need to push these people out of California.
These banned industrial processes sum to making almost every physical object. The net effect is that it’s nearly illegal to make anything physical. Do you think that the state or country will do well in the long term if it’s basically illegal to actually make things?
Also funny that you Musk derangement people will never actually engage with the content of the quote’s message, preferring to dismiss it based on your political disagreement with the person who said it.
I see no reason to engage in any way with the mental flatulations of this virulently racist Epstein fanboy. The quicker his empire can be dismantled and the sooner he gets utterly shunned from polite society, the better off we’ll all be. To a lesser degree, the same goes for his eager and willing co-conspirators.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/12/elon-musk...
As for California, as a resident, I’ll take environment over industry, thanks. Half my home neighborhood is already a Superfund site. Go fuck up Texas if you like.
Maybe the regulations for new car factories are good, maybe they are bad, maybe Musk was exaggerating or making things up whole cloth, but the veracity of these things is mostly unrelated to Musk's views on race.
>Go fuck up Texas if you like.
Indeed, Texas is taking a net inflow of builders and entrepreneurs, California has a net outflow. The state is booming and the future is being built in Texas. The most advanced rocket in the world, something that puts governments to shame, is being built there. Massive semiconductor manufacturing plants, electric cars, financial companies, tons of new housing (look at Austin, 25% price reduction because of new supply in recent years), all happening there.
But I really do think that your train of thought is sort of misanthropic. Anti-progress, anti-science, and just generally being "anti-building" does not play out well in the long term. I supposed it's a lesson that generations have to re-learn.
And doubling down on puerile trigger words like “derangement” does absolutely nothing aside from reflecting poorly on the author. It’s a strange sentiment to preserve in the Internet amber, I must say.
> These banned industrial processes sum to making almost every physical object
The processes are obviously not banned, only an idiot would think that. You just can't do the process and dump all the pollutants into the nearby river.