Chapter 1: Dealing with Real Problems in California

Dear Governor Brown:

I understand that you vetoed affordable housing funds in 2011, and that you are now making a proposal to implement climate change initiatives. I’ll make a simple argument: that where people live and how much it costs, is more important to Californians than the potential problems of climate change. I'll make a suggestion at the end.

 

Googling “California drought” and “climate change”, I find a number of stories that say that the drought is “worse” because of global warming. Okay, droughts occurred in the region before man invented the internal combustion engine.  How much worse is it?

NASA scientists issued a report stating that “One question that’s lingered as long as the drought itself is just how much, if any, of the drought is due to climate change. New research has an answer: up to 27 percent. It also has another important number: climate change has made the odds of severe droughts like this one twice as likely.”

Other scientists disagree.  “…Nate Mantua, a climate scientist at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center who has previously written about temperature variations in the region... was critical of the paper’s attribution aspect. He said that while it’s possible human-driven global warming could have played a role in the region, the study's modeling efforts didn't convincingly replicate certain patterns and that he felt more confident that natural circulation patterns played a more likely role in pushing temperatures up across the region since 1900.       ( http://www.climatecentral.org/)

Okay, here’s my point. There’s room for doubt about the effect of industrialized society on nature. Spending large sums of government money on a debatable issue is poor policy. (I understand that you, Governor Brown, called people "troglodytes" for being unconvinced about climate change. No offense taken, I've been called worse.)

However, there’s no doubt that working class people can’t afford reasonable living accommodations near where the jobs are.

The Los Angeles Times reports that “A minimum wage worker in California must toil about 130 hours a week in order to feasibly afford a two-bedroom rental, a new report found”.  (LAT March 11, 2013)

This map illustrates the hourly wage a person must earn to get an average apartment:

The map can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/01/minimum-wage-apartment-hourly-salary-housing-costs_n_7472472.html

In California, a person must earn an annual wage of $53,000 to afford an average two bedroom apartment. 

So, is this a problem? I think so. Don’t you? What do people do if they can’t find a place to live that they can afford? They go to a (distant) area where they can afford housing, and drive to the job they want.