Originally posted by @Steve K.:
Originally posted by @Andrew Smith:
Originally posted by @Ryan D.:
Ideas so good, they have to be mandatory ;)
There's a few of those like clean air acts, clean water acts, DUI laws, health and safety laws...... :)
I for one am thankful for catalytic converters being mandatory, as an example. Those old cars were nasty. Seatbelts too, that was a good idea. I think a lot of good ideas become mandatory, don't they?
Also solar doesn't have to be mandatory, it's already the fastest growing form of new energy, and the mandate doesn't start until next year.
Lead paint, asbestos... technically bans not mandates, but related in that govt. stepped in to protect the public from harmful building practices. Lead paint was a great paint, but it gives people brain damage. Asbestos was a great fire retardant, but causes lung cancer and mesothelioma.
Central power plants powered by fossil fuels or nuclear were the best way we had to power a lot of homes, so we built a lot of them and wired all our houses up to them. As it turns out, emissions from fossil fuel plants causes increased rates of lung cancer and shortens life expectancy. Nuclear is not a viable option because in 60 years of using it we still haven't solved the waste issue, plus govt. has to insure them since no private insurance company would be dumb enough to seeing how disasters are extremely expensive not to mention catastrophically costly in terms of human lives, so nuclear is dead. Fossil fuels get more expensive as they become more rare so the government has to spend more money subsidizing them to keep our economy afloat since we depend on them. Now we're retiring those old power plants, not building many new ones, and for lack of any better solutions to move on to, solar and wind are getting increased adoption.
Wind is already cheaper and solar is on track to be cheaper than legacy fuels in a few short years (even with legacy fuels keeping their subsidies while renewables lose theirs), so makes economic sense even health issues aside but especially considering those external issues among others. Market evolution. It's already happening, CA is just pushing the issue to speed things up further.
Builders will have to pivot just like when we had to stop using lead paint and asbestos, or car manufacturer's had to start putting catalytic converters and seat belts in every car, or any number of other examples of things the govt. forced us into that was for the public good. I'm sure there was pushback on all of those changes too, as they made things more expensive initially and people had to adjust. Yet in hindsight I hope we all agree society is better off thanks to those changes, and would have been better off had we made those adjustments sooner.
Sure, it's annoying to have to be forced into using solar. But I believe in 20 years we'll look back and ask ourselves, "Why didn't we make that switch sooner?" That's all CA is trying to do.