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Climate change is often misunderstood as a package deal: If global warming is “real,” both sides of the debate seem to assume, the climate lobby’s policy agenda follows inexorably.

Global warming is not even the obvious top environmental threat. Dirty water, dirty air and insect-borne diseases are a far greater problem today for most people world-wide. Habitat loss and human predation are a far greater problem for most animals. Elephants won’t make it to see a warmer climate. Ask them how they would prefer to spend $1 trillion—subsidizing high-speed trains or a human-free park the size of Montana. 

Climate policy advocates’ apocalyptic vision demands serious analysis, and mushy thinking undermines their case. If carbon emissions pose the greatest threat to humanity, it follows that the costs of nuclear power—waste disposal and the occasional meltdown—might be bearable. It follows that the costs of genetically modified foods and modern pesticides, which can feed us with less land and lower carbon emissions, might be bearable. It follows that if the future of civilization is really at stake, adaptation or geo-engineering should not be unmentionable. And it follows that symbolic, ineffective, political grab-bag policies should be intolerable.

Pricey rents in California’s hottest housing markets – San Francisco and Silicon Valley – are continuing to soar, and new data out this month suggests rising costs in major metropolitan areas are driving people out to search for cheaper living elsewhere. The real estate firm Yardi Matrix analyzed trends across California, and found rents are rising faster in Sacramento and the Central Valley than any other part of the state.

In many corners of Southern California, home prices have hit record highs. And they keep going up. In Los Angeles County, the median price in June jumped 7.4% from a year earlier to $569,000, surpassing the previous record set in May. In Orange County, the median was up 6.1% from 2016 and tied a record reached the previous month at $695,000. Across the six-county region, the median price — the point where half the homes sold for more and half for less — rose 7.5% from a year earlier and is now just 1% off of its all-time high of $505,000 reached in 2007, according to a report out Tuesday from CoreLogic.

State and local governments collected an average of $1,070 per person from individual income taxes, but the collection amount varies widely from state to state. New York collected $2,699 per person, the most of any state. Connecticut comes in second at $2,162, with Maryland rounding out the top three at $2,097 collected per person. Arizona collected $515 per person, the least among states with broad-based taxes on wage income. Other states with relatively low collections include Mississippi ($557), Louisiana ($592), and New Mexico ($622). New Hampshire and Tennessee, which tax only interest and dividend income, collected $70 and $37 per person respectively. The seven states that don’t collect individual income taxes predictably reported $0 in per person collections.

Anderson-Williams raised her kids in nearby Burlingame, but last year she had a falling out with her landlord and couldn’t find anyone willing to take a Section 8 voucher. So now she lives in an RV. Her adult son, Malik, lives in the one next door, and her two daughters are living with their godparents in Burlingame until they finish school. In San Francisco and Oakland, tents are a symbol of the homeless problem. But in the Peninsula and South Bay, from Palo Alto to Mountain View to Gilroy, RVs have become that symbol.

While Germany has succeeded in increasing the share of wind and solar in German electricity production to over 30 percent, the average German household spent 50 percent more on electricity in 2016 than 2007. German firms open new manufacturing facilities not in Germany, but in Slovakia and other countries with much cheaper electricity. Even with all this, German carbon dioxide emissions grew in 2015 and 2016, while those in the U.S. fell by an average of two percent per year.

Its critics say that Proposition 13, which restricts taxes to 1 percent of property values and caps increases in those values at 2 percent a year, has starved schools and local governments of vital revenue. However, the latest data on homes, farms and commercial and industrial property, compiled by county property assessors, tell a much different story. Assessors completed their 2017-18 rolls of taxable property this month and are reporting about a 5 percent statewide gain to approximately $5.75 trillion – yes, that’s trillion with a “t” – in taxable value. That huge figure will translate into at least $65 billion in property taxes, including levies to repay bonds, which are exempt from the 1 percent limit. . . .The most eye-popping number, however, is the immense growth in property tax revenue – well over 50 percent during the last decade alone and about 1,000 percent since 1978, when Proposition 13 was overwhelmingly passed by voters. The Legislature’s budget analyst, Mac Taylor, points out that “the property tax has grown faster than the economy” since then.

The stepped-in increase will raise rates by 9.25 percent now and then by another 9 percent in July 2018, which comes out to an increase of around $4.34 per month for the average household this summer and $4.64 monthly when the second raise takes place next July, according to EBMUD measures. EBMUD has said it needs more funds to replace aging infrastructure and other maintenance — and says around 10 percent of the money will go toward filling a projected $30 million gap created when customers conserved water during the drought.

The state is responsible for a tiny fraction of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, meaning its only hope of influencing global warming is modeling policies that can be embraced elsewhere, including in more conservative states. Cap and trade, a system that requires companies to buy permits to release greenhouse gases, is seen as a more business-friendly alternative to other methods that would dictate how polluters such as refineries reduce their emissions. “Being able to show that [emissions] reductions can happen, that the economy can continue to thrive with this ambitious climate commitment, that’s going to be critical for this model being replicated around the world,” said Erica Morehouse, a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, a national environmental group that quickly backed Brown’s plan.

University of California President Janet Napolitano has been under siege since March 2016, when state Auditor Elaine Howle released a report that showed that the UC system wasn’t honoring the principle that California students come first. Howle documented how, over the course of nearly a decade, budget-strapped UC had chosen to increase out-of-state students who pay far higher tuition by more than 400 percent – and that some were admitted ahead of nearly 4,300 California students “whose academic scores met or exceeded all of the median scores of nonresidents whom the university admitted to the campus of their choice.” At least initially, Napolitano and some regents dismissed the criticism before finally giving in and capping nonresident admissions last week. But the Golden State’s other giant higher education system – California State University – got the message loud and clear: In-state students must be the highest priority. Last week, CSU formally guaranteed that a qualified California high school graduate will be offered admission to at least one of CSU’s 23 campuses.

All California’s agencies conduct important work that protects and provides for the public, and all are held accountable to the people by conducting the SRIA. Cal/OSHA’s process is not different and does not warrant a special exemption. SB 772 excuses Cal/OSHA from this important analysis, allowing regulations having a significant impact on the economy to avoid the close scrutiny that would reveal their true costs and any unintended consequences.

The bill’s proponents suggest that the cost and benefit analysis of a regulation is completely satisfied by the debate in the Legislature, advisory meetings, and the public notice and comment process required by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). This is not true – The regular rulemaking process does not adequately address economic impacts and alternative policy approaches.

Borrowing to make the extra payment would not reduce the state’s overall debt, obviously. Brown contends that it would save money in the long run, because the interest paid on the loan would be less than the projected growth of pension debt.

It’s quite similar to the “pension obligation bonds” that local governments have floated, hoping to come out ahead via arbitrage, but they have sometimes backfired, and Brown is betting $6 billion that CalPERS can achieve its 7 percent annual earnings goal despite what the governor describes as “poor investment returns.” Even if this fiscal gimmick works as hoped, the state’s retirement debt will continue to grow.

The state’s regular payments to CalPERS fall way short of what would be needed to keep the debt from growing, much less pay it down. Overall, CalPERS has less than two-thirds of the money it needs to cover all pension commitments.

Governor Jerry Brown and the California Legislature have approved a scheme under which a special state fund filled with citizen-paid fees will lend money to the state General Fund, which in turn will contribute the proceeds to a state pension fund that in turn will invest in stocks in the hope of generating profits to help reduce pension deficits. In doing so, Brown and legislature haven’t disclosed to citizens that the same profits, if earned, could’ve been used for more citizen services. . . . Though Jerry Brown has not used his recent two terms in office to address core fiscal issues, until now he has generally avoided budgetary gimmicks. This time is different.

One of California’s wealthiest counties may continue to get a pass under the state’s affordable housing laws. Lawmakers are considering a measure that would allow parts of Marin County to limit growth more tightly than other regions of California. The provision, inserted last week into a bill connected to the state budget, lets Marin County’s largest cities and unincorporated areas maintain extra restrictions on how many homes developers can build. . . . Since the changes are tied to last week’s passage of the state budget, which Brown has yet to sign, the measure does not have to go through the regular committee process. It’s had just one public hearing and lawmakers could vote on the bill as early as Thursday. . . . Today, the county’s per capita income of $60,236 is the highest of any county in the state, according to U.S. census figures. But the average renter in Marin County makes just $19.21 an hour and would need to work 77 hours a week to afford a studio apartment at the $1,915-a-month market rate, according to data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

California energy regulators say the state could benefit from sharing more electricity with its neighbors during heat waves such as this week’s, but a proposal to do so has stalled after the election of President Trump. . . . “We will reduce costs for everybody. We will reduce pollution. We will improve system reliability, and these are all reasons to do this,” says Cavanagh. Last August, Gov. Jerry Brown wrote to leadership in the Legislature that he would look to pass a proposal earlier this year. “I have directed my staff, the Energy Commission, the Public Utilities Commission and the California Air Resources Board to continue working with the Legislature,” Brown wrote. “The goal is to develop a strong proposal that the Legislature can consider in January.” That still hasn’t happened, although the governor has maintained he still supports regionalization.