back
121 comments
I live in Berkeley, it’s a nice place, great food, a lot of people who care about their neighborhoods.

But I hate that the elected officials here feel the need to get involved in issues beyond their scope.

Last week I was emailed by the city schools that they want to take the lead on… slavery reparations. What? Leave aside if reparations is right or not right, why the heck does the schoolboard think solving this problem is part of their job? It’s like deciding the school district will do ABI. It looks like resume building to me.

I live in a similarly “highly active” citizen government area, and the parking committee will issue proclamations on support for international wars. It’s just government nerds with too much money and time trying to play Model UN. I would say it’s harmless except there is always some hundred million dollar bond they are proposing.
In my opinion that attitude permeates the whole of society, nowhere is the inherent irony of the moniker "liberal" being applied to aspiring dictators as apparent as it is in Berkeley.
"Aspiring dictators in Berkeley"

What permeates society is chronic histrionics.

It's an extended form of virtue signaling.
I feel like that is only natural after a prolonged inaction by the elected official upper in the hierarchy. Climate change is only a world ending type of emergency, we are already at 1.2 degrees and are heading towards 3-4, a lot of people are already dying and the death count will grow exponentially every decade as inaction continues.

Perhaps your elected officials are simply desperate. And given the severity of the situation, I wish more elected officials were many times more desperate than Berkeley’s.

Maybe they're arrogant, they're so convinced that they're at the center of the universe that they forget that they preside over a town of 100k in a world where billions of people are coming out of poverty and wanting increased standards of life. Above everything they're so arrogant that they failed as politicians: they misjudged how much clout they have in their own town of 100k.
Except that banning natural gas makes things worse, not better.

At least for now, while natural gas is still being burned to make electricity.

If they actually cared about climate change they would focus on production. For example nuclear power.

Correct.

Further, any place that jumps on the Green New Deal (or equiv) bandwagon will out complete the brave defenders of the status quo.

As Ben Shapiro likes to say: Mother Nature doesn't care about your feelings.

I live in another Bay Area city that recently imposed a ban on natural gas for all new construction, whether residential or commercial. In addition, the ban forces existing homeowners to install all electric appliances if the cumulative cost of remodels in a 3-year window is over $250,000.

I find this idea absolutely bonkers when our electric infrastructure is terrible. The aerial power lines are subject to trees or large branches falling over and causing large power outages. Just this winter we had 4 major power outages, lasting from few hours to multiple days. Not only my city, the whole Silicon Valley had no power! The place supposedly having the brightest minds, trillion dollar companies, and the most advanced technology in the world! Not only we didn't have electricity, we had no Internet and cellular phones either. Absolutely insane!

Yeah, I do have solar power and battery backup, but during the winter relying on them does not always work. Luckily I had enough solar and battery generated electricity to power my natural gas furnace so I can have my house heated. The fan on the furnace uses 700W when pushing air, far less than electric heaters that would kill my Tesla batteries in a few short hours.

Why would anyone rely on a single source of energy, especially one that's so unreliable? Until we fix the electric grid, we shouldn't force everybody to switch to it.

Partner and I are getting rid of our gas stove this year for induction. We're already running on induction on a small burner for most daily cooking, but when we do a large meal or cook for guests we need several burners. But my partner is from a culture that does Wok cooking and I'm from a culture that loves cooking different breads on grills. Our solution has been to use an Iwatani butane burner. It's already more efficient than the terrible stove that came with our house and it's small enough that I prefer grilling breads on it.

Bonus: we got hit by a 24 hour power outage in one of the storms and cooked solely using the Iwatani burner.

> It's already more efficient than the terrible stove.

How are you calculating that? I highly doubt the total net environmental impact of butane canisters (including shipping and packaging) is lower than piped gas.

A new option is an induction stove with its own battery. It can run a fridge too. Basically a power wall appliance, with a stove on top.

"Induction stoves with batteries built in, and why they matter. A conversation with Sam Calisch of Channing Street Copper Company and Wyatt Merrill of DOE." [Dec 2022] https://www.volts.wtf/p/induction-stoves-with-batteries-buil...

These types of appliances will quickly become the norm.

Buy a gasoline or diesel generator and get a transfer switch installed.

California's banning fuel powered generators in 2028 so do it while you can.

Or... Leave California?

I'm honestly not trying to be a jerk, but it's really hard for me to understand why anyone would want to live like that.

The government there is just so... intrusive.

I lived in SoCal for six years in the 90s and absolutely loved it.

But now? I've lived all over the country, and experienced a lot of different state governments and local cultures.

I just don't think I could tolerate living in a state with that much regulation.

Does it ever bother you?

Solar panels and a big battery would be a better choice.
To be fair, the gas infrastructure is dated and aging up against its lifespan.
Yeah, I have a $20 camp stove and $2 butane cans. And a bbq. And a stick stove if it comes to that. If one is worried about reliability, self-sufficiency is the way.

My biggest worry isn’t cooking, it’s refrigeration.

Let’s say you have a 5BR house … it has been 2-3 years since I surveyed the options but at the time, tankless water heaters that were electric maxed out at something like 6gpm ?

As opposed to a fairly standard 12gpm for a gas unit.

So … you’d have to either take a major step backwards and use a tank heater… or … maybe duplex two units in parallel…

FWIW, I looked into this because I wanted to use an electric option but it’s just not practical.

Heat pump water heaters are what you're looking for. They're still tanked so don't need as much instantaneous power to heat a large body of water which also makes them amenable to batteries as a backup. As a bonus, in California water heaters are often installed in garages for townhomes and detached houses and the heat pump will end up cooling the surrounding space which tends to be a benefit during the summers and isn't a big problem through our generally mild winters.
If we can't reliably deliver electricity why should I trust the ability to reliably deliver electricity _and_ natural gas? Many gas appliances still require electricity to operate anyway.
“it’s disappointing the Ninth Circuit held that Berkeley, like many other cities around the country, cannot take common-sense measures to protect its constituents from climate change.”

I'm all for getting rid of nat gas heating, and I wouldn't install it in a new home, but that doesn't mean that I believe that I would be protected from climate change because of it.

I mean, not to a meaningful degree, but it seems like reducing the use of natural gas is a reasonable thing to seek to do.
Yeah it’s really sad. Treating your constituents like idiots is supposed to be something the other side does.
> I'm all for getting rid of nat gas heating, and I wouldn't install it in a new home...

Does that also apply if your new house is in Alaska?

Good news. Electricity is several times more expensive than gas per unit of energy in CA, and I generally find electrical appliances to be inferior at the present. The ban was just too soon.
Heat pumps are a lot better than they used to be, and in mild climates they can attain insane effective efficiency ratings... several times more efficient than gas furnaces per unit of energy.

I do like cooking with a flame though, even though it's terrible for indoor air quality.

My total energy bill decreased after I installed a heat pump, even though the season was colder (based in degreee days). Electricity may be several times more expensive than gas, but heat pumps are several times more efficient, especially in mild climates like Berkeley
> Electricity is several times more expensive than gas per unit of energy in CA

Fossil fuel usage is vastly more expensive when the externalities are accounted for. This is like saying it's more financially responsible to just put everything on credit cards and ignore the ever-growing balance statements.

As a $European, I can only be jealous. We were importing our natural gas from Russia. Fortunately it was a mild winter, so people got away with lots of extra layers and blankets.

The word "renewable" gets thrown around a lot to the point where you forget what it means. But it means a resource that you can renew: It doesn't run out, you don't need to depend on others, and best of all it doesn't need to be bought from a crazed homicidal neighboring nation.

Compared to the last few years, it was not a mild winter. Colder than usual even (I mean I had to wear a coat in early December, when I was in t-shirts around Christmas in 2018, 2019 and 2020, and it's still cold in mid-April) but we haven't had a polar vortex that would have put significant stress on the grid
It is unfortunate that the people of Berkeley keep electing local officials who want to grandstand instead of spending their time more wisely governing the city.

There are certainly lots of right-now problems to solve in Berkeley, including at the operations of the City of Berkeley, and yet council can find time for a foreign policy agenda, a climate change agenda, a human rights agenda, etc.

Heavy handed interventions from upper courts, like this one, only make itbmore likely that localities will fracture and separatism will take root. The central government should be making it easier for municipalities and states to set their own policy, not harder. Otherwise the political future of an already divided country is a dark one.
This is an extremely salient point that only the libertarians and anarchists understand and practice.
Every watt that is on used to heat makes more carbon in Berkeley today than it does to heat with a gas of some kind. I do, however, agree that new builds should be all electric, with the exception of commercial spaces.
That's not true. Heat pumps are efficient enough that isn't the case.
I think the key to managing statist left wing busybody governments is distraction. We need to get more stupid things on their radar, since they've already tackled the scourges of plastic straws, big sodas, and food deserts.

How about a fourth kind of garbage bin? Maybe a purple one for waste that has bad vibes. Bad vibes are the third leading cause of harshed mellows in the US.

I don't know if this is a good legal decision, but it's certainly a good practical decision. California's forced electrification is a disaster in the making.
How so?

Particularly since we’ve been in a climate emergency for a few years now. In fact I think Berkeley was one of the first cities to declare one. How is electrifying households a disaster but emitting more green house gasses isn’t?

Well of course the largest fossil fuel exporter on the planet is not going to tolerate some local community instituting a ban on fossil fuel use, why should anyone be surprised?

The way things are shaping up, it's going to be the countries who have to import all their fossil fuels who will be the most interested in developing renewable energy as a replacement for fossil fuels.

It's not exactly rocket science, is it?

They should have thrown some financial incentives to the developers instead of trying to institute a ban like crazy people who want to control others. A lot of bay area developers already don't want to deal with venting so you don't get a proper range vent and in unit dryers are often of the (more efficient) condensing variety, I could totally see developers foregoing gas hookups if the city threw them something to encourage heat pumps.
> Well of course the largest fossil fuel exporter on the planet is not going to tolerate...

Kind of. It was the California Restaurant Association that brought the case.

Even if big oil captured the judiciary, why would they care what Berkeley does when Europe generates more than enough demand for American natural gas exports?