Yes. In Silicon Valley, if you go to Bedwell Bayfront Park, which is behind Meta/Facebook HQ, there is, on the bay side, a small sewerage treatment plant. There's a fenced concrete-lined pond, usually empty. That is a sewerage overflow containment pond. It's next to a hiking trail, so it's easily visible to the public. That whole park, by the way, is a recycled garbage dump. So is the bay side park behind Google HQ.

Wastewater plants have other ponds and tanks which are part of the process, and they're usually full, with liquid moving in and out, accompanied by stirring, air, and chemical injection. A big empty one is a backup system.

Real engineering.[1]

[1] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-09/documents/la...

> BTW this likely means quite a bit of land used up by such a reservoir which is ideally never needed, but must be present

This is enough to earn chemical plants a spot on a future "BANNED in California 2" article, because it's "clearly" overregulation.

So you’re saying drilling destroyed crude oil’s natural habitat?

To me this "drilling is good for the environment narrative" sounded a bit misleading.

And not far down the rabbit whole one finds: The author of the study often cited by oil companies for above narrative, felt impelled to publish a clarifying statement: https://luyendyk.faculty.geol.ucsb.edu/Seeps%20pubs/Luyendyk...

Maybe stricter guidelines against operational "routine" spills led to a reduction of the sticky spots, plausible?

Wtf I love Exxon now.

I remember swimming in Santa Barbara growing up (well closer to the Ventura side really) and having to dodge oil on the sand and water.

How did the wildlife adapt to that? There must be some cool species there

There is still tons of tar on beaches in Santa Barbara county, mostly all from natural seeps.

Natural seepage is still just as big of an issue now as it was back then in those areas, including Santa Barbara.

To this day if you walk on the beach your soles or the soles of your shoes will get sticky tar spots. You need baby oil wipes to clean them up before entering your home.

And some of it, if not most of it is not natural seepage but early environmental catastrophes in the 50s and 60s, particularly around Summerland.

(Source ex-resident)

yeah same for the Gulf Coast, oil just seeps right out of the ground at some beaches or at some times. There's plenty of man-made pollution to go around though.

That's certainly one interpretation. Most of the workers there keep doing what they do to protect the environment though, so it's entirely plausible that they are taking precautions to save the environment, but find the method in which the regulations are implemented to be slow or arcane. If it's anything like cybersecurity in the government, the laborious process of filling out irrelevant paperwork is orthogonal to actually accomplishing the initial goals.

...because dumping stuff into the middle of what is already a barren wasteland isn't actually a problem.

Yeah I think there are two problems

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.

Yeah, everyone wants faster bureaucracy until they see the cost estimate for proper staffing, then just pretending there wasn't any harm to regulate in the first place becomes the preferred option.

I think that one solution might be making it much easier to sue companies for their externalities and then loosen the regulation. IMHO, all that regulation is necessary primarily because methods of controlling the corpos and the rich have broken down.

> China has reduced its pollution massively since the 90s while aggressively expanding its industrial output. And they have done it without excessive bureaucracy

China's system is authoritarian state-capitalism. It is precisely the bureaucracy that steered it's industries toward this outcome.

Don't forget Insurance companies! They define and enforce a lot of the requirements too, it's also why all the new parks look the same.

It really helps when the government can just disappear someone when they don't play along with government edicts.

> In the US environmental laws are not about the environment at all.

that is literally nonsense .. lazy nonsense, ill-willed nonsense.. Ignorant nonsense.

literally four seconds to search " history of us environmental law"

I want a more efficient truck!

I don't think that will work. There's simply no viable path towards that much coordination; especially when late stage capitalism ensures that most people are living too hand to mouth to be able to worry about stuff like the environment.

By “these people” do you mean the people who actually make things?

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.

Yeah. It's especially relevant for the author's focus on shipbuilding. The old shipyard at Hunter's Point in San Francisco is horribly polluted, and they've been working to decontaminate it for more than three decades in order to reclaim the land for other uses (in particular, housing). Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island also have a lot of pollution from the former naval base there. There is a cost to overregulation, and there is a cost to underregulation.

And OK, sure, there's a lot of industry that ought to happen somewhere. Someone has to build ships and electronics and whatever, and if California's code is too strict then it just becomes NIMBYism. But if some company moves their gigafactory to Reno for easier permitting, I don't whether (or more likely by how much) CA is too strict, or NV is too lax. And I know that CA has NIMBYish and overregulatory tendencies, but given the clear bullshit on this website, I'm not inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt either.

I'm especially doubtful when it says "THE classic example of what you can't do in CA" is auto paint shops ("Impossible"!) ... but then the detail it gives is that they're "effectively impossible" to permit in the Bay Area AQMD, that being only one of the state's 35 AQMDs (albeit one of the larger ones).

That's the first thing that came to mind when I saw this website. The Bay Area is famous for its numerous superfund sites (among many other things, thankfully).

Non sequitur. Superfund sites come from poor industrial process byproduct controls. They can still happen from highly regulated industries that are approved.

Posting a list of them as a justification for red tape that blocks industries does not make sense.

Trust me I know. If you've ever talked to any of them they absolutely whine about California if you let them.

There is also a good framework of shadow organizations that will take cash and some of your problems away.

Now the regulatory industry is fighting to destroy productive society in the pursuit of profit. The value-added is fairly stagnant, but the costs have been growing dramatically.

That's a good story to consider.

Given the labor challenges in California due to high housing costs, which selectively pushes out those willing to work for lower wages, I am always surprised when manufacturers choose the state at all. Throwing additional challenges doesn't make it any easier.

I was advocating specifically against mincing words so that appropriate remedies can be pursued. "Unbanning" coal isn't going to make coal appear again!

If there's a specific regulation on one aspect of a factory, as you describe, then "unbanning" the factory isn't going to help either, one must specifically unban that which was banned.

Mincing words would be saying "Factories doing X are banned" when in fact an existing Factory doing X with negative externality Y had negative externality Y priced or regulated.

That's exactly what we shouldn't be mincing, if we want to address the problems and make better decisions.

The site is wrong though. I believe it's more of a it's hard and I shouldn't have to do it. I found a company called statevolt (founded August 2021) that plans to build a lithium ion cell factory the Imperial Valley (Southern California). I did see a press release saying it is delayed, but the company maintains that it plans on building it. On the banned website, it's claimed lithium battery cells are impossible to manufacture in California. That doesn't appear to be factual. With no references, it's just a California bashing site based on easily disproven falsehoods.

I wouldn't expect it to be impossible, and it isn't, but I would expect the permits to be different than they were 60 years ago. You can still build a house today, but that doesn't mean you can build one using the same permits you received in 1965. This is true for everything.

You kind of do need to vote Red - or, more precisely, make Red competitive again. Because Californians don't vote Red often enough, most of the candidates in the Republican Party in California are completely unserious. This has allowed the more impractical progressive side of the Democratic Party to increasing set the direction of the Democratic Party in California, to the detriment of governance for everyone.

Personally I hope that the two Republican candidates in California both win the jungle primary - maybe that will lead to some soul searching on how bad the Democratic politicians have become in the state.

I think it could be better run for sure. We need to look at things other states seem to do well (Utah - homelessness, Texas - K12) and push to improve.

The problem for me is that when you go out in the rest of the country the dislike bordering on hate for California is really common. It is insane to me that you can send Marines to Los Angeles and almost no one cares. California is a such a huge chunk of the US economy, not just tech but agriculture, trade and yes even manufacturing.

The partisanship is poison for everyone and it holds back reform in California. We're all the same country.

I think a nuclear plant in Manhattan would cost far more than just building the plant in outer NY, and then running a big power line in to Manhattan. Sure, the power line would take up space, but so would the nuclear plant's cooling system.

Just Devil's Advocate..

but why is this a problem?

There are other states without the regulations that these businesses apparently find offensive. Why can't the manufacturing be spun up in those states?

Serious question.

What's so bad about negative externalities? Instead of thinking about that think of the profits (for me)!

/s

> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer

We cannot. We are richer because we don't do it. We export it to areas so poor they view the environmental impact as a fair trade-off for being able to eat.

USA is already effectively priced out of manufacturing due to high labor costs. Doing things with the "correct choices" simply makes the impossible even more so.

The trade-off to safety and caring about people and the environment is very often cost. Caring about the environment is not a binary concept, it is a matter of where your break-even point is between caring about the environment and absorbing higher costs.

You can also use pigouvian taxation to make polluting expensive. Cost savings is generally the motivation for allowing negative externalities like pollution, so a natural way to reverse it in many cases while allowing flexibility when there is no practical alternative.

"So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment?"

- I don't need a car, I'll use public transport. - I will only buy and eat the amount of calories I actually burn. - This 10 year old phone actually works pretty well. I don't need a new one.

etc

You need new factories because you want more stuff. If you stop wanting more stuff, you don't need more factories, and therefore nobody needs to cry about his industry being "banned".

I have visited the US a hell lot of times. I swear, I never ever in all these visits in any part of the US had the following thought in my head: "Boy, these people really need more car factories!".

> I believe in procedural symmetry: if you ACTUALLY care about people and the environment, then you wouldn't let other poorer do these thing

America barely cares about the domestic poor[1] - do you think its captains of industry will care about the poor abroad? Charity begins at home.

1. See locations of Superfund sites. Or for a modern example, where they are choosing to build AI datacenters powered by on-site diesel generators or gas turbines.

> But people don't actually care about the environment. They care about looking like they care about the environment, and sending industrial processes somewhere else. There is a difference.

The idea that people setting pollution rules secretly don't care is silly.

California can't fix the whole world's problems.

> So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products

No, California can't do that. States cannot impose tariffs per the Constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S10-C2-1...

They could push for more regulations at the federal level (and indeed, Californians do this quite often!)

The person you are replying to mentioned their personal experience. Have you seen this work in person? It might help to talk about those facts.

Also: I suggest rethinking your opening line. It's not very endearing.

> But people don't actually care about the environment.

They probably do if it's near their backyard

FWIW, California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe. CA can't tell other states to ban various manufacturing techniques.

> You CAN actually do these processes, and still keep the environment clean.

Yes exactly. And most of the complaints in this post is not stuff that's outright banned but stuff that's "hard to do".

These companies are complaining about how much more it costs to do this AND keep the environment clean. In an ideal world we would just have environmental protections all over the world so these companies don't simply find some small town with a local gov't they can buy off and do whatever they want

You keep saying reduce regulation and then bring up things like adding permitting and taxing certain processes which is regulation.

The other thing you're not understanding is how the state can enforce regulations and how the federal government has to. States cannot levy tariffs.

> The USA being richer, can afford to do it right and safer, not through regulation, but through process.

If you don't have regulation, for profit industry won't do it right “through process”, because that would be throwig away money. Regulation is how you do it right through process.

> So what would you do if you ACTUALLY cared about the people and environment? Put high tariffs on dangerous process products, reduce regulation (permits, etc), increase standardization and final safety measurements. Then the products we use, we make, safely.

Standardization and final safety measurements are literally regulations (and permitting is just a means of enforcing standardization.) So, basically, you “cut regulations” plan is actually to pair regulations doing exactly what the regulations you claim to cut do, call them a different thing, and add tariffs on top.

Which, is a long winded way of just saying “add tariffs”, which of course, a US state can’t do.

A lot of people are poor. The cheap Chinese shit keeps them alive and relatively happy.

In your proposal you'd also cede the global market to China- because nobody in Angola cares about how those solar panels were made.

I’m sure it’s possible to do both in theory but I find it hard to believe that it’s possible in practice.

If it was California wouldn’t be covered in superfund sites that originated from industrial activities that took place decades ago.

Housing and medicine is largely a political decision with little relation to environmental concerns. The political party that favours deregulation is the same one that wants to keep private health care.

Food is slightly different, judging by the rates of obesity people can afford more than they need.

It’s an inconvenient truth that the better off don’t want to face up to. Your environmental impact is going to be correlated to your consumption. More spending == more damage.

Something to bear in mind when you are being told environmental damage is being caused by the poor or some foreign country.

Yes, I fully agree.

And that choice is basically the exact opposite of what western civilization is heading for, and thanks to the AI boom, it has never been worse at any time in human history, I guess. Which means you are likely surrounded by people who want the opposite of what you want. That will be problematic.

However, this really only would be the proper answer if given by a majority as a community. In a crowd of people who want more, more, more more MORE, you will just drown and die.

But in principle you are right:

No, you do not really need to re-industrialize your country. Instead think about how endless growth in a reality of finite resources is going to play out. California is just fine as it is. Let's think about where Californians will get drinking water from in the near future, instead of thinking about building water-consuming factories.

All true. But these are done in areas where the required resources are available.

A hell lot of industries, including most the original author is mentioning, simply would not work in California. California is running out of drinking water for humans. You can de-regulate all that you want, even cancel all environmental laws, but that will not change the reality: You don't have water. Want to build a water-consuming factory? Great, but please go to somewhere where water is available.

Yes, bureaucracy can be annoying, and of course California has a hell lot of "let's not fix the actual problem, but make it mandatory to put up a sign about it" regulations that for someone from the outside (like me) look silly. If the state of California knows this substance REALLY is harmful, why... is it here?! Either it's not really harmful, but if it is... what? A sign is the solution?! ;)

So I understand people complaining about environmental regulations in California. We had the same in Europe for decades. Everybody was complaining and making fun about all the EU regulations. Then the UK left via Brexit. And learned a lesson. And today nobody is joking about EU regulations anymore.

Anyway: One may call it "banned", or "expensive" or whatever. But it really is "does it really make sense to put this here?".

Well than it’s good that none of this is literally forbidden despite the dramatics.

Then author just wanted to be over dramatic about how it’s not cost competitive to build in the Bay Area vs places like Reno where the land is cheaper and labor is less. Their scape goat or whipping boy is regulations but that’s highly myopic at best.

I'm not judging here. From my experiences in California I would say that the general mindset and cultural approach to life is comparable to that of south-western Europe.

In part that's simply because while looking different, the general environment is fostering respecting nature, giving room for arts and creative and having an open mind.

(This example of course is coming from a past world where you could safely travel to/from the US, say, 10 years ago:)

Travelling from say Portugal to Miami ) would give you a massive culture shock. Portugal to San Diego? Not so much.

) Yes, Portugal to Key West would have worked.

Yes, it is crazy.

The good old coal? Have a look at the life expectancy of a coal worker, and maybe a ct scan of a coal workers lung.

Good old nuclear? Will you accept the nuclear waste getting store in your neighborhood? No? What about your neighbors neighbor? No? Keep asking until you get a yes. See you again after having asked 341.8 Million people.

There are reasons we moved on from this and de-industrialized. Because the industries we got rid of simply weren't actually that great. Go visit a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen/China. I have done it a couple of times. The part of electronics production that is not done by machines is painful and exhausting work. Your back will hurt. Your eyes will hurt.

I really wonder what people are thinking how these jobs look like. Nobody would want them. The only ones in the US who would accept those jobs would be immigrants who have seen far worse and therefore view these jobs as an upgrade. But the US doesn't want those immigrants. So why try to build industries creating jobs only the kind of people would accept that you do not want in the country?

It would have worked out fine. We would have just bought less useless junk.

The EU started charging carbon tariffs from 1 January- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Carbon_Border_Adjustment_Me...

In the US, you could work 400 hours per day, and still nothing would change in regards of wealth concentration.

Inheriting money from your parents is taxed lower than earning your own money through work. Making more money due to already having money is taxed lower than earning your own money.

US Americans by a large majority over decades got trained to believe changing that would have something to do with "socialism", which was made a bad word.

But this isn't about re-distribution, making people equal or anything.

It's just that it is not logical, does not make sense, and in the end will destroy your society if already having money, which provides no benefit to society whatsoever, is rewarded over producing something, which does provide a benefit.

Why does a teacher who provides REAL benefit to society in the US has less yearly net income than someone who does not work at all but has once inherited 200k from his parents?

You have been trained to find all of this normal, and to believe it's your fault. Just work harder! No, it's not your fault. Working harder won't change anything.

So imagine you have one of the richest countries on this planet. But you don't really have enough work for every human to work full-time. Why is this a problem instead of an ideal? What strange goal is "everyone should work hard" when it comes to enjoying life? If you have an insanely rich country, there are far better solutions than trying to artificially create jobs that make no sense.

You can not compare this to a POOR country with high unemployment. There unemployment is a problem. In the US? Who cares if there is no factory to work in? Instead go help your neighbor. Study something. Become an artist. Do a public gardening project.

Again, the problem is that "having money already" that is of no use to society whatsoever is valued and awarded higher than any of those useful things above.

So, Step 1 for the US would be: You don't have to take away anything from anyone. But stop rewarding people for already having money.

As the CEO and owner of a German limited company I can choose between paying me a salary, getting taxed 45% ) for that, or paying myself a dividend, getting taxed 25% ). The first time I learned that 20 years ago I found it totally crazy and could not believe it. I still find it crazy today. Even in my own f'ing company my OWN work is valued less by society than me owning my company!

*) Oversimplification, but the ratios are correct

Wealth concentrates because of shitty tax policy and lack of enforcement of existing, on the books regulation to enforce a competitive market.

Famous Trust Buster Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive republican who openly stated he had no desire to harm or kill industry in the USA but was instead working to ensure there continued to be competitive pressure to make that industry work better.

Employment has never effectively redistributed wealth. Possibly it improved things a little bit after the black plague reduced the labor pool by about 25%.

The only peaceful and low death form of fixing obscene wealth inequality has always been government, through taxes.

You can avoid this scenario with trains.

hah yeah same goes for blue collar trades type jobs, it's weirdly romanticized here. My mom's side of my extended family were all blue collar types in West Texas, ranch hands, truckers, welders, that sort of thing. All of the men were basically crippled by 55 from using their bodies to make money and died in their 60s of various diseases. My father's side is all white collar and they're all still around, my dad is a minor pickleball celebrity in FL at age 80.

Simple != easy

Actually it did pan out. You just weren't paying attention.

Chinese cities had terrible air quality 20 years ago. Now they don't.

The Chinese and Indian governments have climate change plans that they're actively working on, sometimes ahead of schedule. The current US government has banned the words "climate change" in official documents.

They are not quite there yet. China now has a huge middle class, but they also still have a massive underclass. It’s too early to claim these projections were wrong. I think they are misguided, but there is no denying that China now pays more attention to pollution than it did a decade or two ago. There are massive investments to clean the air in large cities. Same in India: the situation is dire but the political cost of supporting the status quo keeps increasing.

It's not magical thinking; it just doesn't happen overnight. The real question is as we get relatively less wealthy in the West, will we start moving the other direction?

China

China deploys more solar and wind power then the US.

Americans seem to love to count their past successes and then declare the game is over and they won.

History doesn't end though.

No, China wasn't "on my mind". Last been there two weeks ago. I am well aware that China in most areas is lightyears ahead of the Western world. I like highspeed trains ;)

I really meant what I wrote: Compare the environment. Pretty much everybody in Shenzhen hates Shenzhen. People live in tiny apartments. And not because they are poor: Even if you have money, you live in such a tiny box. Because everybody understands that Shenzhen is a Machine, and you are a part of that machine. Your goal is to one day be able to have made enough money to be able to exit that system, and unlike the USA, that actually really works.

Want to build electronics manufacturing and be able to compete with Shenzhen? Start by first building 50,000 box apartments of 200 square feet in size. Next step: Find 50,000 US Americans who want to work in that machine.

So yes, when it comes to electronics, it's not so much about getting poisoned by a poisoned nature, but by suffering in another way.

For clothes it's a different matter, for example. There you still have the oldschool stuff - want the US to be able to compete? Let's give the kids some cancer!

Let me try to re-phrase: Go to the place where stuff is successfully made that you want to in-source into the USA. Then make an informed decision if you really want the baggage that comes with it at home.

I am massively benefitting from something like Shenzhen existing on this planet. It is so effective and productive because it was designed for that from the ground up. Would I want anything like Shenzhen anywhere near me? Hell no!

Most US Americans asking for re-industrialization have neither worked in those industries nor even have a clue what it feels like working in those industries. The people who are asking for these industrial jobs to be re-created are those who do not have any intention to take one of those jobs.

It's not about clean inputs, its about industrial outputs and waste product. China is NOT a leader in that field. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57853-z

Just to clarify: When it comes to myself, my post has been a provocative hypothetical scenario in which I would need to make that choice.

In the real world, decided to move to a part of the planet where this question doesn't even come up, due to society having different priorities and a different base definition of "quality of life".

> If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it.

I used to think this way, but I've come to realize that it's very short-sighted. It's not sustainable, and we're already seeing how unchecked industrialization over the last couple centuries is leading to unintended/undesirable effects on our health, and indeed the suitability of the environment we need to live in. Sure, those problems can be pushed onto future generations, and so far (maybe) we've been able to solve them. But if we care at all about humanity's ability to thrive, we need to be more careful.

In developed countries, nobody has to struggle anymore just to stay alive, which is a far cry from the way it was 200 years ago. Advancements now are along the lines of increasing entertainment, or quality of life. But enjoying a good life doesn't have to be a zero-sum proposition, and I think society should put a higher cost on the ability of wealthy people to use up irreplaceable natural resources for their own benefit.

> If I had a button that would wipe out the entire Amazon jungle and replace it with a world class high technology industry, I wouldn't even think twice before pressing it.

Wow. Why, because the Amazon is just a bunch of trees or something boring? If "high technology industry" is so much more valuable without even thinking twice about it, you probably don't understand very much of the world.

> Build a pool.

How does this work without water?

> Clean water to swim in? Build a pool.

Where do you find clean water to fill the pool with?

> You need industry to have a middle class.

Your average industrial assembly-line worker is _not_ middle class. They are horrible jobs no-one really wants back, or at least not for themselves.

It is very much possible to keep your air and environment clean, and still reasonably grow and remain relevant - look at France.

> You need middle class for capitalist consumption.

Again, industry workers were not middle class, and if you pay them enough to be middle class, your product's price stops being competitive.

To have middle class for capitalist consumption, you need to stop funneling literally _all the money_ to single-digit amount of people and companies, leaving everyone else poor, regardless of what they do for work.

I confuses “it’s hard” with “it’s banned”

It’s…not even wrong it is detached from any effort at truth.

Texans seem more than happy to host these industries. Let them, they have no public land left to protect anyway. The environment is arguably California’s most valuable asset. May as well preserve it so people continue to want to actually live here.

Maps of California are dotted with SuperFund sites where these companies left the taxpayers with the bill to clean up their toxic messes. We don’t “foist” these externalities on other people; they choose to hold lower value on a clean environment than regions which regulate pollutants and other negative externalities.

Plenty of states and countries are okay with having this stuff in their backyard. Most of them encourage it. Let them build it.

Most of the complaints from this website aren't about things being outright banned. It's mostly stuff where the regulation is so strict that's it's "nearly impossible". But the regulation seems fair to me wrt what's actually required to keep TCE, asbestos, Freon, chloroform, etc out of our soil and water.

Companies that are complaining are complaining that they can't treat the environment as an economic externality anymore in California. Therefore the price of all of these goods are being subsidized with our health and our ecosystems' health.

I hope more of the world follows California's lead and we eventually have a price of these goods that represents what it actually takes to manufacture them in a fair way

But you also want smart phones, electric cars, and a navy

This is kind of disingenuous.

I mean, not everything used in California, needs to be manufactured in California. Why not manufacture it in New Mexico? Or Arkansas for that matter?

What you're implying, is that Wisconsin, Nebraska, Maine, Florida, etc, etc, etc, should all build out the manufacturing base to manufacture things that are used in those states. That's not really how a healthy economy should work.

I guess what I'm pointing out is that, we don't need to manufacture smartphones in South Dakota. It's perfectly acceptable to manufacture them in, say, New Jersey, and then ship them to South Dakota. Similarly, we don't need to manufacture everything in California.

> But you also want smart phones, electric cars, and a navy.

I would like far less of all of these to exist than we currently produce (I use a 5 year old phone, an 11 year old car, and think the US Navy could function just fine with a lot less budget and warships).

What if, hear me out, what if we did these things… in space?!

That’s ok, Texans don’t mind having to drink bottled water

Consider housing price and state tax as well

They do pay more for the iPhone, they have the highest state sales tax in the US.

> Why not ship your externality creating activities elsewhere?

Like where?

the plurality of this website are californians so this whole discourse is about as predictable as can be

Export the externalities baby!

It's always hilarious when a bunch of people in Texas who hate government and government regulations get screwed so hard by the corporations that move in that they start incorporating to form governments so that they can pass government regulation to stop those corporations. See for example Webberville or the efforts to create Mitchell Bend in Hood County. Some people have to learn the hard way. Some never do.

Texas got so sick of Texans trying to protect themselves by creating regulations that they created the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act. It took away the ability of local communities to protect themselves and instead protected the profits of some the state's biggest industry buddies.

Yes, exactly. That's fine - live and let live.

If somebody else values their health less - let them have pollution in their own back yard. If enough communities worldwide care about their health, then polluters will have to clean up their processes. But it's not for the residents of California to decide what happens in other jurisdictions.

The concept of "grandfathering" rule breakers has always seemed like naked corruption to me. OK, we think this thing is so bad, that we're passing a law to ban it, BUT everyone who was already doing this bad thing can keep doing it forever because... because... because putting an existing company out of business is apparently the worst thing in the world. If our elected officials think something is bad enough to ban outright, then it should go whole hog and actually ban it. Not just prevent upstart competitors to existing legacy industry.

The site is wrong about the Fremont plant being exempted as detailed here:

https://dailykanban.com/2016/09/29/docs-reveal-teslas-produc...

(With things like…links to their permit applications, I.e., sources)

> Tesla's Fremont factory was the former NUMMI plant (GM/Toyota, operating since 1962). It was grandfathered in. When Tesla needed to expand battery production, they built the Gigafactory in Reno, Nevada — not California — because the permitting for battery cell manufacturing was effectively impossible. The Cybertruck factory went to Austin, Texas.

His point was that they were grandfathered in for making cars in general. But he flat out lies about making batteries being something grandfathered in. That wasn't a battery manufacturing plant to begin with.

And he further lies to say they had to build elsewhere because cell manufacturing was "effectively impossible" because they expanded the factory for cell manufacturing in 2023. [1]

[1] https://electrek.co/2023/06/09/tesla-snaps-new-location-frem...

> Tesla's Fremont factory was the former NUMMI plant (GM/Toyota, operating since 1962). It was grandfathered in. When Tesla needed to expand battery production, they built the Gigafactory in Reno, Nevada — not California — because the permitting for battery cell manufacturing was effectively impossible. The Cybertruck factory went to Austin, Texas.

What part am I misreading? How is it that tesla expanded their cell manufacturing in 2023 in California when it was "effectively impossible"?

Not really. CA can regulate import and sales of items based on the what the item does once in CA. They can't really regulate how it was made somewhere else.

For example, the ubiquity of backup cameras in cars is because it is a requirement in CA.

I find it disingenuous to talk about construction jobs as being "generated". Construction jobs are contracts. Building a datacenter might put 3000 people under contract temporarily but it doesn't "generate" jobs. Once the contract is complete those contractors they're no longer paid by the builder.

The word "generated" is used to make it sound like the project opened up 3000 new permanent jobs for people. Those contractors were employed before the contract and will be employed on another contract at some later point. There's no net gain of jobs in the long run. The contractors won't even necessarily be local. The builder isn't going to call up Bob's AC repair from Collierville to do the specialized datacenter HVAC. They'll fly in a company specialized in that task who will fly home at the end of the contract.

The companies scrambling to build datacenters take advantage of that linguistic ambiguity and then the local politicians end up doing the same. They give these companies sweetheart tax/zoning incentives, proclaim contractors as "generated jobs", and then leave the locals with all of the negative externalities and none of the revenue.

The stuff my dad used for cleaning down beryllium copper sheets that then had silicon, gold, and nichrome deposited onto them to make tiny medical pressure sensors was generally various stages of xylene, amyl acetate, freon, and - on one notable occasion when a shipment of the sheet stock came heavily contaminated with tractor oil - plain ordinary petrol.

This was back in the 80s.

You are very much Not Allowed To Do That Now.

Most of this stuff could be done in compliance with the laws but it’s just cheaper to do it somewhere else where you allowed to vent poison in the air rather than having to filter it out.

Are they only banned in the cities, or are they banned in the state, which -- even in California, should have rural areas far enough away from cities to be tenable?

It's an interesting conundrum though, because in many cases, the cities could not exist without the things that are being banned in the cities. It's a curious goal of populations to centralize, then ostracize all the things that enabled that centralization

I do not care to try to make things ethically fair for oil refineries. Call me a hypocrite, I do not care, as these companies similarly do not care. "Ya got me!", yup, moving on, I am still glad oil refineries are effectively banned.

I think if we consolidate those operations the better, and then we can improve an regulate legislative or as a market more easily than if everyone is spread all over.

I'm not sure I agree.

Unless you believe there needs to be a plan for CA to secede in the future and thus it needs to be self-sufficient, why does manufacturing need to be in CA? As you stated, the Impulse stove makes heavy use of outsourced manufacturing to other parties; as long as those parties are within the US (which I'm not claiming they are, but there are states like TX that are far less concerned about environmental impact than CA is and thus could pick up any such slack), why is there a security concern here?

As for the economic concern, it seems like this is backwards: I'd argue it's the HCOL that drives industry with the need for low-wage labor away to non-CA locations. There's nothing stopping non-polluting corporations from working and hiring large numbers of people in CA.

What should be the basis for comparison? The locality with the most permissive rule on each aspect of manufacturing? Is there any absolute floor on the morality? Should California allow slavery to be used in factories if some other locality allows it?

To be fair, it would be very hard to argue against this website since it stays very vague.

For most things it says that they are “impossible” or “near-impossible” with no explanation or just "getting a permit is hard" with no futher detail.

It does give some cherry-picked metrics : - 0 Semiconductor fabs built in CA in the last decade => as there been ANY semi fabs built outside of taiwan and china in the last decade ? Not exactly surprising. - 1 West Coast shipyard that can build destroyers, 0 New automotive paint shops permitted in CA, 0 New oil refineries permitted in CA since 1969 => We don't build those for shits and giggles, is there any demand that would justify new factories for thoses ?

Basically, the website doesn't say anything. It just gives some context-less data and one guys opinion on what he perceives as not possible.

Not that I care, I am not from the US or live there, but let's not try to pass some dude rambling as a source of actual information.

It isn't claiming to be an argument. It's context.

It proves it's pointlessness. CA doesn't want manufacturing like that in their state. Period. They're saying you are not welcome to destroy our environment, go to Texas, they love that shit. States Rights, right?

Really difficult to say because it doesn't make many concrete claims. It doesn't mention any regulations or say what chemicals or processes are actually banned. These are not easy things to look up. I can tell you that at least the semiconductor fabrication stuff is false, there are many fabs in California and here's a new one as of a few days ago: https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/02/19/san-jose-tech-nokia-i....

I realize it isn't completed yet but I don't think anyone is buying sites for something that's impossible to build.

Here's another one: https://www.bosch-semiconductors.com/roseville/

I don't know. He didn't provide anything to backup his claims. Without data that site is worthless.

Maybe reworded as “He has skin in the game”

> so obviously his point can’t be true > so obviously he’s biased and we can’t do the mental work of sifting > so obviously I can dismiss this as teleologically false.

Please don’t be so lazy you guys. There is something to be gained here.

> Aluminum Anodizing & CNC Machining

There are a ton of CNC machining (AL and otherwise) and anodizing shops in the Bay Area.

Lies can be either by commission or omission.

It isn't even information – it's noise.

I'm actually quite surprised by the number of people who have fallen for this. There aren't even any concrete claims here – just the vague assertion that some things are "impossible".

Yes. They lump in sheet metal stamping with giga casting. They are completely different techs with different energy footprints. Banning aluminum casting does not implicitly ban stamping.

I don't think it makes a good case for itself. No automotive paint shops sounds kind of ridiculous. I don't know anything about that industry but there has to be a way to paint cars in a safe way, right??

But lumping that in with semiconductor fabs, which are extremely toxic, makes me wonder how many of these banned industries I don't want in my state. I think if we want to build them in the US maybe don't build them in the most agriculturally productive and highest population state. Or first figure out how to do it without turning the US into China with its "cancer villages" from poisoned river water.

I'm not defending the dysfunctional CA bureaucracy, but the site should probably focus on specific cases of government-produced insanity than a general complaint that certain industries are banned from operation.

Feel free to provide sources for the claims

Really? Since it’s lacking any comparison to other states and because many of these complaints single out metropolitan areas comparison to nationwide census of metro areas, what actual conclusions are you drawing that are valid?

Context matters a lot. We haven’t built a lot of mercury based hat felting shops lately in California. What conclusion do you draw from that?

Yeah, I don't think that is generally viewed as a good thing, though? And I would not be surprised to learn California has some stricter rules on it. (Would honestly not be surprised to find out some of these "banned" items are due to asbestos level concerns.)

Now look up when those projects were started...I will wait.

The free states that demand it of Pornhub causing it to withdraw services from those states?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1skbgEGEn80

Why were old PCs beige? It turns out, Germany had workplace standards laws that mandated light, unobtrusive colors on office equipment. Because it was expensive to offer different SKUs for different regions, gray or beige PC cases became the only ones available worldwide.

If a jurisdiction as big or important as California passes a law mandating certain features on products available there, manufacturers may make those features part of their products worldwide to save on costs. OEMs may make bootloader-locked PCs which cannot run operating systems that don't do age check in order to comply with the law in California and Brazil, and decide it's not worth it to offer a bootloader-unlocked version.

If you think PC manufacturers are required to make bootloader-unlockable PCs, the only thing requiring them to do so is an edict from Microsoft, something they can and will reverse in order to comply with the law.

It's because CA has stricter regulations about what can be labeled compostable. Whatever had this label was never compostable to begin with, but called itself that on a technicality.

California is one of the only states in the union seeing a population decline year over year (while surrounding states are seeing population growth).

https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2026/demo/stat...

And that doesn't even take in to account the major businesses fleeing the state as well.