Hey California! We can avoid a blackout, but you have to turn up your damn thermostat! https://t.co/UuH8Yr6VFH

— Jerry Brown (@JerryBrownGov) August 19, 2020

What a charmer.

Now, it's easy to think Brown, in his dotage, out on some ranch in remote, sparsely populated Colusa County, or perhaps from his mansion in the tony Oakland Hills — reports vary — is just the same mean old man he always was, dating from the '70s.  If someone's using "too much" power, regardless of his willingness to pay for it, then scold, blame, shame, and try to get him to fall for the idea of turning thermostats up. 

But more likely, he's the voice of the California establishment, intimately connected to the oh, so related California power elites who have made a hash of California's power grid and seem to have rigged themselves into permanent power.  What he's saying is what they'd like to say, but don't say.  The connections are just too close.

Because the name of the game right now in California, reeling from a lack of energy, is to collectivize the guilt and privatize the goodies.  And Brown's nasty yellings are nothing but bids to blame consumers for California's policy failures.

Telling people to turn thermostats up in a heat wave is a recipe for failure.

Is there any proof that Brown, in whatever luxury digs he's in, is turning his thermostat up?  Not in the least.  In socialism, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.  Power elites are always going to be able to skip such sacrifices that they call for from the peons.  And how does anyone check on the peons?  Can some old lady, more vulnerable to high heat than others get a dispensation?  What about someone willing to cool down just one room and leave the others to bake?  The one size fits all, commanding all power thermostats to go up (and the recommended 78 degrees is hideous — you want to flee to the Costco refrigerated section to get out of that) is a recipe for non-compliance.

We already know what commanding all people to wear masks is like — many sectors of the public are resistant, despite themselves being the obvious beneficiaries.  To imagine that the collective populace of a huge illegal alien–loaded state like California will all comply together with raising the thermostats is obviously a nonstarter — some will, some won't, and the ones who won't get nice cool air.

In normal places, the market sets the supply and demand — and those who want more cold air, pay for more cold air, and those who want to pay for less, turn the thermostats upward.

But in California, the supply is the major problem, not demand, which is natural.  Supply has been artificially reduced by Brown's greenie mandates.

At a time of record-low energy prices, it's outrageous that Californians are experiencing a problem of energy shortages at all.

California is not some poor country with no access to energy.  It has an amazing access to imported oil via its ports and credit system, and even more important, has access to oil itself, sitting on top of a huge oil bed stretching from Los Angeles (originally an oil town) to Santa Barbara to Bakersfield, all very oil-blessed places.  It can have energy if it wants energy.

But based on Brown's greenie mandates, that oil goes ignored, and the state instead is reliant on bird-killing wind power, whose turbines require massive amounts of imported rare earth minerals to construct, and land-wasting solar power, whose panels are another rare-earth gobbler and a land hog and a blinding hazard to airline pilots as well.  All about the virtue-signaling for "going green."

Brown's nasty yelling at a time of man-made energy famine in California is nothing but a bid to distract attention from state policy failures, and blame the consumers for trying to protect themselves from the heat. 

Even Hugo Chávez, though, didn't used to scold people the way Brown does — when Venezuela had its shortages, he'd try to tell them sheet was shinola.  When water shortages started hitting Venezuela about a decade ago, Chávez advised the locals to use bucket dumps for showers, explaining that "it's so refreshing." 

Not Brown.  His unpleasant approach is the real face of socialism without the candy coating.  And bet on more such policy failures leading to more such blame to the consumers in the future.

Hat tip: Daily Caller.