In the wake of catastrophic fires that have devastated Los Angeles, America’s top anti-green Luddites——Donald Trump and Gavin Newsom—-met at a southern California airport, where Melania greeted the Governor with exceptional warmth.
In service to the coal, oil, nuke and gas burners at the core of climate chaos, her husband’s“drill baby drill” war is devastating a green-powered future built on wind turbines, solar farms, battery storage, electric cars, micro-grids and more.
Trump’s alleged rival, Gavin Newsom, has escalated that attack in California. In 2022, he betrayed a state-approved plan to transcend the states last two atomic reactors with a renewable-based energy system set to compete in global markets.
But forcing Diablo Canyon’’s prolonged operations, Newsom risks a radioactive apocalypse that would dwarf the Los Angeles fires, while currently costing the state at least $11 billion in over-market charges through 2030.
Simultaneously, Newsom’s hand-picked Public Utilities Commission has hit the state’s rooftop solar industry with a multi-billion-dollar wave of bankruptcies, costing at least 17,000 jobs.
Together, the Trump-Newsom anti-green odd couple is gutting the future of the US energy economy, dooming America’s ability to compete in global markets for the foreseeable future.
The avoidable global-warmed cataclysm the Trumps and Newsom toured in Los Angeles on January 24 was sparked in part by mis-handled fossil/nuclear power lines.
Since 2010, utility-ignited fires have torched the Bay Area suburb of San Bruno (incinerating eight human beings), the northern California forest town of Paradise (killing more than eighty), the island of Maui (killing more than a hundred), and now the LA neighborhoods of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, whose death toll is not yet known.
Trump’s contempt for the eco-science of climate chaos is legend. So are the economic costs of trashing a green energy supply that’s far cheaper than fossil/nukes, and a global auto market being conquered by Electric Vehicles coming—-like solar panels—- from China, NOT the US. .
According to Bloomberg, Lazard and a veritable army of energy economists, prices for solar and wind power, in tandem with battery backups, continue to plummet far below those for fossil fuels and nuclear power. Despite Trump’s contempt, huge arrays of photovoltaic panels and wind turbines are vastly outstripping coal, oil, nuclear and soon gas burners in global capacity and cost.
https://www.lazard.com/media/sptlfats/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-150-vf.pdf
Worldwide and in the US, wind and solar are by far the fastest-growing sources of new energy construction. Renewables now outproduce nuclear in the US, supplying 25% (and rising) versus 18% (and dropping).
China every year adds more new solar capacity than the US has installed in total to date. Enormous Chinese wind turbines and proliferating solar panels have dropped energy costs far below nuclear power’s most optimistic projections. China’s booming battery business has soared into the global lead.
Trump’s scorn for these three pillars of a green-powered transition may vastly enrich his billionaire fossil/nuclear backers.
But given renewables’ down-bound prices, a fossil-nuke powered US can’t hope to compete long-term with China or other industrial nations, such as Germany, which shut its last reactor in 2022. (China has 30+ reactors under construction, likely primarily for weapons production).
Trump’s loud scorn for wind turbines, solar panels and battery back-up will cripple the ability of the US to compete in global markets.
His contempt for electric cars—famously promoted by Newsom—-is also destroying a long-standing pillar of American prosperity.
Worldwide, Chinese BYDs are leaving even the Tesla in the dust. In Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, the US auto industry is being rendered obsolete and uncompetitive.
Like his “drill baby drill” obsession, Trump’s horse-&-buggy contempt for green technology undercuts the US’s ability to enjoy cheap power, affordable transportation, and the ability to compete in global markets. As shown by Wisconsin Professor Alfred McCoy at Counterpunch, the administration’s war on electric vehicles could gut much of America’s industrial base.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/28/detroits-death-spiral/
But Trump’s Luddite push to forever burden our declining economy with crony-owned fossil-nuclear technologies has been more than matched by Golden State Governor Newsom.
As Lieutenant-Governor, Newsom, co-signed a landmark 2018 blueprint for phasing out the obsolete, un-insured, hyper-expensive nuclear reactors at Diablo Canyon.
An exhaustive two-year process led by then-Governor Jerry Brown produced this monumental program. Diablo Canyon’s twin reactors, the last two left in California, now 43 years old, are surrounded by earthquake faults, just 45 miles from the San Andreas,. Brown’s deliberations revolved in part around fear that a catastrophic accident at Diablo could blanket the region with a radioactive cloud, rending the state forever uninhabitable.
This comprehensive green transition was approved by then-Governor Brown, then-Lieutenant Governor Newsom, the state’s Legislature and key regulators, the utility company (PG&E), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, labor unions, local governments, environmental groups and more.
At the time, California was at the heart of America’s solar future. A booming multi-billion-dollar business installed more than 2 million photovoltaic rooftops, and employed more than 70,000 people. By 2024, for several hours virtually every day, solar farms in the Central Valley were providing more than 100% of the state’s entire electricity consumption, pumping excess power into burgeoning battery arrays that would carry the grid deep past many sundowns.
The 2018 phase-out plan meant that Diablo’s nukes would yield to a flexible grid powered by renewables, backed with a powerful new generation of battery storage arrays. The statewould thus transcend its obsolete fossil/nuke “baseload” paradigm, yielding to a flexible, cheap, clean-powered system that would relieve the atmosphere of radioactive Carbon 14 and radioactive cores super-heating the ocean and atmosphere.
The process would fulfill the fast-evolving promise of a low-cost, high employment, ecologically sound green grid, reliably powering the world’s fifth-largest economy (behind China, the US, Japan and Germany).
The transition plan proceeded ahead of its goals, especially as technical breakthroughs accelerated the reach of big storage batteries.
But in 2022, Newsom suddenly trashed the whole plan, ramming a kill bill through a midnight session in Sacramento. The bitterly divisive HB 846 offered PG&E some $1.4 billion in “forgivable loans” and federal funding to keep Diablo running through 2030, costing Californians some $11 billion in over-market charges. The money would be collected statewide, even though most California consumers get zero power directly from Diablo.
Meanwhile, Newsom’s hand-picked Public Utilities Commission trashed a “net metering” program that had supported rooftop solar’s statewide spread.
CPUC regulations had mandated that utilities purchase electricity from individually-owned solar panels at a price that sustained the industry’s growth. But as Newsom sabotaged the Diablo phase-out, his CPUC trashed utility solar purchase agreements and approved new taxes on rooftop arrays.
Rooftop installations instantly collapsed, costing billions in bankruptcies and thousands of layoffs. Within weeks a seismic wave decimated America’s best hope for green-powered prosperity. As the bottom fell out of California’s renewables industry, so did technical support for a pivotal battery facility at Moro Bay, which caught fire in 2025 not far from Diablo Canyon.
So alongside Trump’s fossil fueled attack on the “Green New Deal” and American-made EVs, Newsom’s nuke-powered assault has decimated a cornerstone of the US solar industry.
Together, Trump and Newsom have cast a toxic obsolescent cloud over America’s ability to compete worldwide.
As China’s “Deep-Seek” AI breakthroughs further undercut American computer dominance, the US-based Small Modular Reactor (Silly Mythological Rip-Offs) industry may also be stillborn, unable to compete with renewables while failing to come in on time for much-hyped data/crypto centers whose projected power needs are being thoroughly re-made.
Overall, China’s mastery over global markets in solar panels, wind turbines and Electric Vehicles may soon turn America’s economic future to rubble.
Unless reversed, the Trump/Newsom anti-green attack portends a quick, toxic death for the US economy…as well as for its ecological survival.
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Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman wrote Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, Introduced by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Most Mondays he co-hosts the Green Grassroots Election Protection Zoom via www.electionprotectionep.org.