california worst case

california is a mix of best and worst cases sustainability human and  artificial intelligence will ever see - this matters to the rest of the world as so much tech priorities originate in this one of the strangest paces on earth
much of california's infrastructure is pathetic- the reason there is no coordinated plan across different governaces of this tall state- and precious little federal mapping of how eg overland trade from east to west could be made 21st C fit- ironidally the east big corporations are stuck in industrial mindsets and big box retail while california at is edgiest leads ir4 and the end of bricks/property driving the cost of having an organisatuonal strategy. Perhaps most ironical of all - ad and enetretainment industruies are led out of california- ie east coast bsuiensses spend ever more on advertising ( a west coast livelihood) even as they have ever less uniqueness versus old indutry around the world. East usa main hub of bruillaint tech is boston but for some reason big industry usa doesnt have that good relations with boston either- perhaps its too hard for most amwricans to work out of aplace that can be snowed under 4 months a year ... but lets get back to california

California is by far america's largest economy but pretty isolated geographically =

Total	United States	20,865,140
1	California	3,018,337
2	Texas	1,818,585
3	New York	1,701,399

Its a peculiar place for the world to be led technologically. And its pretty unlikely that its future (sustainably up or crashing down) is understood by majority of us congress let alone the self-declared greatest trading brain: mr trump. Only 4 countries have a larger economy than california's (one half of a per cent of the worlds people) - the whole of the US eg 20 , China (one fifth of world people) eg 15, Japan eg 5- Germany eg 4 (where we have taken numbers adjusting gdps a bit towards ppps) nb its true that india's economy (one fifth of worlds people) also rivals cal's depending how you count things

The inequality of wealth in california is also staggering (i think but cant be summed in one line)

in area California is the third largest state, behind Alaska and Texas, and runs almost 800 miles from north to south. It is not surprising that it offers a contrasting landscape and a diverse topography. California's general coastline is 840 miles long. -thats .longer than north to south of whole of britain

Japan - Location, size, and extent

The total area of Japan is 377,835 sq km (145,883 sq mi). Comparatively, the area occupied by Japan is slightly smaller than the state of California. It extends 3,008 km (1,869 mi) NE – SW and 1,645 km (1,022 mi) SE – NW and has a total coastline of 29,751 km (18,486 mi).

there;s hardly a train along its coastal belt- and because of a 1913 law shipping trade along the cast has to be saved by american built ships (an industry us mainly deserted) although trains and boats are the greenest trade and criitcal to supply chains- usa relies on extremely expensive and non-ecological cars and planes- in other words its markets are designed by and for the rich not by and for the sustainability of all the people - california

one of its electricity utilities page went bankrupt last yearas it had to admit that its down electricity lines started sparks that started the wildfire that raised the town of paradise to the ground

the pge and saga continues = thsi ftom axios today

1 big thing: PG&E's blackouts make the case for home generation

Person sitting in a California restaurant lit by candlelight during one of PG&E's shut-offs. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small/AFP via Getty Images

One side effect of California utility PG&E shutting off power to roughly 2 million people to deter wildfires: It's effectively a free ad for distributed generation options. Driving the news: Check out the Twitter feed of Sunrun, the country's top residential solar provider, and you'll see this message about their battery product... "#Blackouts are happening now all across #California. Take back control of your home's #energy with Sunrun's Brightbox #solar #battery service and stay powered through the next #outage." It links to a page where customers can explore purchase of their solar and battery systems. Sunrun even has a separate page about the PG&E shut-offs that notes wildfires are now year-round events in California. The big picture: They're not the only distributed energy provider that stands to gain. "Suppliers of backup, diesel-fired generators, solar panels, batteries and fuel cells alike see a sales opportunity in the massive power shutoffs rolling out across the San Francisco Bay Area," Bloomberg reports. Via Greentech Media, Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables' analyst Ravi Manghani says this week's blackouts mean "the market should see an uptick in battery storage sales." Why it matters: Distributed energy is indeed an important part of creating more resilient power systems at a time when climate change is putting more stress on grids. Greentech points out that this isn't lost on California regulators, who "have been looking to distributed energy resources as part of the solution to the state's wildfire-power grid challenge." What they're saying: A Fast Company story last night on the PG&E outages quotes Christopher Burgess of the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute making the case for "community microgrids" that combine solar and batteries. “I could definitely see a future where the transmission lines are just so long and so problematic, and it gets more and more dry due to climate change, and those things just become so much of a vulnerability that it’s actually better just to ‘island off’ certain communities,” he said.