Economic forecaster Bill Watkins, told an audience in Santa Maria, CA, “If you were in Texas, you’d be rich.”

◼ 'GREEN' POLICIES DEPRIVING CA CITIES OF ENERGY INDUSTRY JOBS - Tony Lee/Breitbart

Much has been written about how public sector unions, bloated pension plans, government waste, and poor fiscal planning led to California cities like Stockton, Mammoth Lakes, and San Bernardino to end up bankrupt. Many other California cities -- especially in the Inland Empire area -- are on the verge of fiscal insolvency.

What has not been discussed as much, though, has been how California’s green energy and environmentalist policies may have contributed to pushing these cities closer to bankruptcy and depressing their economies.

Joel Kotkin at The Daily Beast writes that many of California’s most energy-rich cities are among its poorest because they are shackled by laws and regulations that prevent them from capitalizing on their energy reserves.

Kotkin writes that “nowhere is the element of choice inherent in energy policy more evident than in California, where green energy elites and their environmentalist policies have stunted California’s energy production even though the state “has double-digit unemployment, a collapsed inland economy and a series of bankrupt municipalities.”

...Walter Russell Mead writes that the “green energy bias” is killing California, and “destroying the economic hopes of low income people in order to stoke the self esteem of entitled Boomers” just shows “how backwards” the “exalted moral standards of the California elites” are.