Let's be specific:

A pivotal climate battle can be won by solarizing California for  the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics...upending the global equation ecologically, economically and politically.

Letter printed below

The principle political target is Gavin Newsom, not Donald Trump.

As Lieutenant-Governor, Newsom signed a landmark 2018 blueprint for shutting the two dying atomic reactors at Diablo Canyon, replacing their output with a green phase-in.  

The deal was signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, the state legislature & regulators, local governments, unions, green groups...& plant owner PG&E

Solar, wind, geothermal and battery storage now dwarf Diablo's output & regularly exceed California's entire electric demand; installed statewide battery backup exceeds Diablo's capacity by a factor of 4 (and growing) avoiding potential blackouts at least twice.

Covering LA County's rooftops, parking lots & aqueducts with solar panels can power all 60 Olympics sites & more.  CA's 2,000,000 solar rooftops once sustained 70,000 jobs and put us on a trajectory to totally green-power Earth's #5 economy.

But Newsom has sabotaged the Diablo phase-out, costing  $12 billion in over-market charges (& massive carbon, heat & radiation emissions); his regulatory assault on solar has killed 17,000 jobs.

Totally solarizing California would slash our electric rates, save our ecology & shine a global green beacon.  

Let's do it NOW.

When the Olympics return to Los Angeles in 2028, we can make history— and vastly lower our electric rates, clean our air and employ our people— by making sure the Games are 100% powered with local-generated solar energy.

That clean green electricity should not be wired in via an obsolete, over-stressed grid, coming from places that should otherwise be left in their natural state. Instead we have four full years to cover every appropriate southern California rooftop with photovoltaic cells.

That would mean installing solar arrays atop this mega-city’s many square miles of wahouses, businesses, factories and homes. It would also embrace our parking lots and structures, sports stadia, aqueducts, canals, rivers, reservoirs, all powering local-based micro-grids that can save billions in unnecessary generation and transmission costs.

This Olympian deployment would be a great long jump for southern California’s power supply. As we’ve seen from the state’s 1.8 million rooftop PV installations, solar-generated electricity can be far cheaper than anything coming from fossil or nuclear fuels.

 

Our state-wide grid now regularly goes 100% renewable, usually in our sun-drenched afternoons, where photovoltaic power becomes “too cheap to meter.” By then charging batteries across the state, our demand surges in the evenings are covered cheaply and reliably.

Until very recently our rooftop solar businesses employed some 70,000 Californians. But now we’re losing far too many good jobs to devastating regulatory manipulations that have gutted far too many of our state’s green businesses.

An Olympian push can make this great green industry boom again, especially if the cells and panels are manufactured here.

Advanced battery storage is plummeting in cost. Within the past few years California has installed more than 10,000 megawatts of stored capacity— nearly five times what we get from the two dangerous, expensive atomic reactors at Diablo Canyon.

Advanced battery technology can now permanently protect the region and state from any future melt-downs or blackouts. When it does, our soaring electric rates will head straight down.