California’s Green Mirage

The Golden State’s environmentalism isn’t just a failure. It’s almost a fraud.

California doesn’t lead the nation in environmental policy. It leads in environmental hypocrisy.

The state sells itself as a green utopia—a model for the rest of America to follow. It brags about electric vehicle mandates, solar subsidies, and plastic bag bans. It celebrates wildlife overpasses and dam removals. From Sacramento to Silicon Valley, California congratulates itself on saving the planet. But behind the smug posturing is a reality as scorched, polluted, and mismanaged as any industrial backwater. The Golden State has become a case study in how performative environmentalism leads to actual environmental destruction.

Start with the wildfires. Every year, tens of thousands of acres burn. And every year, California politicians take the stage to blame climate change, corporate greed, or federal inaction. But the fires are not just natural disasters—they are man-made crises. In 2020, as fire conditions worsened, Governor Gavin Newsom cut $150 million from the wildfire prevention budget. Then his administration lied to the public, claiming it had treated 90,000 acres of fuel. In truth, it had cleared just over 11,000. The lie wasn’t just statistical—it was strategic. They needed to protect the image, not the land.

And it’s not just negligence—it’s obstruction. The California Environmental Quality Act, once designed to protect ecosystems, now blocks controlled burns and forest thinning. Utility companies trying to replace fire-prone lines are fined millions for disrupting native plants—even if those lines could prevent the next blaze. CEQA has become a weapon wielded by bureaucrats and activists who would rather see a forest burn than admit their ideology has failed.

While California lectures the rest of us about environmental justice, its cities are dumping raw sewage into the ocean. In 2023, San Diego spilled over 500,000 gallons into its bay. In 2024, beaches from Marina del Rey to Santa Monica were shut down due to bacteria and toxic runoff. Residents were warned they could contract sepsis from touching the water. Meanwhile, the state was busy outlawing plastic straws. This isn’t leadership. It’s political theater with a body count.

The water crisis is no better. California’s answer to its chronic shortages? More restrictions for homeowners, more giveaways for Big Ag, and endless legal hurdles for anyone proposing real solutions. Almonds and alfalfa—two of the most water-hungry crops on earth—are grown for export, while working-class Californians ration their tap water. Entire towns in the Central Valley run dry. But when someone proposes desalination, aquifer storage, or infrastructure upgrades, the environmental lobby and their allies in Sacramento mobilize to shut it down. Why? Because solutions don’t look good on a protest sign.

Tulare Lake, once a vital freshwater body, was drained for agriculture. Now, when it reemerges during wet years, it floods farmland that should never have existed in the first place. The Salton Sea is a toxic dustbowl created by mistake and now left to rot. Mono Lake was nearly killed off by water diversions to Los Angeles. Owens Valley already was. These aren’t accidents. They are the legacy of a state that views nature as a PR campaign, not a living system.

And what of the air? California’s skies are now hazy year-round—not just during fire season, but in every season. Cities like Bakersfield, Fresno, and Los Angeles are suffocating under the weight of wildfire smoke, traffic congestion, and unchecked industrial pollution. The once-golden sunlight now filters through a permanent sepia haze, turning the iconic California sun into a dull, red orb hanging over a state choking on its own contradictions. It’s not scenic—it’s dystopian.

Want to go for a run on one of those “bad air” days in Southern California? A two-hour workout can expose you to as much toxic particulate matter as smoking 10 to 15 cigarettes. That’s what the air has become: unbreathable. And still, Sacramento pushes EV mandates, bans gas stoves, and calls it progress—while ignoring the wildfire fuel buildup, the aging industrial infrastructure, and the working-class communities breathing in poison every single day.

This isn’t just failure. It’s failure dressed up as moral superiority. It’s a ruling class so obsessed with optics that it would rather let forests burn, beaches rot, and families breathe carcinogens than admit their environmental religion is a fraud.

California’s elite drive Teslas and fly private jets to climate summits while the working poor drink bottled water in the Central Valley. They pass laws to “save the planet” while ignoring the sewage in their own backyard. They boast about banning lawns while letting 80% of the state’s water go to subsidized agribusiness. They post Instagram videos about climate change while refusing to build a single dam or reservoir in decades.

The hypocrisy isn’t a side effect—it’s the system.

California could have been a model. Instead, it’s a warning. A state with natural beauty, vast resources, and immense wealth has turned itself into a cautionary tale. Wildfires rage. Beaches close. Water vanishes. Air turns toxic. And the people in charge issue press releases about their climate virtue.

This is what happens when environmentalism becomes a brand instead of a policy. When ideology replaces stewardship. When politics values symbolism over survival.

If California is the future, it’s a future no sane country should want.

This article has been adapted from my new book: The Myth of California. The Amazon Kindle version is available now. The full book, paperback and audiobook will be released in May and June.

Endorsements for "The Myth of California"

"California was once America’s “Promised Land” where people flocked to find gold, good weather, and opportunities in everything from movies to manufacturing. It was the agricultural epicenter of the world, known as the “salad bowl” of the planet. But decades of leftist leadership has destroyed everything but the weather. It’s become “Paradise Lost” with homelessness, unanswered crime, and choking tax rates and regulations causing people to flee in stunning numbers to get to places where their families can live without the boot of big government on their necks and cultural cuckoos setting the atmosphere of the lifestyle. Chad Hagan details what happened in his riveting book, “The Myth of California: How Big Government Destroyed the Golden State.” It’s the tragic story of how the irrational left destroys everything it touches and how one state exchanged its gold for garbage. - Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas, Bestselling Author, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel

"My father was a car salesman in a town of 800 people in Northern Minnesota. He had one vacation in his working life, and we took a trip to California. He had a friend who had settled in Carlsbad years earlier and wanted to visit. I was 10. My brother was 11, and our sister was 7. We were in awe. It was a modest home, beautifully maintained, with a yard full of fruit trees. We picked oranges and ate them in the yard. We had grapefruit off the trees for breakfast. I dreamed of moving to California for years. No longer! Chad Hagan’s book, The Myth of California, will make you disappointed, infuriated, and then just plain sad. It is a cautionary tale about how politicians can destroy a paradise in one lifetime. Ultimately, unchecked political power serves only itself. The citizens are included only to pay the bills. It is also a testament to how the crazies run the world. Most of us just want to go to work, come home and relax, and build a family and life. The crazies don’t think that way. They are loud, and they vote. Ultimately, politicians whose only interest is in power, cave in to them. (A government permit needed to wear heels taller than 2 inches in Carmel? Spare me!) As Californians now flee in droves, the stories they tell disabuse us of any notion of paradise. This book does that in spades. Read it!" - John Linder, Former U.S. Congressman (GA-7)