I have lived on California my entire life and all we have managed to accomplish were feel good initiatives which made for great PR puff pieces and were quickly shuffled down the road.
I remember the first electric car, hailed as a true step forward, that was subsequently killed. Go to Santa Monica beach patrol stations and see all of the failed electric car station plug poles that were sawed off and tossed onto a heap to rot. The end result of an economy that pushed SUVs over what we are currently seeing. And yes, for the most part those status junkies traded their SUVs for Priuses.
We are asked to conserve water when the wasteful farms and elites use more water than every citizen combined and our efforts (I recall as a youth, if it's yellow let it mellow as an allusion to not flushing if you don't have to) are literally a drop in the bucket. I remember my dad putting a brick in our toilet tank to reduce overall water capacity in an effort to 'do our part'; all the while our neighbors ignored the lawn watering rules (like our officials watered their estate grounds).
San Fernando Valley stopped watering or used minimal recycled water on the median's vegetation and trees in "an effort to save water". They even went so far to print signs everywhere along these plots and all advertising spaces (bus stop, billboard, etc) which have their own environmental impact that's conveniently ignored. End result is that all of these well matured trees died and cracked or burned in the subsequent year's end.
We also get billboards about food waste costing us water (one about eggs is fairly prevalent) which goes back to ignoring the actual major sources of waste.
The Nestlé corporation was allowed to do this:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36161580
And yet we are expected to 'do our part' to help a corporation's profits?
Lastly, recycling. We are asked at every turn to recycle amd separate garbage to an extent, yet there is no punishment for recycling thieves like in New York. So we taxpayers fund recycling efforts, containers, centers and trucks only to have the proverbial gold stolen each night by thieves. I stopped sorting my garbage when I was driven to the brink being woken every trash day at 3 am by opportunists raiding every can thoroughly. I had compassion until then. Most who still do have not had first hand experience in their ivory gated communities.
In summation, the best laid plans if the misguided bleeding hearts.