People sure have some funny ideas about California. It is big, comparable to say Italy in economic output, bigger than Japan and I think UK in land area. Issues that have to be faced here really are nation-sized.
Like my photo above showed - because there are so many people, problems become acute here earlier than less populated states. So there is demand by the citizens on our state government to devise a remedy, often before the issue has become a nationwide issue that Congress will get involved in. As these same problems appear in other areas, those states then adopt California standards instead of duplicating the research to come to the same remedies. This doesn't mean California dictated to those states. And this works both ways. California, Pennsylvania, and Texas all have top quality research and technical standards for highway building, for example. California often adopts these other states standards.
Now if people would just quit moving to California! There were 8 million of us when I was born, today 38 million.
Please - stay where you are, burn your toxic waste there, not here. We have reached overload.
there's still only 8 million people there the other 30 million are illegals just like down here the population boomed up but most are mexicans.