People underestimate just how massive California is. There are a lot of people across a large span of land that require electricity. I imagine the map would look very different if it was scaled by population.
my wording has failed me immensely. i would at least expect people to look at the map and realize what I'm actually trying to say but here we are. that is my point. California has like the population of all these states combined yet all of them are producing more carbon emissions. when i said "winning" i meant in amount of carbon emissions, meaning doing worse.
Are we looking at the same map? Looks like California is far less emissions heavy than the flyover states. High proportions of solar panel energy, too.