Schwarzenegger's Folly
Oh the lessons we've not learned!
A mere four years ago, as you may remember, California suffered rolling blackouts. Electric power supplied to consumers in the state did not meet the demand. Curiously, there was no shortage in neighboring Oregon, Nevada, or Arizona. Why? Many reasons, and all specific to the oddity we know as the Golden State. The two major reasons were 1) a failure to build enough power plants to generate electricity within California, forcing California utilities to import power from neighboring states and 2) price controls that prevented California utilites from recouping higher costs demanded by out-of-state energy providers during a spike in nationwide energy prices.
They couldn't generate enough power themselves, and as the public utilies went bankrupt due to balance of payment problems, many utilities outside the state became unwilling to supply more power.
But the conventional explanation that seems to be accepted these days is much simpler: "Enron." The logic goes like this: "Power plants are dirty and dangerous. Let's make it harder to build them. Why don't we have power? Greedy energy companies!" Repeat it often enough and it becomes true.
The consequence of this ostrichism, of course, will be that history repeats itself. Today Governor Schwarzenegger unveiled a plan to cut greenhouse gases in the state of California over the next 45 years.
While it may take 60 US Senators to give a job to a federal judge, a lone Austrian egomaniac can in one stroke subject 35 million Americans to power outages and flush the California economy down the low-flow toilet.
"Factories are dirty and dangerous. Let's make it harder to build them. Why are jobs being outsourced? Greedy corporations!" But let's focus on energy and leave the California economy to another day.
Electric power is a commodity freely traded between utilities among the various states. Tight restrictions on building new plants got California part-way into its 2001 pickle. Similarly, restrictions on greenhouse gas outputs in California is will reduce the output of electricity from coal-fired plants within the state, necessitating that more power be purchased from out-of-state.
So while California emissions decline, emissions from other states will have to rise to compensate. It's simple math. Unless Californians start to consume less power (not likely) or generate new clean power of their own, this policy does nothing but prime Arnold for a disastrous Presidential bid.
Thomas Sowell provided some wonderful insight into the rolling blackouts four years ago, and it rings especially true today:
An animal lover I know eats all kinds of meat, but would prefer to think there's some sort of chicken tree than to dwell on the reality that the business of butchering (in a literal, not hyperbolic sense) puts food on her table. Californians, dwelling in their own enviro-friendly world, want the fiction of an energy tree in their back yard, without the "ugly" real world interfering.
A mere four years ago, as you may remember, California suffered rolling blackouts. Electric power supplied to consumers in the state did not meet the demand. Curiously, there was no shortage in neighboring Oregon, Nevada, or Arizona. Why? Many reasons, and all specific to the oddity we know as the Golden State. The two major reasons were 1) a failure to build enough power plants to generate electricity within California, forcing California utilities to import power from neighboring states and 2) price controls that prevented California utilites from recouping higher costs demanded by out-of-state energy providers during a spike in nationwide energy prices.
They couldn't generate enough power themselves, and as the public utilies went bankrupt due to balance of payment problems, many utilities outside the state became unwilling to supply more power.
But the conventional explanation that seems to be accepted these days is much simpler: "Enron." The logic goes like this: "Power plants are dirty and dangerous. Let's make it harder to build them. Why don't we have power? Greedy energy companies!" Repeat it often enough and it becomes true.
The consequence of this ostrichism, of course, will be that history repeats itself. Today Governor Schwarzenegger unveiled a plan to cut greenhouse gases in the state of California over the next 45 years.
Schwarzenegger's plan calls for reducing the state's emissions of greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010, 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
Under the governor's executive order, the secretary of California's Environmental Protection Agency will be charged with overseeing efforts to meet those goals, and will report on the state's progress in January and every six months after that.
While it may take 60 US Senators to give a job to a federal judge, a lone Austrian egomaniac can in one stroke subject 35 million Americans to power outages and flush the California economy down the low-flow toilet.
"Factories are dirty and dangerous. Let's make it harder to build them. Why are jobs being outsourced? Greedy corporations!" But let's focus on energy and leave the California economy to another day.
Electric power is a commodity freely traded between utilities among the various states. Tight restrictions on building new plants got California part-way into its 2001 pickle. Similarly, restrictions on greenhouse gas outputs in California is will reduce the output of electricity from coal-fired plants within the state, necessitating that more power be purchased from out-of-state.
So while California emissions decline, emissions from other states will have to rise to compensate. It's simple math. Unless Californians start to consume less power (not likely) or generate new clean power of their own, this policy does nothing but prime Arnold for a disastrous Presidential bid.
Thomas Sowell provided some wonderful insight into the rolling blackouts four years ago, and it rings especially true today:
There are all sorts of bright ideas for generating electricity by using sunlight or windmills. It never seems to occur to those who espouse these ideas to ask why people who have spent a lifetime working in the electricity industry do not share their enthusiasm for these schemes. Could it possibly be that the costs of generating electricity this way are higher?
There are already vast arrays of aging windmills in the hills leading out to California's central valley as monuments to the utopianism that seems to flourish in the golden state. All that is needed is Don Quixote.
Politics is supposed to be the art of the possible but, in California especially, it is often the art of the impossible. Somehow politicians must make it seem possible to get benefits without paying costs. But if we are too squeamish to build a dam and inconvenience some fish or reptiles, too aesthetically delicate to permit drilling for oil out in the boondocks and too paranoid to allow nuclear power plants to be built, then we should not be surprised if there is not enough electricity to supply our homes and support a growing economy.
The easy answer that is preferred is to use electricity generated outside of California -- somewhere out in the real world beyond our borders.
An animal lover I know eats all kinds of meat, but would prefer to think there's some sort of chicken tree than to dwell on the reality that the business of butchering (in a literal, not hyperbolic sense) puts food on her table. Californians, dwelling in their own enviro-friendly world, want the fiction of an energy tree in their back yard, without the "ugly" real world interfering.