This is the fourth---and worst---completely unnecessary major regional blackout in this country in forty years, dating back to 1965.
It's scope---from Detroit to Ottawa to New York and New Jersey---is
absolutely awesome, especially since it's due to total stupidity and corruption.
This does not count the blackouts that raged through California in 2000-2001.
Those were "blackmails," set by Enron and the other Bush gas cronies to rip
$60 billion out of the state, leading to, among other things, the impending
ouster of Gov. Gray Davis.
When the lights went out, Davis kissed the feet of Southern California
Edison's John Bryson, who engineered a deregulation bill that gouged $30 billion out
of the ratepayers for the state's failed nukes. That opened the gates for
the gas pirates to steal yet another $60 billion. Davis got caught in the
backdraft.
The culprits in this latest northeastern disaster are basically the
same---the barons of fossil and nuclear power and their cronies in the electric utility
business.
Their "weapon" is an ancient electric grid that's obsolete if not obscene.
It is a massively fragile Rube Goldberg device that dangerously and
inefficiently carts around electricity from expensive, polluting and extremely unsafe
central generating plants to buildings that waste massive amounts of energy and
generate none.
That the grid will crash again and again and yet again is absolutely certain.
The only question is who are the real terrorists: errant crazies who blow
things up, or entrenched interests that refuse to change?
The technology now exists to transcend this mess. In the mid 1990s
California's green energy advocates proposed a 600-megawatt mosaic of solar, wind and
other renewable generators that would have entirely prevented the fake
deregulatory crisis of 2000-1. It was approved by the California Public Utilities
Commission, but then killed by Southern California Edison and the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission.
Today, the Bush Administration wants to further subsidize its fossil/utility
friends with a bad energy bill, and by pouring billions into "upgrading" the
electric grid. The only thing certain is that every cent of that money will be
wasted.
In 1952 a Blue Ribbon report to Harry Truman predicted that the future of
America's energy rested with the sun. It predicted 13 million solar-powered
homes here by 1975, and the promise of decentralized, off-grid self-sufficiency.
Instead, Dwight Eisenhower took us into the pit of the "Peaceful Atom". A
trillion dollars later, we have a half-century of crashing grids and dangerous
nukes that are vulnerable to terrorism and must shut down precisely when
they're most needed, as they did during this latest blackout. The latest Bush
energy bill only makes the situation worse, with more nuke subsidies and a powerful
push for fossil fuels, especially coal.
The whole system demands a green deconstruction. Solar technologies are
ready to make energy self-sufficiency a tangible reality. Photovoltaic cells on
rooftops and embedded in windows can produce grid-free electricity, with
battery or fuel-cell backups. Geothermal power can heat and cool with nothing but
the power of the earth's crust. Methane digestion can turn waste into usable
gas. Basement generators can use biomass fuels like ethanol and soy diesel for
off-grid self-sufficiency.
These systems need not provide 100% of a building's energy, but can gradually
make them increasingly self-sufficient. Meanwhile more efficient heating,
lighting and cooling systems can reduce demand. Windows that actually open and
close can balance usage, building by building.
Bush's "upgrading the grid" means a new money pit for the same old unsafe
nukes, polluting coal burners and gas turbines whose prices are set to skyrocket…
all looped together by dangerous, wasteful wires that are bound to crash again
and again.
San Francisco has used part of a public bond to put the first of a new
generation of solar cells atop its downtown Moscone Center. Those same cells
could've kept Madison Square Garden or any other Manhattan building up and running
during this latest outage. Will New Yorkers know better next time?
The technology for a decentralized, solar-based power system is ready now.
We don't need massive research breakthroughs.
We need public demand and fully funded production capacity. And to stop
repeating the same mistakes because the utility and fossil/nuke guys fund the
politicians in power.
This isn't rocket science. It's just common solar sense, known to all since
1952.
Harvey Wasserman is author of THE LAST ENERGY WAR and senior editor of
www.freepress.org.
