Well, I note that the Californians are looking at a 40% electric rate hike! The news blurb on the Netscape site this morning had its usual silly poll and it asked who I thought was to blame for the electrical woes in CA.
Wow! That's the question of the century. I think the choices were the electric users in California, the power companies and the other was the CA legislature.
The users can't be at fault under any circustances for using and being willing to pay for any amount of electricity. That was a stupid direction to point the fickle finger of fate.
The electric utilities can't get one bit of the blame either. They want to inundate the user with more power than he can use so they make more dough. More stupidity in scapegoat selection.
The legislature is also blameless as they are the stooges of popular opinion and and suffer under the popular vote.
No, it is a more nebulous and nefarious fall guy, which has destroyed nations and civilizations. "General Public Apathy, a sense of deferring till tomorrow tough decisions for the long term while focusing in on useless minutia of the short term.
The only unapathetic are the tree huggers and folks who have stirred up the screams for no new power plants. For as they posit, they harm the environment, they kill us, they kill the flora and fauna. They are correct to a degree if you don't want to squash an ant for fear of it affecting you Karma. However, not only are we stewards of this place, we are its masters! Lesser things, great or small have lesser places and can't figure against the ultimate destiny of man. The time for a total balance with nature is over. It died with the philosophy of the indian.
Such thinking would work great with a total world wide population of 5-10 million people. So, short of a good old fashion world wide nuclear holocaust making us a few tens of billions less and the world a more balanced environment (the essential eco system would recovery very quickly too), we are just going to have to bite the bullet and decide whether we want power or snail darters.
Nuclear energy, (fission) steadily brought on line would have avoided this situation and will at some point probably be brought it hastily (frighteningly) to solve the woes of nation wide brown outs.
Remember, California is a trial balloon for fads to sweep eastward. You won't be anyone until you have experienced rolling blackouts or brownouts. Fun and rugged at first, but they will become wearisome and then frightful soon enough. Apathy turns to rage real quick. Let's not hope anarchy.
Three Mile Island effectively ended the fission power romance which always seemed to need a bit too much vasoline for miss Jane Q. Publics liking anyway. Any chance of fission bedding her again through forgetfulness or a weak moment was, for the time being, again, lost with Chernobyl. That's OK, she'll beg for it soon enough.
It is like the choices are lessening with time to wind up as either choke on fossil fuel fumes in a CO2 ridden hot house planet, risk a melt down here or there from time to time or huddle cold and frightened in the dark.
Fusion, I fear may not even be a player. If so, it will come very late to the game.
I offer no solutions, just best guess future scenarios. No Chicken Little here, just good ole' "hard sayin's" as the southern comedian Brother Dave Gardner would say.
Richard Hull
Created on Wednesday, March 28, 2001 10:29 PM EDT by Richard Hull