from freepress.org
Harvey Wasserman
The latest bogus fossil-nuke blackout: this grid should not exist
August 15, 2003
This is the fourth---and worst---completely unnecessary major blackout
of the
Northeast 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.
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