Posted on 07/19/2014 6:18:35 AM PDT by bestintxas
n 1980, under the first administration of Governor Jerry Brown, California decided it wasn’t going to build any more power plants but would follow Amory Lovins’ “soft path,” opting instead for conservation and renewable energy. By 2000, with the new digital economy sucking up electricity, a drought in the Pacific Northwest cut hydropower output and the state found itself facing the Great California Electrical Shortage.
You know what happened next. For weeks the Golden State struggled to find enough electricity to power its traffic lights. Brownouts and blackouts cascaded across the state while businesses fired up smoke-belching diesel generators to keep the lights on. Governor Gray Davis finally got booted out of office but the state didn’t rescue itself until it threw up 12,000 megawatts of new natural gas plants.
At that point California officials decided that the whole thing had been engineered by Enron and other out-of-state merchant providers and the charges and lawsuits flew. No Democrat ever learned a lesson. The state is now 60 percent dependent on natural gas for its electricity — twice the national average — and its electric bills are almost twice that of surrounding states. Industry is headed for the door.
So how have California’s liberal counterparts on the East Coast managed to avoid the same fate? You’d think a region that could produce Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders plus legions of college students trained to hate fossil fuels would have no trouble pursuing the same green dreams. Well, it’s about to happen. In the next few years New England will be facing a full-scale power shortage.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
I know there are a few gas lines that move gas around, but NIMBY is alive and well and will kill people if things go south.
I say let 'em freeze in the dark.
It’s an Atlas Shrugged world.
When I moved to Boston in the mid-80s, there was a sign adjacent to one of the elevated highways in town (and it did not appear to be a new sign, it was weathered).
It had a light like a traffic signal (or highway onramp) light. It had some panic message about how energy levels were being exceeded. I never saw that red light trip. It was constantly at “OK- but GO SLOW”.
Big Bruddah is watching you.
The more things change in the “miracle” that was Dukakis’ Massachusetts, the more they stay the same.
I worked in the tech sector up there (about 40 miles out of town) and we constantly experienced rolling blackouts in the summer.
Ever try to run a computer company without power?
Okay, everybody go home.
Dead Red Ted Kennedy wouldn’t permit a wind farm on Martha’s vineyard’s playground for the idle/idol rich.
How WELL I remember the rolling Brown-...Outs..courtesy OF Jerry Brown and company. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone given that most areas have reasonable decent sane people in them ..even if only as a miniscule minority.
Time to revise an old slogan:
“Let the dumb bastards freeze in the dark.”
Meanwhile the White House will remain a toasty 80-plus degrees all winter.
Does anyone else remember those stories from early in the Obama regime?
Blue State Dimmers. Full of hope-n-change, but not very bright. Soon to be not very warm either, especially after the EPA bans wood stoves.
In case it goes down the memory hole (barf alert, too):
Obama Cranks Up White House Thermostat: “You Could Grow Orchids In There”
Uh oh.
Hey, remember all that fuss about how Obama was bucking tradition by not wearing his suit jacket in the Oval Office? And how it was going to be much more casual in there? Well, there’s this other side to it: energy waste.
The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.
“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”
Sure, but didn’t he spend some time in Chicago? And don’t they make their politicians go through some kind of rigorous acclimation training to get used to the cold? Why, just look at these Chicago politician stock photos I’ve found:
.........
In any case, I think Obama wears a suit better than most politicians. Keep the jacket on, I say, and the thermostat down around 68.
At that time we in the Eastern High Plains area were producing so much power that we had to open electrical outlets and let the power flow out on the ground to keep from overwhelming our system! ;-D
Those were hot years and the AC was constantly on keeping us cool as hogs on ice.
“Let the dumb bastards freeze in the dark.”
Or as we say on the Southern High plains area amongst the oil wells,
“Drive like hell! Freeze a Yankee!”
So let’s bring in a lot of illegal aliens as icing on the cake. How much more power will they use?
someone remind me who did New England vote for in the 2008 and 2012 elections?
“...but environmental groups insist the lines be buried underground.”
This will never happen, not at the power levels they’re talking about - can’t be done, not even close. The environmental groups, of course, know that - but it plays well with the masses. It allow them to say: “Yes, we have proposed a solution too, but Big Power doesn’t want to pay for it.”
Unfortunately Republicans have NO CLUE as to how to take these people on, no clue at all.
The power goes out every time a chipmunk f*rts in Red Hampshire...the number of power outages up here stagger the imagination. During all my time in Tennessee; we lost power ONCE, and that was for just a few hours after a near-miss by a tornado.
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