Arnold Suffers Not Only From Broken Leg But a Case of "Dam-nesia?"

The Pasadena Pundit ^ | January 7, 2006 | Wayne Lusvardi

[WayneLusvardi]

Arnold Suffers Not Only From Broken Leg But a Case of "Dam-nesia?"

Damnesia - damn amnesia, e.g., "What's Arnold's problem? Oh, he's suffering from damnesia again." - Pseudodictionary.com

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is using the environmentalists own "Global Warming" rhetoric as a reason to build new dams in California which they have opposed (see here: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070107/news_1n7dams.html). Even worse for environmentalists, he proposes to free up the long-standing political log jam on the infamous "Peripheral Canal" which would send water, which is dangerously backing up behind flood levees in Sacramento, around the Delta to Southern California. With shrewd ideological co-opting tactics like this, who knows maybe even skeptics may soon become "true believers" in global warming.

However, no mention is made in the Governor's press release whether these new dams would add any new hydropower to California's growing demand for electricity. Not only is Governor Schwarzenegger suffering from a broken leg in a recent skiing accident but possibly he's got a case of what might be called "dam-nesia."

In 2001, California experienced a calamitous electricity crisis. The popular notion promulgated in the media was that it was caused by Enron's infamous trading maneuver's which spiked electricity prices at the peak of the crisis. However, this was far from the truth.

The reality was that in 1996 the Federal EPA mandated that California reduce smog or it would impose fees on air and ship traffic, no-drive days and one-stop truck deliveries http://www.calepa.ca.gov/pressroom/Releases/1996/C3396.htm The simplest way to reduce smog was to mothball all its old, polluting power plants, which was euphemistically called "energy deregulation."

Not only did California suffer a loss of electricity generation from mothballed power plants but concurrently state and federal agencies required utilities to destroy dams to restore salmon runs

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/comsite5/bin/pdinventory.pl?pdlanding=1&referid=2930&purchase_type=ITM&item_id=0286-6684620. A check of California energy statistics indicates that the major reason for a decline in electricity in 2001 was a loss of generation from hydropower and nuclear power plants, both targets of environmentalists http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_generation.html

Inexplicably, hydropower generation decreased 17,048 gigawatt hours in 2001 and hasn't fully recovered since. Was environmentally-mandated restoration of salmon runs one of the culprits of the Electricity Crisis of 2001 but never reported by the sleeping-walking media?

Another reason that electricity prices spiked in 2001 was that backup hydropower was unavailable from the Pacific Northwest due to a drought (no doubt due to the new bogeyman of "global warming!"). Without competition from cheap hydropower, the rapid shift to natural gas inflated energy prices wildly. This is to say nothing about how government induced an electricity pricing fever to pay off the old mortgages (stranded debts) on the mothballed power plants by enacting price controls, tacking surcharges ("transition fees") on energy purchases, and erecting inter-state trading barriers.

New state laws AB 32 and SB 1368 now mandate that California's municipally-run utilities must buy at least 20% of their electricity from "greenpower" sources. However, hydropower for some reason is not considered as politically correct "greenpower." But what about hydropower from new dams, which are going to be built anyway to ostensibly mitigate "global warming?"

Unlike the states of Idaho and Washington, California is increasingly dependent on imported sources of electricity to slake the demands of its ever-growing population http://www.energy.ca.gov/html/energysources.html. This means dependency on overly-maligned "dirty coal" and controversial offshore Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) platforms. Nevertheless, California should overcome its "damnesia" to hydropower when it selects and designs the sites for any new dams to combat "global warming."

In acting the phrase "go break a leg" is said to actors for good luck before they go on stage, especially on opening nights. The term "break a leg" comes from the contrarian belief that one ought not to utter the words 'good luck' to an actor. By wishing someone bad luck, it is supposed that the opposite will occur. Let's hope that Governor Schwarzenegger's broken leg is a lucky charm for building news dams and the long-awaited Peripheral Canal, but that he doesn't forget to push for amending California's new "Greenhouse" gas laws to allow hydropower to be considered as "greenpower."

[Alia]

Well written article.