Two years ago this month, a Blackout plunged 50 million people in
Northeastern U.S. and the Canadian province of Ontario into total darkness
for more than a day, wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy. Now, it's the
devastation in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi wrought by Hurricane
Katrina that has killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of people.
The common thread in both disasters is that energy and environmental
experts sounded early alarms about the potential for catastrophes like
this unless the White House immediately took the necessary steps to
upgrade the country's aging power grid to stave off widespread power
failures, and in the case of Hurricane Katrina, backed the Kyoto protocol,
which aims to curb the air pollution blamed for severe climate changes
that is no doubt the reason Katrina turned from a relatively small
hurricane to a destructive monstrosity due to high sea surface
temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Weather
Service.
While supporting the Kyoto treaty would not have done anything to prevent
an act of God like Hurricane Katrina or the destruction left in its
aftermath it would have been a step in the right direction. Global Warming
isn't some hair-brained scheme cooked up in a laboratory by mad
scientists. It's an issue that is as real as terrorism. And it's just as
deadly.
In keeping with this column's theme, power shortages and daily blackouts
have become a daily occurrence around the country over the past few years
as the antiquated power grid is continuously stretched beyond its
means-mainly a result of electricity deregulation, whereby power is sent
hundreds of miles across the grid to consumers by out-of-state power
companies as opposed to power being sent to consumers by local utilities,
which is what the grid was designed for.
Still, the Bush administration, and Democratic and Republican lawmakers,
has refused to treat the issues with the same type of urgency given to the
so-called war on terror, which makes the president's sympathetic response
to Katrina's victims and those who are trapped inside elevators during
blackouts insincere.
Keep in mind the White House refuses to change its stance on the issues
because it would be economically unfriendly to President Bush's financial
supporters-the oil and gas industry who just got $15 billion in tax breaks
under the new energy bill that guarantees these corporate behemoths will
end up emitting more toxic emissions and greenhouse gases into the air
from their power plants and refineries, further eroding the environment
and, as a result, ensuring that Global Warming, and unusual weather
related disasters like Hurricane Katrina, are here to stay.
On the electricity front, all may appear to be back to normal since the
worst blackout in the nation's history struck an unsuspecting public two
years ago. But there's a crisis in the making there too and it's only a
matter of time before another catastrophic power failure hits.
Just last week, more than 500,000 Southern California residents fell
victim to rolling blackouts after a transmission line linking California
to Oregon tripped, creating a shortage of more than 2,600 megawatts. One
megawatt can light about 750 homes.
Two years ago, President Bush promised that the nation's aging power grid
would quickly be updated to stave off the potential for future blackouts
and to handle growing demand, but so far nothing substantial has been done
and the likelihood for a Hurricane Katrina-like disaster remains all too
real. Demand for electricity is expected to increase by 45 percent by
2025. The Bush administration has not developed a plan to handle, at the
very least, the annual increase in demand.
Spotting the potential for a disaster similar to the August 2002 blackout,
Pat Wood, the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
and a close friend of Bush, distanced himself from the do nothing attitude
of his friends in the White House.
"The reliability of the transmission grid is too important to let another
year go by without legislation providing for nationwide mandatory
reliability rules," Wood said at a June 8 Energy and Resources
Subcommittee hearing on the reliability of the nation's electricity
system.
Currently, power companies maintain grid reliability by following
voluntary guidelines designed by the power industry, just like the
voluntary emissions limits the fossil-fuel industry says it upholds. A
measure that would have imposed mandatory grid reliability rules and
mandatory limits on fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emissions was defeated
by the Senate earlier this year at the urging of President Bush, who said
the voluntary rules were working.
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Jason Leopold is the author of the explosive memoir, News Junkie, to be
released in the spring of 2006 by Process/Feral House Books. Visit
Leopold's website at
www.jasonleopold.com for updates.
