I live in Humboldt County. We’ve had our power shut off twice now, even though we’re not in a fire area. Here are my thoughts:
Like all natural monopolies, the People should own the power grid. And Water. And Roads, And Cable Internet. The people who run our utilities need to be answerable to US, not to shareholders. If WE were in charge of our utilities, we would have allocated the funds where they should have gone, instead of in someone’s pocket.
I know this isn’t as important as the danger that people are experiencing due to the fires, but this is DEVASTATING to small businesses like mine. NOBODY is coming to shop in my store while this madness is going on. My sales are down 90% because the entire town is sitting on line at Costco trying to fill their gas tanks. But I still have to pay my rent, and my loans, and, and and… And when my store is closed because there’s no heat or lights, my employees lose hours, and then THEY can’t pay their rent. (I’m going to try to bonus them, if I have any cash to do it with…)
Sure, it’s easy to say, “don’t live there.” But WHERE do we go? How do I pick up a business that’s 10 years old and has a customer base, and just drop it somewhere else? Arizona? You mean where it’s already too hot and getting hotter? Michigan? Where there’s no clean water, and blizzards that are getting worse? Florida? Where we’ll be trashed by hurricanes?
Rather than migration, we can do this smartly, IF we have the political will. That’s a big if.
Step one: get the profit out of our utilities. PGE should forfeit the grid to the state.
Step two: Raise some dough (bonds?) to bring our grid up to the standards necessary in a climate crisis world. Start new, huge tax credits for solar.
Step three: Institute a national climate crisis work force. Take every human who wants a job, and put them to work making our country climate crisis ready. Because it’s not only coming, it’s HERE.
Step four: Slap anyone who asks “how are we going to pay for it?” That’s a straw man. When we want to do something — anything — like going to war, or giving tax breaks to zillionaires, we ALWAYS find the money. Always. Every single time. Remember when the Iraq war was estimated to cost $85 million. Real cost? Last I heard, CBO said $2.4 trillion. TRILLION.
I say, we “declare war” on the Climate Crisis, and spend whatever the heck it takes to win that war. It’s either that, or the whole damn country will look like Puerto Rico (another national shame!) before too long.