Thread by @ComradeArthur

Why is California on fire and has widespread blackouts?
Attitudes like this...
"headline from back in August at the San Francisco Chronicle:
“‘Radical’ tree trimming: Critics say PG&E’s
rush to stop fires may hurt California forests.”

pjmedia.com/instapundit/34…

AND ...
": The rolling blackouts in California is not a climate change story.
It’s a perfect storm of bad management decisions and
rent-seeking green energy contractors."
pjmedia.com/instapundit/34…

"There is far more concern over policing how people think and talk in California than there is in actually providing essential government services."

1/2
California’s investor-owned utilities have dealt with the increasingly batshit people in Sacramento by taking an “if you can’t beat them, join them” attitude in lobbying. And that’s what you are seeing backfiring now.

2/2
PG&E went all-in on the green energy projects that California lawmakers and their constituents love. So much so that the company was actively choosing to invest in new green projects rather than make the necessary safety upgrades to its existing transmission systems.

Credit Suisse estimated contracts with green energy companies costs PG&E $2.2 billion more than rates can support EVERY YEAR. 2 $billion for their liberal political connections, while the utility cannot afford even to **inspect** their 100,000 miles of power lines
But #Feelz!

The utility claims that inspecting the lines alone would require quadrupling their rates. That’s how long they have let their system rot in the service of liberal fantasies.
---------
This is very much Atlas Shrugged territory..

The cumulative financial cost of bringing these systems back to normal pretty much ensures the government is going to watch its tax base walk out the door.

Ref the first tweet "radical tree trimming"
Now that PG&E is playing catching they've hired 3,500 contractors from all over the country - who don't know local conditions and are cutting fast and sloppy. Sometimes fixing short term problems and creating long term ones.

Govl. Newsom ... blames “dog-eat-dog capitalism” for the current crisis.
Newsom is talking about one of the most regulated industries in the state — namely California’s energy utilities, which answer to the state’s public utilities commission.
not exactly an Ayn Rand operation.

1/2
The state could have, if it wanted, pushed the utilities to focus on the resilience and safety of its current infrastructure — implicated in some of the state’s most fearsome recent fires — as a top priority.

2/2
Instead, the commission forced costly renewable-energy initiatives on the utilities.
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And that IS out of an Ayn Rand novel.

In 2016, then-governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that had *unanimously* passed the state legislature to promote the clearing of trees dangerously close to power lines.

“California’s overriding goal should have been safe, cheap, and reliable power, a public good so basic that it’s easy to take for granted. The state’s focus on ideological fantasies has instead ensured it has none of the above.”

Here's another.
thefederalist.com/2019/10/30/its…
"California’s large and heavily regulated public utilities—PG&E, SDG&E, and SCE—prioritize wind and solar power, leaving little for powerline maintenance and upgrades."

It's not like there's not enough money to do maint.
" California already has among the highest electrical prices in the nation, "
They *choose* to use the money for #Feelz

Article points out that high power prices are driving production out of Calif - and to places, like China, that have crazy amounts of pollution from power generation.
Net result is MORE pollution.
But #Feelz.

"... seven months’ worth of emission increases from China would wipe out all the gains made by eliminating California’s carbon emissions. All of them."
Not 7 months of Chinese emissions - JUST THE
INCREASE IN EMISSIONS OVER 7 MONTHS.

<shows graph>
"We see that as the timber harvest plummeted, with a concurrent drop in active forest management practices, the area burned by wildfire grew as the fuel load increased."

"With the retreat of the timber industry came an inevitable buildup of uncleared brush as well as runaway tree density, with it becoming common to have four times the number of trees per acre as is considered healthy. "

"Between the drought and the bugs, millions of trees died—trees ... left in place because regulators, environmentalists, and politicians couldn’t muster the will to permit harvesting ... before they became worthless and deadly matchsticks."

Harvesting DEAD TREES was banned!