Venezuela has suffered through recurring power outages this year, as money for routine maintenance dries up and power plant employees flee the country (and, okay, as the US practices its cyberwar skills on a vulnerable target).
Some of the blackouts have lasted as long as a week. Here’s an aerial photo comparing Caracas on a normal night with a “new normal” blackout night.
Why open a post on California’s blackouts with Venezuela? Because the latter is not a surprise. A socialist Latin American country is expected to spend a fair bit of time in the dark while its impoverished citizens barter cigarettes for gasoline.
Meanwhile we Americans, safe in the belief that our big systems are well-run, can’t imagine ending up in such a self-inflicted mess. And yet…this month Californians are enduring rolling blackouts as the (now bankrupt) local utility tries to avert a repeat of last year’s equipment-failure-caused fires that destroyed entire towns. See Paradise CA “wiped off the map” by fire.
And where America’s traditional take on natural disasters is that they happen, we throw the needed resources into rebuilding, and normal life returns — that may not be possible this time:
Massive California blackouts could become way of life
(NBC) – As PG&E begins a second round of fire-safety power shutoffs, it warns a third, bigger blackout could be needed as soon as the weekend.
Hundreds of thousands of residents of Northern California whose power will be shut off in the next two days got even worse news Wednesday: Another, even larger, blackout is likely over the weekend.
The state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Corp., or PG&E, began shutting off electricity to nearly a half-million people Wednesday afternoon, the second massive blackout in two weeks. It said hot, dry winds and low humidity were creating a high risk of sparks and “rapid wildfire spread” from its long-neglected power lines.
The blackouts will eventually spread to parts of 17 counties — including such large communities as Santa Rosa, Sonoma and Napa but not San Francisco or San Jose — at least through Thursday afternoon and through Friday afternoon in other parts of the region, PG&E said.
In the southern part of the state, Southern California Edison began cutting off power to almost 27,000 customers on Thursday and said it was considering shutoffs to almost 400,000 more. The potential coverage area includes such large communities as San Bernardino, Malibu, Irvine, Glendale and Palm Springs but not Los Angeles itself, which is served by a separate power company. Total potential blackouts could exceed 1 million.
“Some would say, ‘It’s life.’ But I think it’s not the life we used to have,” John Sikora of Placerville told KCRA. “I think it could easily be changed.”
PG&E is in the largest bankruptcy proceeding in U.S. history, threatened by as much as $18 billion in potential liabilities from the role its power lines played in several highly destructive fires that burned hundreds of thousands of acres of Northern California in 2017 and 2018.
The company has warned that wide-scale rolling blackouts could be needed for as long as a decade as it races to harden its transmission systems, calling it “a multi-year journey.”
“We do think that this is the new normal that we need to be prepared for,” Ari Vanrenen, a spokeswoman for the utility, told NBC News during the blackouts earlier this month.
Which brings us back to Venezuela and the rest of what used to be called the Third World, where overpopulation collides with corruption and mismanagement to produce crises that never really end. Their citizens’ lives are hard in ways that middle class American’s can’t imagine. But as the US and the rest of the developed world make basically the same mistakes – overborrowing while moving tens of millions of people to large cities and/or disaster-prone regions like Southern California and the East Coast’s hurricane alley, this same combination of too many crises and not enough wealth is producing a Third World style permanent cut in living standards.
What happens next is predictable: Over-indebted governments faced with the need to bail out everyone in sight will create a tidal wave of new currency to keep the chaos at bay, leading to a collapse in those currencies’ value.
California, as usual, seems to be leading the way.
10 thoughts on "Welcome To The Third World, Part 30: California Burning In The Dark"
I happen to live near the city of Doral, a haven for Venezuelans, and for years I heard their arrogant ignorance about Chavez and Maduro being “good dictators” and their country not being like Cuba.
Incredibly, after being able to bail out to the US they’re still arrogant and ignorant and resent there not being a class system here that benefits who you know, not what you know.
– DO REMEMBER: Venezuela is also suffering under a (DELIBERATE) boycott by the US (!!!!).
– PG&E is a GOOD example how corporate greed is (very) “detrimental” for a society as a whole. The company was able to increase its profits by cutting back on maintenance. PG&E’s maintenance consists of things like cutting back tree branches, removing trees and replacing old wooden poles (carrying power lines) with new poles. But PG&E reduced the budget for maintenance and one of the results were those wild fires in California.
– As soon as all the bad stuff came out PG&E declared bankruptcy and that meant that (californian) taxpayer has to pick up the tab for all the “misdeeds” which were perpetrated by PG&E. And that included the botched construction of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. In that power plant everything was constructed “the wrong way” and California had to step in to rescue the project (financially) (as well).
I think what you mean is that PG&E is a good example of how GOVERNMENT REGULATED “corporations” are detrimental for society as a whole.
The real reason PG&E didn’t ‘cut back tree branches, remove [dead] trees and replace old wooden poles (carrying power lines) with new [aluminum] poles,’ is because of environmental restrictions. They couldn’t touch the underbrush in case there were woodland creatures living there.
So, not only are all woodland creatures toast, so is a lot more.
I’m sincerely sorry for the woodland creatures but I feel no compunction for Californians. They deserve it.
– I don’t have any knowledge of all the environmental regulations that were implemented in California over the years. Sometimes that state is rightfully called the “People’s Republic of California”.
– But this DOES NOT eliminate the fact that PG&E has DECREASED its maintenance budget over the years in order to INCREASE its profits.This was only one of the many (sometimes highly questionable) tricks PG&E has used to increase proftis. By doing so, PG&E has deliberately put its own (economic) future at stake. And now the “chickens have come home to roost” for PG&E and California.
– On top of that: PG&E has a monopoly in parts of California. In that regard they have A LOT OF leverage over the state.
– Given the fact that A LOT OF houses are made of wood here in the US, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a LARGE city (LA, San Francisco, Seattle, etc.) to go up in flames as well in the next say 10 years. I thought that such large fires would be something of the past but I think it could happen again in the (near) future.
– Keep in mind: the amount of rainfall in western parts of North America (including western parts of the US, including states like Idaho & California) has gone down significantly since the year say 2000. (No, this has NOTHING to do with “Global Warming”. The reason for this reduced rainfall is actually the pacific coastal waters becoming cooler.)
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You are wrong about the San Onofre Nuclear Plant. That plant was not connected with PG&E at all. I worked there for several years and it was run by Southern California Edison. It did have some design problems but it was unprofitable and that’s why it was shut down. The state of CA will not let power companies earn enough money to fund their business which are hit by onerous regulations that are unnecessary. That causes neglect of other things such as power line maintenance. You should get your facts right before you post.
– Not ONE nuclear powerplant has been build without (state) subsidy.
– The problem with a nuclear power plant is that after the plant has been closed that plant will continue to cost money (millions and millions, if not billions and billions) for decades and decades. All paid for by the tax payer
No nuclear power plant is paid for by taxpayers. All nuclear power plants are required by Federal law to set aside millions of dollars to pay for decommissioning. After decommissioning there is not even a tiny bit of radioactive left on site. Keep talking about what you don’t know.
Hey, John, you are absolutely right that the U.S. has millions of people living in regions vulnerable to wildfires and hurricanes. But don’t forget the millions who are living in arid regions off depleting aquifers — and not just in California! Aquifers are another source of natural capital that we’re sucking dry.