IP: Bruce Sterling on Cal Blackouts

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>
>http://www.feedmag.com/templates/default.php3?a_id=1583
>
>Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackout
>Bruce Sterling on the origins, the outrages, and the lessons of 
>California's energy muddle.
>
>CALIFORNIA'S ENERGY CRISIS: what a fantastic muddle. Bits versus atoms. 
>Clicks versus bricks. It's very 2001 -- all about the New Economy getting 
>hauled from its Volvo and curbstomped by the Old Economy. California's 
>problem is that energy is not bits. You can't burn bits to keep warm. A 
>natural gas pipeline is not the Internet Cloud. There are networks, and 
>then there are networks. This is what comes of trustingly treating a rusty 
>gas pipeline like the warm and kindly Internet.
>
>California runs on natural gas pipes, not fiber optics. On the Internet, 
>you can produce all the bits you want and shuffle them around at the speed 
>of light -- sort of. But natural gas isn't bits and it doesn't get 
>"produced." It gets extracted out of big dirty holes in the ground, and 
>then shipped in big glugging rusty pipes. That's the story.
>
>The "free market" doesn't even enter into this discussion.  OPEC is a 
>cartel. OPEC is 105% market friction; market friction is why they exist. 
>The fossil-fuel business is the Old Economy at its most primeval and 
>piratical. It's not run by dot-com guys in moleskin slacks and polo 
>shirts. It's run by genocidal warlords in berets.
>
>Which is not to say that this crisis is lucid, clear, and simple. On the 
>contrary, this is California in one of its bad karma moments: a seriously 
>weird scene. Steve Peace, the state senator who authored California's 1996 
>deregulation bill, is also the guy who produced the daffy sci-fi parody, 
>Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!  While the governor, Gray Davis, was trying 
>to patch the crisis together, a suicidal lunatic tried to assassinate 
>him.  This maniac drove an eighteen-wheeler milk truck straight up the 
>steps of the State Capitol at seventy miles an hour. So while the State 
>Assembly passes its emergency bailouts, California's Capitol is cracked, 
>patched, and stinking of charred flesh and gasoline.
>
>But those are mere tinsel threads in that glamorous cultural tapestry that 
>once gave us Reagan and Sonny Bono.  For a deeper understanding, a 
>situation this severe requires a list. Here's what has gone wrong in 
>California, in more or less direct order of crisis-hood. Some of these 
>things may be dealt with in a big hurry, given political genius and 
>generous bankers. Others are going to hang on for years.
><snip>



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