Prevention now key
Out went the lights, and 50 million Americans and Canadians scrambled to cope. There isn’t a one of us who hasn’t spent a few hours in the dark, wondering when the electricity will come back on. Whether it’s an ice storm, thunderstorm or a car crashing into a pole, everything grinds to a halt. Fortunately most outages are brief and confined to a small geographic area. Nothing like the blackout Thursday has occurred in decades.
By now power has been restored to nearly all the 50 million people knocked out. Authorities are attempting to establish just what combination of glitches and happenstance led to the blackout. Basically, it can be explained simply that our nation’s power grids are similar to a house of cards. A key card folds and the house crumbles.
Energy experts for years have warned a blackout of this magnitude was imminent, but as long as the lights are on, the air conditioning is running, the computer, cell phones, television and microwave are humming, who pays attention?
The blackout has our attention now, but for how long? President Bush will use this opportunity to trot out his energy proposals. Congress shouldn’t be as quick to embrace a hasty solution, as it was in adopting the so-called Patriot Act following the terrorist’s attack.
Any long-term energy policy must be based on the cost Americans are willing to pay not only in their monthly utilities bills but in the toll to the environment. It is that cost that has caused concern over the president’s plan. He wants the federal government to hold the power to say where new power plants and lines should go, even if local and state governments don’t want them.
Power generation is a national concern, and the federal government should have some say-so, although not the ability to run roughshod over states.
Also leading to the distrust is the perception that Bush’s standards of clean air and plant discharges are not as high as those who would be asked to live, work and play near new power plants.
Yet, the blackout illustrates the devastation to the environment should power fail. In just a small example, sewerage plants incapable of pumping water, dumped raw waste into streams and lakes.
Finding a way to balance all concerns requires negotiation and statesmanship. Until now, there has been no immediate need for Congress to exhibit either.
But a compromise must be reached as demand for electricity is not decreasing. Without more power generation plants, more blackouts will surely follow.