It seems that the whole Blackout of 2003 was blown out of proportion to reality, distorted, and an attemptto hide blame from those who a really responsible for 50 millionpeople going in to the dark. Let's look at who to blame and what's not to blame.

Blame the Independent System Operator

Those power geeks, sitting in their little room with all thecomputers, are suppost to prevent the lights from going off. Theypull levers, push buttons, and type stuff in their computers tomake sure that the power level is constant and reliable. This iswhat they are paid to do, and this what they are suppost to bedoing.

I'm sure that more then a few little mistakes where made on thatThursday that the lights went out. Most of the stories mention thatthere are circuit breakers that are suppost to go off upon a surgeof power. People in the control rooms are suppost to prevent thisfrom happening, and when they see an area where power is out, or isthe very improper level, they are suppost to shut their connectionto this bad area off.

At least that's how I understand it. So why did this not happen?Where the people, being paid to watch the grid, just sleeping intheir chairs? Where they just too egotistical to do anything aboutit (our badass power plant will never be tripped up by a littlebrown out).

I've yet to seen any of the media or the Op-Eds place blamefirmly on this people, eventhough they likely deserve morethen a little blame.

Blame the Modern Political Culture

We are a technocratic society. We love our technology and ourbureaucracy, even if we pretend to hate it. Today we have a lotbetter perspective of the risk associated with certain activities,that we never had in the past.

Some research shows that exposure to magnetic fields caused byhigh-voltage lines may increase the risk of cancer. Likewise, thereis some more recent evidence that seems to contradict that. But doyou want to be the person who is dieing of cancer, or do you wantto be one who killed somebody by cancer? I'm not seeing anybody puttheir hands up.

Knowing the potential risk, is a good thing. We can now dothings to prevent it. But it changes the dynamic of the debate,which has been changed since our new found knowledge. Many peoplesimply don't want to live near high voltage lines, and who canblame them?

Other things have changed since the end of the industrialrevolution (which I love to say was, well, about 1965). We haveenvironmental standards to live by. We see the benifits of swampland, and open space in general, and we don't want it covered byugly power lines. This is a good thing: our ecosystem will behealthier, we will live longer, and the world will become aprettier place.

But it has a downside. It makes it darn hard to install new highvoltage power lines, with all the places that are no-nos for linesin our modern society. I'm not saying, all regulation is bad, orthat protecting open space is bad, I'm saying that it makesinstalling new transmittal lines much more difficult andcostly.

Why has the media not picked up on this major point? I reallydon't know. But society has changed, and the change has causedcertain aspects of our society to be deempahished and almostforgotten.

Gridlock on the Grid?

Politicians (especially those on the right), are screaming andyelling about how our grid designed in the 1950s and implementedmostly through the 1960s, is antique, crappy, 3rd world like, andjust plain terrible.

After all, the grid doesn't vote. Nobody is going to fightupgrading the grid as a whole, nor are they going to complain thatthe system is too efficient and reliable. You blame the grid, andnobody is going to complain.

I have my doubts that all this moaning about our old grid isgoing to lead anywhere. Community groups and environmentalists willlikely stop the addition of new lines, and probably with goodreason‹we don't need them at all.

The reality is that little of the grid will be changed. Maybe afew extra lines will be added in the weakest links, but those willhave a minimal effect on the larger picture. Lots of political haywill be made out of this all.

Get Out The Old Standbys

Everybody, let's blame the left and right's favorite whipping boys.Deregulation must be at fault, say the liberals, because nobody hasspent any money in the past 30 years on building new power lines(which is not true). Business doesn't want to spend money on stuffthat will not lead them to profit.

It's not like the government still controlled the distrubution of power, and their oversight saw no major problem with the grid (at least at the time). So it doesn't seem like deregulation was the problem, as much as government regulators.

I think my previous explanation explains the lack of new powerlines. I really doubt we need more, but we need people who areaccountable, and we need organizations restructured so they canmore quickly respond to emergencies, and make the necessary changesto get things back online.

Conserve and Reduce Dependence

I hope if we learn anything from this blackout, it's that we needto think outside the box, and find creative solution to address ourproblems. As I've noted in recent blog entries, some people didn'teven notice the black out in New York: namely those whogenerate their own power.

It's sure sounds like it's pretty darn cool to be off the grid.Your not dependent on the establishment to get your power, you cando whatever you want, within the laws of nature. In otherwords: your free. Now if I could only figure out how to get outof paying property taxes and how to be connected to the internetfor free. I guess technology isn't totally there yet.

Not to mention using wind and solar power is suppostly moreenvironmentally friendly. Your not blenching out all those toxicchemicals to generate power, so your not responsible for yourfraction of energy wastage (pollution, that 30% of which reachesyour house as electricity via the grid). Of course those batteriesand chemicals in the solar cell probably aren't the mostenvironmentally friendly, but it's better, I guess.

Another good idea is conservation. I use only florescent lightsin my room, since last spring. They provide a much wider beam, andgenerally are brighter then the 60-watt incandescents they replaced(and only use 14 watts a piece). Even they aren't perfect(florescent bulbs use nasty chemicals in them), but they are nicein the sense that they save on energy (and the energy bill).

Our Society's Crackpot Dependence On Power

It's quite annoying how dependent we are on the grid. Trafficlights are everywhere, without power, many intersections are toocomplex to allow for the smooth flow of traffic. Even ourinterstates, which are suppost to be free of stop lights, arescrewed up because traffic going off them has to stop.

The Averil Harrium State Office Campus somehow was designed toavoid traffic lights, it seems to be fast way to access stateoffices, in a system similar to the interstate system (and trafficcircles). Maybe we should design more intersections to be modernroundabouts, and one-way major roads, and force traffic to merge onand off with no traffic lights. But that might be tooconfusing.

As noted in another article this month, another solution wouldbe to ensure that our cities are suburban enough, to ensure that asmooth traffic flow exists, and not too much traffic jammed aroundone intersection.

The power outage caused a lot of food spoilage in the big city.Lots of it ended up in the landfill. After all, they really ain't gotanywhere better to put it in such a mindless, poorly plannedsociety. They are so removed from the land, they can't put it inanywhere but a landfill. Not to mention the whole issue of foodspoilage. Why do we live in a society that depends so much onfrozen and refrigerated food, when we new that such a power outagewas more then likely to happen at one point or another?

We Didn't Learn Much

I think society learned little of anything from the blackout, nordid we do much good. Little serious debate will result from theproblem, as most of it will be a bunch of political bullshiting. Weare a society of dependents, one that can not survive without theestablishment.

We should do better. I hope people read this article (if you read anything on this site read this one), and it provokes some thoughts. I know my grasp of writing ain't perfect, nor is my ideas, but they are only meant to be a start to better tommorow.