I Hope Calif. Enjoyed the High Tech Civilization While It Lasted

Because they are going to be living in the 19th Century. On and off, anyway. A new normal? Millions of Californians prepare to live in dark again as 3rd power cut looms amid fires, high winds.

Millions of Californians prepared to live in the dark again as the state’s largest utility warned it might cut power for the third time in as many weeks because of looming strong winds and high fire danger.

What no one in the media seems to be pointing out, is that all of this would be unnecessary if the state would (or would have allowed PG&E to) remove brush and dead trees. At least around the power lines. Does the utility have responsibility? No doubt. They have failed to maintain stuff, but then California has seen the most regulated electric power industry in the nation. Even when they called it “deregulation” they included even more regulations for what the utilities could, and could not, do.

Anyway, it’s hard to have a technological civilization with out technology. Virtually all of which (staring with municipal water treatment, and ending with refrigeration) is completely dependent on electric power. Not to mention, the internet, credit card processing, telephones, fuel pumps, traffic signals, …