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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