Power Crisis, Cont’d
So far, the media has blamed free markets and “deregulation” as the cause for the power shortages, even though California’s energy market is by no measure free and was not “deregulated” in 1996, but actually “reregulated,” with one set of regulations substituted for another. While reregulation was certainly responsible for California’s energy crisis, another important cause has gone unnoticed and has not been given proper attention: environmentalist activism.
Green activists have worked for decades to stop the construction of major power plants in California,and have succeeded. As a result, California generates less power per resident than any other state, and “imports” about one quarter of the energy it consumes.
The origins of today’s energy crisis can be traced back to the1970s, when lawsuits, demonstrations, and media campaigns by environmental groups succeeded in delaying the construction of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant for 10 years and forcing unnecessary project changes that increased building costs twelve-fold, from $500 million to $6 billion. Similar problems plagued San Onofre.
Environmentalists justified the changes by claiming that nuclear power is inherently unsafe. But the fact is that hundreds of nuclear plants have been safely producing electricity around the Western world, without the burden of having had environmentalist changes to their original plans.
Environmentalist groups have also prevented coal and oil power plants from being built by lobbying legislators to enact such Draconian regulations and unreasonable air-quality standards that even some existing plants were forced to shut down.
At the EPA, environmentalists have worked to institute a torturous process to slow down and deny approval to the construction of power plants. Daniel Nix, deputy director at the California Energy Commission, observed, “Of the last five certificates we awarded (for power plant construction), four were challenged by the Environmental Protection Agency.”
The recent blackouts are an early warning sign of the dangers to human life coming from environmentalist activism. How much more of the Green agenda are Americans willing to put up with, and for how long?
David Holcberg
(Holcberg, a former civil engineer, is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org) in Marina del Rey.)
