||| FROM BILL APPEL |||
The Snake River dam issue is heating up arguments for their removal (“save the salmon and our totemic southern resident killer whales”) or retention (“our ability to reduce fossil fuel usage requires an assured generation capacity to convert our lifestyle and economy from fossil fuels because global warming with its consequences is The Big One”).
Not surprisingly, the Snake River dam discussion has omitted the underlying cause of the conflict. OPALCO’s fundamental mission is to provide reliable electric power in an increasingly uncertain climate to support whatever lifestyle we choose. How we live isn’t their idea, it’s ours. We have an energy-intensive lifestyle, and view that as our right. Any material alteration is likely to be viewed as an infringement on that right. Moreover, our economy is based on the mindset that even after life’s necessities have been provided for, a further increase in the Western standard of living guarantees a better quality of life. The fact that this might possibly not be true maintains the quest for more, seeking better.
We make our choices, one at a time, as individuals. There is no “they.” It takes a certain courage to make choices that seem to benefit only others who decline to make them. These are issues of individual integrity. This is not OPALCO’s issue to solve. It is each of ours.
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Bill makes good points. I would like to see more OPALCO focus more on affordability. The cost of electricity is one area that is making living here difficult. There is really no advantage, in my view, for OPALCO to get into the political debates. Just stick to providing affordable, safe and reliable electricity.
Our lives are going to change when the next contract with the Bonneville Power Administration goes into effect, which will be not long from now as electric power planning goes. Municipal (City and PUDs) and cooperative customers have a “preference” for BPA’s power the legal breadth of which has eroded over the years. BPA has effectively cancelled a more efficient aluminum smelting operation to replace the Anacortes INTALCO smelter because even with increased efficiency, BPA can no longer contract for the needed power. We will need to lower our expectations.
We aren’t used to thinking of limits, of controlling our consumption. They happen somewhere else. Personal habits will have to change. Our habit of leaving phone and computer charges on 24/7 nationally equals a nuclear plant generating about a gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts. Prices follow availability. We can count on our rates going up, for causes outside OPALCO’s control.
The term “mindfullness” is old-fashioned. It may have to come back.
One thing concerns me… the so-called alternatives to Hydro – and that would most likely be pushed as nuclear energy – supposed “clean” energy – which is FAR from clean or sustainable. Anything that could knock out constant power needed for the cooling pools and spent rods (for many thousands of years!) could mean another Chernobyl or Chernobyls. In case no one has noticed, nuclear power plants need a massive amount of water – which is then polluted forever in human terms and not much better for the rest of Life. It’s why they build them next to rivers and on coasts, primarily. How would we even consider allowing any more of these? Even the ‘decomissioned’ ones are ‘hot’ for thousands of years. So stupid, greedy, and short-sighted. That leaves solar, wind, and the new idea – tidal; the former two also with drawbacks; I don’t know enough about tidal to know the impacts but it seems promising – but who knows the long term effect? Everything we do has a long term effect, it seems.
Mr. Appel may be right; the problems is with us. But is it really that simplistic?
Whatever sources we use, it still doesn’t solve unfettered consumption; you can’t legislate that or lecture that out of people. Consumerism is both income-driven and polluting – considering where all the cheap imports come from – anyone who hasn’t seen The Story of Stuff (youtube) ought to take the 20 minutes to do so. Try to understand what we’ve been conned into when all our manufacturing was offshored to Asian and other sweatshops by the overlords in power in a system meant to crush us. It’s mind-blowing, really.
You fault the people, the individual, Mr. Appel. If we’re honest, isn’t that sort of blaming the victims of a crushing capitalistic and consumer-driven system in a country that doesn’t manufacture anything anymore, except bombs and war machines and wars of aggression? I think the fault lies with tech-driven solutions and adverts, driving up consumption and waste, convincing people that having all this crap keeping us from real life, is “the good life” – in short, people have been brainwashed. I cringe when I see every country want to emulate the US’s life-killing model.
“Supply/demand” market driven rates won’t fall; the have’s will continue to waste because they can pay for all this gadgetry and waste – including waste of our most precious resource; water. The ‘have-nots’ will either go into debt trying to keep up with the wrong ideas of what true wealth actually is,. or they will freeze and starve.
We’re not all wasteful consumers, Mr. Appel. Poor people don’t have that option! Living in town in an all-electric subsidized, ‘smart metered’ apartment, I have to decide on whether to keep my place just above 50 degrees in winter – IF the power stays on – or treat myself to a shower or bath, since it’s about $5 bucks for every shower or bath I take. I’m one of the lowest kwh users, or so OPALCO tells me. In a world where you can hardly find a wool garment or blanket anymore over the ‘convenience’ of using synthetic fabrics which are useless in cold or wet situations, how is a body to stay warm in winter?.
In our all electric Eastsound UGA, thus far, the idiotic ‘solution’ to power outages in winter has been gas-powered generators – adding smoke, fumes, pollution, and noise to what, in past years, was peace and quiet with our woodstoves and candles – and the blessed dark sky. Now we have high mounted spotlights on all night or worse; motion detector’ lights – all at super high lumens. What a waste! I miss the stars and the Milky Way..
I’ve asked what we are supposed to do in the event all of us in our all-electric “urban growth area” in the event of a days’ long outage in the snow or ice? I guess we’re supposed to just cage our beloved pets and drag them to the Fire Hall shelter (IF we can get there), or leave them home unattended, and hope they’re alive in a few days. Unacceptable.
What are some real answers to these dilemmas of pushing all -electric heat and expensive heat pumps on us? I’m asking because I’d really like to know.
Those with enough money will use all the power they want; keeping demand high; nothing’s gonna change that.
I’m for dialing back BIG on the technocratic ‘solutions’ that are making people into obedient slaves to their cell phones and being OK with frying our brains with high frequency radio waves like 5G, known to destroy bees,’ bats,’ and birds’ navigational abilities. But how to convince anyone else? What are we DOING to our planet, ourselves, for ‘convenience-sake?’
Humanity’s trajectory frightens me.
I crave a much simpler, quieter, darker-sky life – impossible under the current state and county mandates to keep pushing unlimited growth. “progress” is cramming the opposite down all of our throats. One thing’s for sure; just like the cockroaches, we poor folks will be more resilient and able to deal, because we’ve HAD to.