Good morning! Today's lead editorial from the Des Moines Register. A good step. Lyle Des Moines Register Editorial: Rebuild U.S. energy systems Ramming a bill through Congress in a few months, however, would invite political gridlock. By Register Editorial Board 08/20/2003 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A power plant shuts down in Ohio and the price of gasoline jumps 10 cents a gallon in Des Moines. That, more or less, is what happened when last week's power blackout in the Midwest and Northeast interrupted oil-refinery production. It's one of the many repercussions rippling through the U.S. economy. The power outage cost the nation's economy an estimated $6 billion in everything from lost business to spoiled food. Economists likened the impact of the blackout to a snowstorm - brief, expensive, tolerable. Yet the massive failure is a symptom of serious long-term problems with the nation's energy systems. This is no snowstorm. It's more like a return of the Ice Age. The difference is that we have it in our power to do something about it if only our elected leaders have the will to make tough decisions and be frank with the American people that the solutions are neither simple nor cheap. Alas, partisan bickering already has erupted in Congress, where the Republican leadership and the Bush administration want to roll the electric-power transmission issue into a comprehensive energy bill by Thanksgiving. Democrats, meanwhile, want to deal with the blackout separately. They fear it will get bogged down by hot-button issues like opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling and auto fuel-efficiency standards. Both sides have a point. The energy bill, which sets national energy policy, is a logical place to address the subject of building a reliable electric-power supply for the 21st century. Indeed, why was nothing on this issue in the bill before the blackout? Experts have warned Congress about the problem for years. But it makes no sense to rush major changes through in just a few months, either. The problem revealed by last week's blackout is this: The network of electric-transmission and distribution lines is inadequate to carry the growing power demands of businesses and consumers. And because the network functions with little federal or state regulatory oversight, there is no meaningful authority to make decisions or discipline wrongdoers. What rules are in place were inadequate or ignored, according to officials of the North American Electric Reliability Council, which was created after the famous 1965 New York blackout. Perhaps the biggest decision ahead is whether the nation intends to complete the deregulation of energy begun in the 1990s but interrupted by the Enron meltdown. Some say deregulation is the cause of these problems; others say it is the cure. Having it both ways does not seem to be working. In any case, there is no silver bullet. Congress would be crazy to try to ram one into an energy policy bill already larded with controversial provisions, certain to create political gridlock. Americans may scoff watching Iraq struggle to recover basic systems, but we now see that America's energy infrastructure is surprisingly fragile, too, and in need of serious investment. We need to rebuild our own country, while rebuilding others". ********************* Lyle R. Krewson Sierra Club Conservation Organizer 6403 Aurora Avenue #3 Des Moines, IA 50322-2862 515/276-8947 515/238-7113 - cel [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To view the Sierra Club List Terms & Conditions, see: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/terms.asp