Populics

By Aidan Rodriguez-Swanson

When I first started writing this, the power was out for hundreds of thousands of Californians because of a “Public Safety Power Shutoff.” Following the mass death and destruction in the 2018 Camp Fire at the hands of PG&E and the bankruptcy declaration in January 2019, PG&E announced that this fire season they would shut off the power to prevent fires. It should be noted that these fires they are aiming to prevent would be started by something well under their control, their ill-maintained equipment. In 2018 alone, more than 400 fires in Central and Northern California were started by PG&E equipment. When this first shutoff ended I had not anticipated another one only a couple days later, PG&E’s CEO said these blackouts could become the new norm for the next 10 years. 

And indeed it has quickly become the norm. Currently we are in the tail end of a second wave of blackouts which have impacted over 1 million people, an even larger amount of people than the first blackout. This blackout did not seem to stop the massive Kincade Fire in Sonoma County which may have been started by one of PG&E’s transformers after the power was supposedly shut off. There is a third potential blackout slated to begin Tuesday October 29th. 

If this is starting to sound vaguely familiar, you may remember the 2001 California Energy Crisis which also resulted in massive blackouts. Enron (don’t you just love that name?) exploited deregulation legislation enacted by Republican Governor Pete Wilson and manufactured a crisis due to nothing more than its own greed. PG&E declared bankruptcy in 2001 as a result of this crisis and emerged in debt, with their customers paying a higher price for the same energy as before.

Fast forward back to 2019, with bankruptcy once again declared and criminal charges on their way over the 86 Camp Fire deaths, PG&E is finding itself increasingly cornered and these blackouts may be a reaction to that. Nearly two decades after Enron and we may be in the midst of another manufactured crisis. Greg Palast, a long-time worker in energy regulation across the states, believes that the blackouts are not about public safety as PG&E has led us to believe, but about intimidating the judge who is overseeing their case. This of course would not be too far-fetched for an investor-owned company, PG&E couldn’t care less about the people because, like Enron, their goal is to first and foremost make money. 

California Republicans, always eager to exploit any disaster, have argued that the urgent push for the state to have 100% renewable energy is putting a strain on PG&E’s resources. This of course being the issue for them as they naturally overlook PG&E’s misuse of gas safety funds for executive bonuses and the millions of dollars in lobbying. 

The problem however is not that PG&E is run by “greedy” individuals or too much “regulation”, the company being investor-owned is its inherent problem. It doesn’t matter who captains the ship is if the goal is to blunder the state. Governor Newsom’s recent encouragement of billionaire Warren Buffet to buy PG&E will bring us right back to where we are in no time. Hoping for some out-of-state billionaire to come in and make money for himself when the impact of wildfires in California is already being exacerbated by climate change (do largely in part by the billionaire class) is all different kinds of delusional.

Luckily there is a road forward, and I am here to tell you about what can be done. PG&E has run its course and needs to be broken apart. But not into bite-sized investor-owned mini PG&Es, it needs to be placed into the hands of the people, whether at a county or city level. Municipalization, or the process of turning over an investor-owned company into the hands of a city, county, or state government, is not only the best way to ensure that the fatal decisions of money-driven organizations like PG&E and Enron never happen again, but it democratizes one of our most essential utilities. 

While the democratization of utilities and mitigation of corporate greed may be enough to convince you of this necessary change, the benefits do not end there. More of the money is kept within the community to invest in a transition to green energy because of the lack of federal taxes and no need to worry about out-of-state greedy investors. A preliminary report by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission found that San Francisco was better off municipalizing utilities if it wanted to reach its sustainability goals. PG&E only serves as a hinderance to progress and the Bay Area is waking up to that.

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo has expressed interest in taking ownership of PG&E’s local infrastructure but the council must not just consider the possibility, they must follow through and take ownership for the sake of San Joseans. Failure to do so when municipalization is an option is to enable PG&E’s behavior of disproportionately impacting vulnerable communities and needlessly costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars with just one blackout. 

San Jose would not be the first to have a municipally-owned utility in Silicon Valley, the neighboring city of Santa Clara provides tens of thousands of homes and big businesses like Yahoo! And NVidia with energy through their city-owned Silicon Valley Power. 

The issue is not a matter of possibility, it is about whether or not Silicon Valley’s political leaders have the willpower and necessary leadership to stand up to greedy, corporate entities that exploit the people of the state. 

The power belongs to the people, not Pacific Greed & Exploitation.

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Aidan Rodriguez-Swanson is a writer and editor for Populics. You can follow him on Twitter @AidanRSwanson.