Why the lights went out.

Everything is political. When most of Ontario, Canada, and the northeastern United States suddenly goes dark, given the technological prowess of the two nations involved, rumors of lightning must be set aside and the social systems charged with maintaining the power grid must be examined. The blame game is silly. It doesn't matter if the blackout of August 2003 began with a lightning strike in Niagara Falls (a quickly debunked rumor given the region's clear weather at the time) or with the blaster computer worm debilitating an alarm system at an Ohio power plant. A power plant can drop into the sea. The point is, in 2003, thirty-eight years after the great East Coast blackout of 1965, the loss of a power plant shouldn't darken most of an area stretching from New York to Ontario to Ohio.

There really were no surprise technological failures here. No "Oh wow, we didn't think that could happen." And no need for a chorus of "Gee, let's have an investigation." What happened was totally predictable and in fact was predicted by the U.S. Energy Department during the Clinton administration, whose energy secretary, Bill Richardson, described the nation's power system as "a third world grid." Jack Casazza, a former electric utility executive and author of Sham? Shame! Inside the Electric Power Industry, predicted that a blackout of the magnitude experienced this summer would hit by 2004. Casazza, it turns out, was pretty much on target, predicting the breakdown would begin in the Midwest; he was only overly optimistic about the date.

The problem is that, in this climate of deregulation, the government doesn't require utility companies to maintain the power grid properly. Hence, while investors pour money into profitable new power plants, companies find little incentive to invest in the less profitable wires that carry juice to consumers and, more importantly, between power districts. During the last decade the grid has begun to resemble New Hampshire's highways. That state has become a haven for anti-tax retirees drawn by its low taxes. Pensioners' tax savings allow them to buy expensive luxury cars but fiscal realities leave them driving their posh cars on some of the nation's most dangerous, ill-maintained roads. In a nutshell, that's the power grid: with new plants on the generating end, new power-sucking appliances on the consumer end, and ill kempt wires in between.

This brings us to dark Thursday, when those lucky enough to have power got to hear President George W. Bush proclaim that, surprise of surprises, he suspects that the power grid needs updating, calling the blackout "a wakeup call." Bush explained that "we'll have time to look at it and determine whether or not our grid needs to be modernized. I happen to think it does, and have said so all along." Lame as this proclamation appears to be, it also is the opposite of the truth, since Bush has opposed democratic initiatives to upgrade the grid since taking office in 2001. That year, Representative Sam Farre (Democrat, California) authored a bill to provide $350 million in government loans to begin modernization of the nation's energy grid. Borg-like Republicans, along party lines, voted the bill down at the urging of Bush.

One week before the bill failed, former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (Democrat, Missouri), in a rare pre-9/11 moment, accused Bush of "obstructionism," arguing that Bush was "committed to helping the big energy special interests" who opposed the bill. Three months later the nation became distracted, with representatives like Gephardt more interested in lining up behind a wartime Bush than arguing about electricity. (The power grid, predictably, failed twenty-six months later. How's that for homeland security?) Bush continued on in 2001, fighting to roll back efficiency standards for air conditioners, a move that promises to further strain the overstressed grid.

For the next two years Congress kept failing to pass a bill mandating modernization of the power grid. This was primarily due to Bush administration insistence that any such bill should also contain riders to further deregulate the energy industry, open wilderness areas to oil and gas drilling, and further subsidize the nuclear power industry while relieving it of safety regulations. Current House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California) told the New York Times that Bush put the interests of energy companies ahead of the American people by insisting that oil companies be allowed to drill in wilderness areas "rather than modernize our energy system." Bush's simplistic "my way or no way" insistence on linking environmental destruction and corporate welfare to any bill to update the grid is blackmail, with the nation's power grid held hostage. Recent post-blackout Republican rhetoric blaming the power failure on the oil industry's inability to drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is just the most recent example of this campaign--and Bush has now, again predictably, attempted to renew interest in the energy bill that would allow the drilling.

The power failure wasn't due to a lack of energy, it was due to an antiquated delivery system. In any event, electric energy shouldn't be a problem in this country with biomass, wind, and solar technology now developed to a point (no thanks to the federal government) where they are feasible and sustainable power sources, both on and off the grid.

The problem is political and the keyword here is deregulation. Deregulation of the electric industry began in 1992, initiated by former President George H. W. Bush. The electric industry, according to British Broadcasting Corporation investigative reporter Greg Palast, rewarded the Bush family by contributing $16 million to the Republican Party in 2000--a donation that would have been banned under prior rules governing electric utilities instituted by President Franklin Roosevelt.

The current industry-centered deregulation of the national power grid has created market-driven chaos, with electric bills skyrocketing as high as 300 percent in California while power systems become less and less reliable--all at a time when the shrinking cost of renewable energy should be providing lower costs and a more reliable system. Democratic Ohio representative and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, in an interview with Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, explains:

   In the frenzied deregulation
   atmosphere of the past five
   years, private investors supported
   companies building
   highly efficient [natural] gas-fired
   power plants, while traditional
   investments in
   transmission lines and related
   equipment took a back seat.

Casazza, also speaking to Goodman, argued that "all of these individual companies became more interested in their individual profits than the welfare of the grid."

Of course, this self-interest is mandatory given Wall Street's carnivorous nature. Kucinich points to First Energy of Ohio, the utility in whose territory the blackout began. "First Energy," he explains, "has consistently failed to invest in upgrading of equipment." Instead, he argues, "Their emphasis has been on holding onto their cash so that they maintain the fiscal stability of their company while Wall Street is looking at it." First Energy, despite one of the worse plant safety records in the industry, can't help but follow a policy of hording cash while its system falls apart.

Hording cash not only looks good, it's also a defense mechanism. If First Energy didn't keep large cash assets readily on hand, it would be vulnerable to a hostile takeover. Hence, in a financial culture obsessed with short-term profits, the only way a utility can operate is recklessly--which is the strongest argument for re-regulating the industry.

The recent blackout illustrates the problem. The current theory is that the first power failure began after a transmission line under the control of First Energy subsidiary Toledo Edison failed, which caused an undetected power overload in another transmission line that picked up the load. It overheated and eventually failed, short-circuiting into a tree. Palast recounts how Toledo Edison was "messing around" for an hour, failing to either fix or contain the problem before it spread throughout the grid. As First Energy's plants went down, a power surge moved east like an electron wave, knocking out adjacent plants until the problem reached Niagara Mohawk's territory in western New York. Once the surge hit NiMo, Palast argues, there was no containing it, with NiMo spreading it like "Typhoid Mary" to adjacent systems. This, he argues, is because, under deregulation, NiMo was bought by the "notoriously incompetent" British power company National Grid, which immediately fired eight hundred NiMo maintenance workers. This and other cuts to an already stressed and worn system allegedly resulted in a one-shot windfall of almost $90 million for NiMo stockholders while setting the system up for failure.

If the Bush administration has its way, none of the utilities responsible for the blackout will be penalized. To the contrary, they will be rewarded for their greed and incompetence by approval of rate hikes. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham argues that "the people who benefit from the [current] system," who in his mind are the already overcharged consumers and not the corporate shareholders, "should have to he part of the solution here." Speaking on NBC's Meet the Press, he clarified himself, explaining, "That means the rate payers are going to have to contribute. We think the rates need to be sufficient to incentivize the building of new transmission [sic]." This is akin to being mugged, only to face the mugger in court and have the judge award compensation to the assailant for time spent mugging the victim. And Bush's current call for more nuclear power and wilderness oil drilling as a solution to the problem is akin to the judge ordering the victim to spend more time walking in dark dangerous areas. Under the Bush administration, this is what we call an "energy policy."

Michael I. Niman is a professor of journalism in the communication department at the State University of New York at Buffalo. An earlier version of this article appeared in the August 21, 2003, issue of ArtVoice. His previous articles are archived at www.mediastudy.com