Energy Antics: Oh, Behave!
Admit it: The only comic relief in this energy crisis has been watching our leaders go at suppliers and each other like pro wrestlers or Jerry Springer guests.
In his State of the State address last January, Gov. Gray Davis accused the big private electric power generators of legalized highway robbery and threatened to seize their plants if necessary. Then he really got angry, calling them “the biggest snakes in the world.” This past week, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer boosted the rhetoric a notch by declaring he would like to personally escort the chairman of Enron Corp. “to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, ‘Hi, my name is Spike, honey.”’ Meanwhile, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have blamed California for causing its own problems with a “harebrained” deregulation scheme and mocked the state’s power purchases and conservation programs. It’s been fun. Now it’s time for our leaders to act like adults.
Davis and Bush always will have their political differences, but the economies of both the state and the nation are endangered by California’s energy situation. These leaders need to work together as cooperatively as possible, starting next week when Bush makes his first visit to California as president.
Davis wrote Bush Wednesday offering to meet with him during his California visit. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president looks forward to discussing energy and other issues. Good start. Let’s hope the conversation is civil and that the civility spreads.
No matter how much California has been abused by the power companies, and it absolutely has, the state still needs them to help solve the crisis caused by shortages of electric power generation this year and next. Usually, the biggest targets of official and public wrath are the investor-owned utilities such as Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric Co. But not this time because, in the view of the state, the utilities have been bled dry by the power generators’ stratospheric prices. The state had to take over the purchase of power when the generators refused to extend any more credit to Edison and PG&E.; Legal recourse should be pursued, but the threatening rhetoric needs to subside.
State lawmakers are right to be upset with the White House for refusing to use its authority to set reasonable temporary wholesale price controls. And Davis is justifiably upset with Bush and with Cheney, who said the only solution was to build more power plants--ignoring the fact that the state is building 10 plants now, with five more on the way, and that the only way to control wholesale power rates is for Washington to cap them.
If the state hadn’t bought the power, the generators would have let the lights go out. Davis needs to deliver that message, quietly and persuasively, while Bush is in California. And Bush needs to listen respectfully, like an adult.
