I often write in generalities about the lunacy of looking to the State to meet your needs, but today I think I’ll talk about some U.S. state governments in the northeast and what they are doing to their citizens. I think most of us are aware that California is driving industry out of the state and that there is a great flow of business towards Texas as it has much lower electric rates. California charges approximately double what Texas does for electricity. But let us look at the states in the northeast on the other side of the country which are about to enter a crisis trying to supply energy in the winter.
The governors of six New England states have recognized an impending crisis situation and so had a meeting to see how to deal with it. (see here) The governors even invited five premiers of Canadian provinces to join them since Canada can generate electricity while the northeast U.S. does not have that ability any more.
Last winter record low temperatures hit the northeastern region and utilities struggled to supply electricity to the region. Since the region has moved from generation by coal and oil to utilizing natural gas there was the problem that natural gas can not be stored up like coal can so there was not enough gas to heat homes and generate electricity. Now this may come as a total shock to some folks but in times of shortage the market will ration the product in short supply via higher prices. Sure enough, the price to the utilities went from $4 mBTU to $79 mBTU. That would be an almost 20 fold increase in price in one year. Naturally the price of electricity skyrocketed all over the region as the utilities had to buy expensive power from other regions at the same time as their own generation costs were skyrocketing.
But how in the world did we get to the state where the northeast United States can no longer reliably supply its own power? Glad you asked. It seems there has been a long campaign to rid the region of any form of “dirty” energy like coal or oil as well as nuclear power. The statistics are that only three percent of the region’s power comes from coal and only one percent comes from oil these days. New England’s power now comes mainly from natural gas, but the region does not have enough natural gas pipeline to meet its needs and there is great political resistance to building any more even though Pennsylvania has surplus natural gas and would love to sell it to the northeastern states.
The region has just barely the electrical generation capacity to meet its needs without the reserve that is needed for extreme usage times like a really cold winter. Even so, the region expects to shut down 10% of its capacity to please the extremist environmental pressure groups or EPA regulations. (but I repeat myself) First on the target list are the remaining coal plants. At least five will be shut down possibly before the coming winter. Along with that, we see that the remaining nuclear generation plants are targets to be closed as well.
So who is hurt the most by these idiot moves by the state governments? Why the elderly and the poor of course; along with blue collar workers. The well-to-do “liberal” activists and pressure groups look forward to sky high power rates as they hate the poor and hope to drive them out of the region. Does that seem harsh? Well, look at their actions and ask yourself if they give a flying fig about the lower classes.
The government at all levels is waging war on the productive section of the American economy. The over paid busybody regulators from Washington D.C. down to your local town hall are writing anti-business regulations that have been exporting jobs to places like China for decades.
Realistic weather prognosticators are forecasting another year like last year’s cold winter and that will bring ever higher prices and perhaps brownouts to the northeast region. New England residents pay about 50% more than the rest of the country already and it looks like they are in for more fleecing by their ever-so-green governments. The news out of Detroit should give you a taste of what New England is headed for in the near future unless they wake up and reign in their idiot regulators and legislators. However, I predict that it will take massive amounts of people freezing in the winter to wake up the people of the northeast — if even that will do it.
This is just another example of government working hard to make your life worse. That is what the criminal gang writ large does.
On the Mark 