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By Matt Hurley | Special to Ohio Watchdog
Matt Hurley
As roughly two-thirds of Ohio was without power this past weekend, I couldn’t help but think what would happen if the liberal and conservative positions on energy were reversed. Would we see massive demonstrations calling for more power plants and refineries that would increase the capacity of our power grids?
While we should be pleased to see our fellow Ohioans pitching in to do whatever we can to help each other, we ought to take a minute to think about why this happened in the first place. Infrastructure is one of the things that government is supposed to manage for us. And when it comes to energy, they have failed us time and again. Why do we tolerate this from our government?
Government has been the largest obstacle to energy independence, including power generation for domestic consumption. Why isn’t there more clean coal-fired power plants being built? A few more of those might have eased the load on our power grid and maybe a few thousand more homes wouldn’t be facing another night in the dark and sweltering heat.
When all of this is over, citizens will return to their air conditioning and television sets and all will be right with the world until the next time Mother Nature decides to throw a tantrum. Or worse.
In an article written for the Weekly Standard, Newt Gingrich seems to think these power outages ought to give us a glimpse in to what it would be like if a rogue regime or terrorist group let loose an electromagnetic pulse device.
Utility companies are classifying the level of damage done to the power grid as “catastrophic” and yet nobody seems ready or willing to talk about what happens after the damage gets cleaned up and we return to our normal routines.
This isn’t just an emergency situation lasting a few days. It is a national security quagmire. The sad truth is that Americans continue to consume more energy while allowing our capability to produce electricity to deteriorate at an alarming rate.
Yes, let us continue to help each other out in the days ahead, but let us not forget to hold government accountable for their role in this disaster.
