Regarding the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial of
December 2 (“PG&E needs a rethink, not yet another rescue”), my feeling is that it is not
just PG&E that needs the rethink but rather our whole system of providing
basic infrastructure and utility services.
In the first place, we are often too quick to point fingers.
After all, if no one is responsible, who are we to sue? Instead, it would be
instructive to look inside and try to understand the role we all, each one of
us, might have had in this or that catastrophe. With regard to the Camp Fire,
for example, even if it ultimately turns out that it was indeed a PG&E
power line that sparked the fire, we
cannot say that PG&E caused or set the fire. That fire and others around
the state were actually set by years of draught (to some degree exacerbated by
human-caused climate change), the extension of housing and other urban development
into sensitive areas, and exploitation of forest resources. All just waiting
for someone (PG&E, an arsonist, a careless camper, a lightning flash) to
come along with a spark.
We can no more say that PG&E caused the Camp fire or any other fire than we can say that the
spark of Gavrilo Princip’s
assassination of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 caused World War I.
Secondly, and more importantly, we urgently need to take a
fresh look at all of our systems and practices to retrofit and re-engineer for
both resilience and adaptiveness. As climate change and its consequent weather
extremes and social and economic disruptions accelerate, how quickly and
smoothly can our critical infrastructure (roads, bridges, power grid, water
supply, communications services, etc.) as well as our social cohesion and
economic activity recover from a disaster (earthquake included) and how quickly can they adapt to new
and unexpected ecological, social, and economic realities?
As WaltKelly’s Pogo famously said for the first Earth Day in 1970, “We have met
the enemy and he is us.” So, rather than establishing commissions to assign
blame for this or that disaster, let’s realize that we have all had a hand in
it and come together in community to find long-term solutions.
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