My friend Josh Ellis, in response to the California power out, put up a series of tweets on how to prepare. I’m going to repeat those here. This is also an open thread for topics unrelated to recent posts.
1) Have a way to cook food that doesn't involve electricity. My advice is to get one of these, I did and I swear by it. Fuel is cheap and readily available at Walmart or other similar stores with a camping section https://t.co/akfNk0lkcN
— Josh Ellis (@jzellis) October 9, 2019
3) For less than $100 you can get pretty decent portable solar panels to charge your phone and said USB power packs.
— Josh Ellis (@jzellis) October 9, 2019
5) Know how to get around and, more importantly, out of your town without Google Maps. If something bad happens, don't assume anyone is going to come get you. Have a plan to connect with family.
— Josh Ellis (@jzellis) October 9, 2019
7) People will get weird about it and you just have to deal with it. It's not likely to turn into Mad Max or anything, but just be very aware of who's around and what they're doing.
— Josh Ellis (@jzellis) October 9, 2019
(An addendum, as this thread has started to get shared: you can get shelf stable milk at the dollar store in, I think, half-gallon or close to it boxes. Also a lot of other survival food, cheap as hell, though supermarkets are usually better priced for canned veggies.)
— Josh Ellis (@jzellis) October 9, 2019
Also, I probably need to say this: have tools on hand:
– A modular screwdriver set with as many bits as you can get
– Two socket sets, one metric, one imperial
– Hammer and a crowbar, even a small prybar
– Power drill that's always charged or a hand bore
– Hand saw— Josh Ellis (@jzellis) October 9, 2019
I also keep a whole buncha ways to make fire:
– Flint/steel
– Waterproof matches
– Zippos
– USB charging waterproof electric lighter
– A Fresnel lens from an old overhead projector (no, really)But I'm a smoker, so not having a light is a genuine emergency for me. đ
— Josh Ellis (@jzellis) October 9, 2019
These USB Christmas lights are really nice, though they're not especially rugged: https://t.co/o5gT8oVOsW
— Josh Ellis (@jzellis) October 9, 2019
A case of fuel canisters for the burner I linked earlier – you just pop em in and lock the nozzle and they last me a week of daily usage. (Just keep em away from fire!) https://t.co/WrXhTJcRcV
— Josh Ellis (@jzellis) October 9, 2019
If you can spare $250, these are highly recommended all-in-one backup power systems. I'm planning on getting one to try out in the near future. Jackery has a good reputation. https://t.co/QAe3ZQfHcu
— Josh Ellis (@jzellis) October 9, 2019
If you find any of this useful, feel free to buy my book: https://t.co/ttJsjirgdf I'm working on another one right now about how poor folks can survive climate collapse, which is why I've learned all this stuff.
— Josh Ellis (@jzellis) October 9, 2019
Alrighty, that was long, but maybe it’ll help some people.
Eric Anderson
Observed from a certain perspective, the rolling blackouts become a bit of a social experiment that may help turn posh urbanites (of both political flavors) into something, at least remotely, resembling self-sufficient human-beings.
Have I mentioned the amount of respect I afford the typical urbanite?
Little to none. I suffer them.
Dan Lynch
So … what happens to greenhouse gas emissions if everyone in the power outage area starts cooking & heating with gas? And the more affluent residents acquire dino fuel generators to keep their lights on?
The outages are a political game intended to soften up public opinion in preparation for building more nuke plants and/or raising rates, and as Ian has previously said, the solution is to socialize utilities. Sometimes regulating privately owned utilities is sufficient, but sooner or later there will be regulatory capture, so just socialize the damned things.
For the individual trying to survive, the better solution is to get rooftop solar and 2 or 3 old school lead-acid batteries, enough to run your refrigerator, a few lights, the internet modem, a microwave, etc.. That is my own goal, currently being held up by lack of funds.
The rooftop solar / batteries setup does not mean you’ll be able to maintain your current lifestyle. You’ll have to cut back. Smaller homes, navy showers instead of baths, a bare minimum of lighting, drying your clothes by hanging them up instead of in a dryer, etc..
People who live off the grid or in RV’s are already doing this, so it is quite do-able.
Pass laws requiring all new homes to be energy self-sufficient. Homeowners in existing homes should be offered free solar panels (produced at the socialized solar panel factory). No federally backed mortgage for any home that is not energy self-sufficient.
Heating the home is a bigger problem — solar is not going to keep your home warm in the winter unless you live in Florida. I heat with wood, but that produces CO2 (arguably CO2-neutral in the long run but nonetheless produces CO2 in the short run) and particulates and is illegal in many urban areas. So realistically, most people are going to have to shiver. The simplest, surest way to use less heating fuel is to live in a smaller house. No one “needs” a McMansion.
As for charging your electric vehicle — EV’s have a large environmental footprint even before you get to the charging problem — do like the Danes and ride a bicycle. And yes, the Danes ride in the rain and snow. I did it for several winters in Idaho before I could afford a car. Of course that means you’ll have to live near your work instead of commuting from the suburbs — so be it.
In general, addressing climate change is not about finding new technologies that allow us to maintain our existing lifestyle, instead, we’re going to have to change our lifestyles. A lot. But is the Danish lifestyle that bad?
bruce wilder
I remember looking at graphs of the rate of electric utility power outages (frequency, duration, numbers affected) at least a decade ago, and the numbers were then rising steadily from a very low base as disinvestment was gaining momentum. Of course, now such statistics are unavailable, apparently (or very hard to find).
This is the collapse of civilization. Not in a moment, as Hollywood would portray it, but very slowly, over decades, with dramatic punctuation to be sure, but also relentless and with no political will to reverse it, retard it or even to prepare to collapse gracefully.
Hugh
California provides a textbook of examples of where not to build, how not to build there, and how not to provide roads and utilities for what is built.
Rule 1: Don’t build on hillsides subject to landslides.
Rule 2: Don’t build at the bottom of valleys subject to flash flooding.
Rule 3: Don’t build on earthquake faults.
Rule 4: Don’t build in forests subject to frequent fires and/or affected by climate change.
Having ignored all of these, re Rules 1 and 2, you’re screwed. Get used to it. Re Rules 3 and 4, build with re-enforced concrete, it’s flexible and also fire-proof. Stone or metal roofs and under-eaves. Create clear spaces around the house and build stone walls around the property perimeter. Important! Repeat on a community wide basis. This approach provides a kind of residential herd immunity.
Re roads and utilities, as already said, nationalize the utilities. And require that every community have at least two access roads, with one being as close to due west as possible and the other between 90 and 180 degrees from this.
edmondo
Wasn’t just a few months ago that our esteemed Congresscritters were pointing out the failures of “socialism” in Venezuela because “they couldn’t even keep the lights on”?
America is so busy building an empire that it is rotting from the core. What does it take to start a revolution in this country? Cancelling the Khardashians?
Jack Parsons
Jeez, I was hoping for some sanity here.
PG&E is going through this exercise because it got sued into financial oblivion and is finally behaving like an adult.
All power systems have occasional outages. In this case, you get advance notice.
different clue
@Dan Lynch,
Burning wood is indeed CO2 neutral, in fact and not just arguably. The tree pulled carbon out of the air to make itself with, and burning it returns that carbon to the same air which the tree got that carbon out of to begin with.
Clearcutting and stripping all trees off an area to burn them is indeed carbon negative until a new forest of the same size has grown back to the same biomass. And if the exposed soil erodes and degrades to un-reforestability in the meantime, then the carbon negativity is for centuries at least.
How to keep the carbon involved in burning-growing-burning-growing-etc. wood moving in a balanced circular cycle . . . carbon in = carbon out . . . is an interesting challenge. Perhaps that challenge is meetable with coppicing fast growing trees and cutting the multi-trunks for burning no faster than new multi-trunks grow back on previously cut trees can maintain that particular coppice-cut-burn-grow system in carbon balance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/trees/tgen/what-is-coppicing.htm
I once read an interesting article about high heat-value trees growable in Zone 5 or further north. They are also coppiceable for sustainable fuel-wood yield. The article praised Osage Orange wood highest of all.
https://www.permaculturereflections.com/top-10-fuel-trees-for-zone-5-and-above/
And what is the most efficient way to harvest maximum useable heat from a set amount of burning wood? Perhaps a masonry stove, as popular for centuries in far Northern Europe?
https://insteading.com/blog/masonry-heater/
And perhaps augmenting that masonry stove with a rocket-stove-type burn-chamber? For total utmost highest-temperature usable heat-load extraction?
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/17/efficient-wood-burning-rocket-stoves-masonry-heaters-dakota-fire-pits/
Of course I live in a Co-Op townhouse unit so I can’t do any of this. So I offer it as possible brainfood for thought.
Jeff Wegerson
@Dan Lynch. Oh good you have corrected my own first impulse: ânationalise it.â Of course California isnât quite yet its own nation, so yes âsocializeâ its utilities.
Are you paying attention @Jack Parsons? PG&E is still being allowed to be sued for malpractices. You are right. It shouldnât have been sued. It should have been âsocializedâ. Lock, stock and barrel. Oh and by the way, grown ups donât behave like a child and throw a spite tantrum when they are called out for not doing their job.
And back to you Dan. Heating is a different need than the others. Solar can be enough with good insulation. But with even an intermittent grid external sources like wind and community solar can be self sufficiently robust enough.
Hugh
“PG&E is going through this exercise because it (couldn’t be bothered to invest in and maintain its infrastructure so it) got sued into financial oblivion and is finally behaving like (it got caught).”
There fixed it for you.
Paul Harris
PG&E are doing this because they didnât maintain the infrastructure sufficiently or build in proper (expensive) safeguards but instead paid dividends with the money. Dividends from profits they wouldnât have made if they had managed the business properly.
No essential public utility should be in private hands.
But then thatâs not what America is all about I suppose.
Ché Pasa
PG&E’s problems are mirrored by too many other US utilities, and they are almost all the outgrowth of the deregulation and privatization fetish of the last several decades. The specific problems with lack of utility infrastructure updating and maintenance in California were thoroughly discussed and largely dismissed during the Enron-driven black- and brown-outs of the early 2000s, dismissed because of course it would take vast amounts of money to rebuild the power grid to a modern standard, and by golly, all the money that might be used to do it was being spent on paying outrageous energy rates under contracts that (for some reason) were cast in stone and could not be adjusted or canceled (although they eventually were adjusted somewhat). Customer rates skyrocketed and have stayed high ever since. Gray Davis was recalled and Schwarzenegger replaced him and made some stinky deals with the energy traders. The contracts were eventually paid, and then all the excess money went to the executives and investors. The electricity grid was allowed to deteriorate further.
Those who say the recent blackouts in parts of PG&E’s service area are deliberate social experiments are most likely right. What the experiment seemed to produce more than anything was anger, fear running a close second, as well as a sense of futility and powerlessness wrapped in a bow. The anger is directed at PG&E and at the largely passive and ineffectual California state government. This was an opportunity for bold action, and it didn’t happen. PG&E should have been condemned and seized by public authority long ago, but it wasn’t. This was another opportunity that wasn’t taken.
The public did note, however, those areas that didn’t lose power: San Francisco and the pockets of publicly owned electric utilities around Northern California, including Santa Clara, home to certain high tech heavy hitters and Sacramento, the home of state government. A map of where the power stayed on and where it didn’t is instructive and it shows how a new-model class division is developing, though I can’t say that was the intent of the social experiment.
So what’s to be done? For whatever reason, the state continues to refuse to act. As long as the tech giants have their power, they don’t seem to care what happens to anyone else. And the public, to the extent it can, is becoming more energy self-sufficient. It looks like nothing will be done in the short term to prevent future massive blackouts, and we’re liable to see the process repeat everywhere, not just in California — it was such a success there, after all.
450.org
From an environmental perspective, these power outages are a positive development. The premiere first world country is past peak development. America, Canada too in fact, is/are officially on the downside of the curve. Contraction, as involuntary as it may be at this point, is underway. It will happen whether we manage it or not. Managing it and planning it and planning for it would help mitigate some of the worst suffering but since when are humans interested in mitigating the worst suffering?
450.org
Donald Trump IS the revolution. These things never take the form you think they will. Donald Trump is as good as revolution gets in the 21st century. God help us all and the planet that vomited us from its womb. Who said God doesn’t have a sense of humor?
different clue
My lonely comment sits and weeps in moderation. ( Unless it never even registered at all , and the machine fooled me into thinking it was “sent”).
ponderer
“Socialization” of the infrastructure is no panacea. I guess others here haven’t dealt with any public utilities or public/private partnerships that are unresponsive to, well, everyone outside their little fiefdoms. Private companies you may be able to sue, but not public or a partnership. I’m not actually arguing for one over the other. It doesn’t matter.
I think what we need is a citizen oversight agency/agent over every major organization. Let those regulators be chosen like we choose politicians. If their approval rating ever drops below 50%, open the position for challengers. Make it the agencies responsibility to publish information related to each office/position and appropriate metrics that they expect to be met. They don’t need to have hiring/firing power over all employee’s. Just board members and CEOs. Only for cause and that must be documented and public. All documents and conversations are pubic. They have no recourse other than firing and referring criminal charges to the appropriate agencies. If the agent leaves with an approval rating less than 50% they have their wages garnished above their current income for 5 years. I think that would do it.