Washington State House Petition Promotes Energy Industry Lies

Energy deregulation in California has cut quite a destructive swath so far with no end in sight, unless the energy industry is reregulated soon. Honest public debate about the California \"energy crisis\" has been in, well, short supply in the mainstream media and from elected officials. Contributing to the lack of transparency about the causes and the possible solutions to the problems faced by California\'s, and the Northwest\'s, energy industry is a recently introduced Washington State House of Representatives petition to the federal government, titled House Joint Memorial 4006 (link to the text of the bill on the Internet below).

In short, the petition asks the federal government to direct all of its agencies from enforcing the contractual obligations Washington state\'s utilities have in exporting power to California this Summer and, you guessed it, to cease any consideration for breeching any hyrodoelectric dams. The petition uses deceptive language by characterizing Washington state export of energy to California as \"preferential\" but an honest person can easily see through this. This is the Washington State Legislature\'s way of saying, \"We want you, the federal government, to allow us here in Washington state to weasel out of our contractual obligations to send power to California this summer.\"

The reason for this petition is twofold. First, Washington state relies heavily on environmentally destructive hyrdoelectric dams to produce its power, salmon be \"damned.\" Second, we\'re experiencing a record drought here in Washington state. The lack of rain and snow has put reservoirs at historic low levels and the upcoming Spring run off from mountain snow melting isn\'t going to be enough to make up the difference. In short, Washington state\'s utilities are likely to not have enough power to meet local needs when they start shipping it to California this Summer. That means they might have to purchase power on the spot market to meet local needs this summer, thus they will be getting fleeced by the same out-of-state energy cartel that is fleecing California ratepayers right now.

An honest accounting of why we are in this mess in Washington state is not forthcoming from this petition. The state legislature obviously isn\'t too eager to take on any responsibility it has for forcing the state to have to rely so heavily on hydroelectric power. A more honest petition would be asking the federal government to direct its agencies to encourage more conservation and investment in energy alternatives, like wind and solar power. A more honest petition would basically say, \"Look we\'ve been a bunch of short-sighted dumb-fucks all of these years and we should have listened to those voices urging energy conservation and clean and environmentally friendly forms of power generation, but we didn\'t.\" Instead, what follows is a provincial assault that blames the entire energy mess we\'re in up here in the Pacific Northwest entirely on \"California,\" and its current Governor Gray Davis.

Now there are plenty of people to blame and plenty of reasons for California\'s current energy woes but this petition doesn\'t name one of them. Of course, I\'m refering to the dumb-fuck state legislators in California who fell to their knees in 1996 and unanimously voted in favor of energy deregulation and the equally idiotic former Governor who signed the legislation, Pete Wilson. Now Gray Davis didn\'t do this and it\'s ridiculous to put forward the popular myth from the free market partisans in the media that \"those stupid Californians just don\'t know how to do deregulation right,\" as if there has ever been an example of deregulation of government services that hasn\'t provided crappier service at higher prices. But that is bascially what this misinformed petition does.

The petition goes so far as to chastize Governor Davis for not fleecing Calfornia ratepayers even more, as if they haven\'t been fleeced by deregulation enough already. The petition calls on Davis to lift the cap on rates that Calfiornia\'s two main utlities can charge their retail customers. Perhaps the idiots who authored and sponsored this petion are too lazy to find this out, but individual utility bills could go as high as several hundred dollars for Calfornia ratepayers, if Davis were to actually do what the petition suggests.

The petition reads like a PR piece for the energy industry. It repeats the lie that Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison are on the verge of bankruptcy without enough assets to pay off their debts. It repeats the lie that one of the causes for California\'s energy problems are environmental regulations that prevent the construction of new power plants. It indirectly cheapshots environmentalists by calling them \"foes of development.\" It doesn\'t assign any responsibility for the problems with California\'s energy industry on deregulation or the out-of-state energy cartel that is manipulating the newly created speculative energy market to drive up rates. The word \"deregulation\" does not even appear in the text. Neither do the words \"conservation\" or \"cleaner alternative energy sources.\" Of course, it doesn\'t point out that the two municipalities in California that are doing just fine happen to be the only two that have publicly owned utilities, LA and Sacramento.

Well, that\'s how Olympia works here in Washington state. The state legislature here, like in most states, is a pathetic body that can be expected to produce such rubbish. In fairness, the state legislature did fail to pass an energy deregulation bill in 1997. I find it unbelievable since most politicians here, or anywhere, immediately fall to their collective knees when the terms \"deregulation\" and the \"free market\" are mentioned. To the credit of the state legislators who opposed utility deregulation, they spared us the disaster that has been the California experience with energy deregulation (At least for now. Things may not be looking so good for ratepayers up here this Summer. Utility rates are already on the rise and it could even get worse if we experience a power shortage).
Leadership from politicians on the energy issue is sorely lacking these days. The only example of a national politician doing the right thing on this issue I have found so far is U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon, who has introduced legislation to reregulate the utility industry, which is what needs to be done ASAP. You may want to contact your U.S. Representative and Senator and urge him/her to support Representative DeFazio\'s effort (The bill is titled HR 264).

I, of course, will have some choice words to share with the idiots down in Olympia who forced me to endure reading the nonsense put forward in House Joint Memorial 4006.

-Rick Giombetti
Seattle