How the hell does this happen? I deliberately waited to post on this topic until two and a half weeks after the event because I knew that everyone would forget about by now. It’s bullshit. Here we are a few days away from 2009 and a fire that messed up the electrical grid in Neptune Township managed to cut off the power to tens of thousands of residents not just in the shore region, but also up in the Highlands part of the state, too! How does that happen?
With all of the discussion about improving America’s energy future and President-Elect Barack Obama’s pledge to make energy security the top of his domestic policy agenda, let’s hope that situations like this don’t happen for too much longer.
This reminds me of the blackout from 2003 that knocked out power for most of the northeast states as well as Ontario, Canada. How pathetic was that? If you remember, for a brief period of time after that blackout there was some talk about fixing the electrical grid so that something similar would never happen again. Yeah, well, apparently that was forgotten real quick, huh?
At the very least, America should have a secondary energy grid running at all times just in case the primary grid goes down like it did in 2003 or a few weeks ago in Neptune Township. The secondary grid should be built on green technology with wind turbines, solar arrays, and other renewable energy sources so that we know it will always be available (wind is always and sun is always shining…somewhere). Then the secondary system can be built upon and expanded which does two things. First, it actually creates a large portion of the “green collar” economy that keeps getting thrown around in political debate. Second, it begins to shift America’s reliance on coal and oil sources to renewable energy.
Or we can do the alternative – which is to keep bitching about the need for energy independence via renewable sources and do nothing to achieve that goal. And the next time there is a blackout in any part of the country, we’d have no one to blame besides our politicians (go figure).
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