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Is California's PG&E The First Climate Change Bankruptcy? (marketscreener.com)
"California's largest power company intends to file for bankruptcy as it faces tens of billions of dollars in potential liability following massive wildfires that devastated parts of the state over the last two years," reports the Washington Post.
Calling it "a climate change casualty," one Forbes contributor notes that PG&E's stock has now lost 90% of its mid-October value after a giant November wildfire, adding that "Future investors will look back on these three months as a turning point, and wonder why the effects of climate change on the economic underpinnings to our society were not more widely recognized at the time." Climate scientists may equivocate about the degree to which Global Warming is contributing to these fires until more detailed research is complete, but for an investor who is used to making decisions based on incomplete or ambiguous information, the warning signs are flashing red... there is no doubt in my mind that Global Warming's thumb rests on the scale of PG&E's decision to declare bankruptcy.
And the Wall Street Journal is already describing it as "the first climate-change bankruptcy, probably not the last," noting that it was a prolonged drought that "dried out much of the state and decimated forests, dramatically increasing the risk of fire." "This is a fairly new development," said Bruce Usher, a professor at Columbia University's business school who teaches a course on climate and finance. "If you are not already considering extreme weather and other climatic events as one of many risk factors affecting business today, you are not doing your job"...
In less than a decade, PG&E, which serves 16 million customers, saw the risk of catastrophic wildfires multiply greatly in its vast service area, which stretches from the Oregon border south to Bakersfield. Weather patterns that had been typical for Southern California -- such as the hot, dry Santa Ana winds that sweep across the region in autumn, stoking fires -- were now appearing hundreds of miles to the north. "The Santa Ana fire condition is now a Northern California fire reality, " said Ken Pimlott, who retired last month as director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. "In a perfect world, we would like to see all [of PG&E's] equipment upgraded, all of the vegetation removed from their lines. But I don't know anybody overnight who is going to catch up." PG&E scrambled to reduce fire risks by shoring up power lines and trimming millions of trees. But the company's equipment kept setting fires -- about 1,550 between mid-2014 through 2017, or more than one a day, according to data it filed with the state.
The global business community is recognizing the risks it faces from climate change. This week, a World Economic Forum survey of global business and thought leaders found extreme weather and other climate-related issues as top risks both by likelihood and impact.
Other factors besides climate change may also have pushed PG&E towards bankruptcy, according to the article. They're required by California state regulations to provide electrical service to the thousands of people moving into the state's forested areas, yet "an unusual California state law, known as 'inverse condemnation,' made PG&E liable if its equipment started a fire, regardless of whether it was negligent."
In declaring bankruptcy, PG&E cited an estimated $30 billion in liabilities -- plus 750 lawsuits from wildfires potentially caused by its power lines.
Calling it "a climate change casualty," one Forbes contributor notes that PG&E's stock has now lost 90% of its mid-October value after a giant November wildfire, adding that "Future investors will look back on these three months as a turning point, and wonder why the effects of climate change on the economic underpinnings to our society were not more widely recognized at the time." Climate scientists may equivocate about the degree to which Global Warming is contributing to these fires until more detailed research is complete, but for an investor who is used to making decisions based on incomplete or ambiguous information, the warning signs are flashing red... there is no doubt in my mind that Global Warming's thumb rests on the scale of PG&E's decision to declare bankruptcy.
And the Wall Street Journal is already describing it as "the first climate-change bankruptcy, probably not the last," noting that it was a prolonged drought that "dried out much of the state and decimated forests, dramatically increasing the risk of fire." "This is a fairly new development," said Bruce Usher, a professor at Columbia University's business school who teaches a course on climate and finance. "If you are not already considering extreme weather and other climatic events as one of many risk factors affecting business today, you are not doing your job"...
In less than a decade, PG&E, which serves 16 million customers, saw the risk of catastrophic wildfires multiply greatly in its vast service area, which stretches from the Oregon border south to Bakersfield. Weather patterns that had been typical for Southern California -- such as the hot, dry Santa Ana winds that sweep across the region in autumn, stoking fires -- were now appearing hundreds of miles to the north. "The Santa Ana fire condition is now a Northern California fire reality, " said Ken Pimlott, who retired last month as director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. "In a perfect world, we would like to see all [of PG&E's] equipment upgraded, all of the vegetation removed from their lines. But I don't know anybody overnight who is going to catch up." PG&E scrambled to reduce fire risks by shoring up power lines and trimming millions of trees. But the company's equipment kept setting fires -- about 1,550 between mid-2014 through 2017, or more than one a day, according to data it filed with the state.
The global business community is recognizing the risks it faces from climate change. This week, a World Economic Forum survey of global business and thought leaders found extreme weather and other climate-related issues as top risks both by likelihood and impact.
Other factors besides climate change may also have pushed PG&E towards bankruptcy, according to the article. They're required by California state regulations to provide electrical service to the thousands of people moving into the state's forested areas, yet "an unusual California state law, known as 'inverse condemnation,' made PG&E liable if its equipment started a fire, regardless of whether it was negligent."
In declaring bankruptcy, PG&E cited an estimated $30 billion in liabilities -- plus 750 lawsuits from wildfires potentially caused by its power lines.
They neglected their infrastructure in a known fireprone area.. Now they are being fined/sued out of existance. Uh huh, yeah its climate change.
PG&E would not be liable for "Global Warming", the fact they are liable for damages is because they were the ones you irresponsibly cared for equipment and other things.
Nothing like using some mystical bogeyman to cast blame on and shift away from your own poor judgment and ability.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
PG&E Files for Bankruptcy / $9 billion in debt, firm abandons bailout talks with state (2001)
Can't make a profit, can't drop unprofitable components of business, can't raise prices to meet costs... but somehow is expected to fully maintain thousands of miles of electrical equipment and wiring.
When PG&E got a rate hike to upgrade their natural gas pipe lines, the board pocketed the rate hike for shareholders. No one knew that happened until after the San Bruno pipeline blew up a neighborhood and PG&E asked for another rate hike to pay for upgrading natural gas pipe lines. Putting the shareholder first and burning down the state is why PG&E is unpopular. Has nothing to do with climate change.
If climate were going the other way, we'd be reading about how Senegal was caught red handed with insufficient snow removal equipment.
Many people dead from icy sidewalks in July.
And you still wouldn't blame global cooling: those darn Senegalese can't get a damn thing right.
It was caused by not routine controlled burns. Building homes in high risk areas. Blaming climate is ignoring these factors.
They're required by California state regulations to provide electrical service to the thousands of people moving into the state's forested areas, yet "an unusual California state law, known as 'inverse condemnation,' made PG&E liable if its equipment started a fire, regardless of whether it was negligent."
Either that legal situation is going to change, or power bills are going to go up steeply (at least for people if forested areas, if it's legal to discriminate). Or no power company is going to buy up the company's infrastructure and there'll be no electricity for their customers.
TL;DR: they gambled; they lost. Somebody ought to be put in a debtor's prison (or its analog).
Of California's fucked-in-the-head regulatory environment.
This has NOTHING to do with climate change.
They're basically required to service areas that will never be profitable, below their costs of delivery, can't spin off unprofitable business segments, they're not allowed to charge more to cover their costs, etc.
Meanwhile, state and federal regulations basically conspire against them. Changes in land management dramatically increase the chances of fire in any given area. And they're made liable for any fires in the area of their equipment, whether it was actually their equipment or not...meanwhile industry regulation basically prevents them from charging true cost of the power they deliver and actually making it MORE profitable to sell the power out of state and then re-import it...
Meanwhile, California's idiot density is going up year over year as people with an actual functional brain flee the state. They've had wildfires in California for HOW LONG? Yet, every year we've got idiots starting fires and moving into areas that abut to the aforementioned badly managed forested land and building WOOD HOUSES, while ignoring sensible rules for building in fire-prone areas. Then, after they've burned down for the umpteenth time, they go back and rebuild in exactly the same fashion!
It's just the intellectually retarded leading the intellectually retarded out there.
It's like going into a boxing match and finding out the other guy is bringing a knife, guns, artillery, grenades and a group of friends to kick your ass.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Can't make a profit, can't drop unprofitable components of business, can't raise prices to meet costs...
Is California government still price fixing even after their price fixing caused Enron?
Zero federal dollars better go to saving California from itself...
"His name was James Damore."
It baffles me why the worlds super rich spend so much effort concealing their money to avoid taxes and whatnot but don't seem to factor in the non-zero risk that climate change will make ALL of their money completely worthless in 50 years. If I were a middle east prince, sure I'd crack down on dissidents which may be a threat to my power...but not nearly as threatening as an average temp of 130F through the whole frikkin summer. To say nothing about how many immigrants the US will see in a few decades. Comparatively, being "limited" to a 250mi range or paying 15% more for a plane ticket probably wouldn't seem as bad.
Exactly, PG&E has been proven mismanged for decades. San Bruno wasn't a one-off, they covered up their lies intentionally. This company is shit and needs to die.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/17/pge-uninsulated-power-conductors-were-factors-in-fatal-wildfires-federal-judge/
The premise that climate change was even a 50% factor is retarded. Climate change doesn't cause mismanagement of trees along power lines while the company pockets the money for their bottom line, as they provably did.
This. PG&E does bare minimum maintenance. Our power goes out about once a year for the better part of a day, entirely at random, along with an area that is a couple of miles on each side, containing several thousand homes. That's not in the mountains or in some hard-to-reach place. It's in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
PG&E is grossly incompetent. Even if you ignore their equipment malfunctions causing wildfires in 2017 AND 2018 and somehow blame that on global warming, there's also the San Bruno pipeline explosion that killed 8 people and destroyed 38 homes. There's certainly no global warming involved there. They simply don't maintain their equipment until something breaks. And this means things break. A lot.
Basically, PG&E is what happens when governments try to allow a regulated monopoly to provide critical utilities instead of a municipal electric company or a regional nonprofit. Every dollar that went to PG&E's sharedholders is a dollar that should have been used for routine maintenance and upgrades. If that money had been used that way, close to a hundred people would likely still be alive today, just from those two incidents alone. The problem is, the primary goal of any for-profit corporation, no matter how highly regulated, is and always will be profit, and their concern for public safety will always be limited to doing the bare minimum necessary to avoid getting sued out of existence.
This is their second bankruptcy this century. The first, though largely caused by the California energy crisis, was certainly not helped by a $2 million judgement against them in 1997 for failing to trim trees near power lines, resulting in a devastating wildfire in Nevada back in 1994. For them to have pretty much the same situation in 2017 is almost unconscionable. Yet judging from the frequent power outages in mountainous parts of the Bay Area, IMO, there's no reason to believe that they have learned their lesson and are maintaining trees adequately even to this day. The 2018 Camp Fire was just the additional straw thrown down on top of the camel posthumously.
Clearly, this company has failed. We should let it fail. Deny them Chapter 11. Cancel the stock. Make them file Chapter 7 and sell off the pieces. That's the only way things get better. Or at a bare minimum, order a complete replacement of all the company's leadership as part of the bankruptcy proceedings. If we keep letting the same people make the same bad decisions, how can we possibly expect different results?
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Yeah. The real problem is that they are simply responsible for so darn much negligence. Their main problem isn't getting charged for damage not caused by negligence, but rather that they are constantly, consistently negligent, and they end up paying for damage that they could have easily avoided if they had put safety over profits instead of the other way around.
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Take a look at their financials, 2017 was a golden year for them. Every quarter their gross profits have been going up.
https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...
Every quarter their gross profit increases by a nice healthy amount. Maybe they are cutting costs in places they shouldn't be and causing the fires?
The only quarter they had a problem with as Q2 of 2018, where they made a big payout of 2.2 billion. Their filing shows this really odd though, not sure why it came out the way it did.
I know it's fashionable for conservatives to pick at the Leftist policies of the United States' most prosperous state but you're just making things up here. PG&E was doing great prior to the two big waves of fires that came through California https://www.macrotrends.net/st... and they would have zero liabilities in the case of these fires if they had maintained things the way they knew they were obligated to.
"Meanwhile, state and federal regulations basically conspire against them."
So we're convoluting state and federal policy now as a means of damning California? Most of our big open territory in this state is Federal.
"And they're made liable for any fires in the area of their equipment, whether it was actually their equipment or not..."
Citation needed.
"Meanwhile, California's idiot density is going up year over year as people with an actual functional brain flee the state."
Right, Californian's are idiots. What state are you from? Wait, it doesn't matter because it's not as prosperous as California.
"It's just the intellectually retarded leading the intellectually retarded out there."
Shit, I'll take our imperfect system over a Red state's any day of the week. At least we're able to generate meaningful wealth without the maximum exploitation of all of our public land as Texas does. We could certainly learn a thing or two from other blue states but I'm guessing that's not where you're at.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
made PG&E liable if its equipment started a fire, regardless of whether it was negligent."
In that case, would not the wise company use equipment that did not start fires?
It's time to consider to bury the power lines. Something they do here in Sweden more and more.
Even if their equipment caused it - the amount of combustible items around should have been trimmed. Maybe like the GoatFundMe campaign?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
From wikipedia...
....."...supply-demand imbalance, flawed market design and inconsistent rules made possible significant market manipulation as delineated in final investigation report. Without underlying market dysfunction, attempts to manipulate the market would not be successful."
By keeping the consumer price of electricity artificially low, the California government discouraged citizens from practicing conservation. In February 2001, California governor Gray Davis stated, "Believe me, if I wanted to raise rates I could have solved this problem in 20 minutes.
Energy price regulation incentivized suppliers to ration their electricity supply rather than expand production. The resulting scarcity created opportunities for market manipulation by energy speculators.
State lawmakers expected the price of electricity to decrease due to the resulting competition; hence they capped the price of electricity at the pre-deregulation level. Since they also saw it as imperative that the supply of electricity remain uninterrupted, utility companies were required by law to buy electricity from spot markets at uncapped prices when faced with imminent power shortages.
When the electricity demand in California rose, utilities had no financial incentive to expand production, as long term prices were capped. Instead, wholesalers such as Enron manipulated the market to force utility companies into daily spot markets for short term gain. For example, in a market technique known as megawatt laundering, wholesalers bought up electricity in California at below cap price to sell out of state, creating shortages. In some instances, wholesalers scheduled power transmission to create congestion and drive up prices.
After extensive investigation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) substantially agreed in 2003
One of the biggest contributors to political campaigns during the period of law making that created the mess was Enron. So guess what fucker, your politicians made it happen, for their own personal gain. They sold you idiots out, and you are still blaming someone other than them.
"His name was James Damore."
If they had done their job then that wildfire likely would not have happened at all.
Thanks for the link! It says exactly what I was saying, PG&E is responsible for the fires... like this sentence from your link:
A PG&E transmission tower in a burned-out forest in Butte County. PG&Eâ(TM)s lack of properly insulated power conductors â" and the threat of trees or limbs falling on distribution lines â" played a role in causing some of the disastrous and lethal wildfires of 2017 and 2018,
I'll save that one to point out to others, thanks man!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They're basically required to service areas that will never be profitable
Just take a look at this helpful link someone provided me, PG&E with uninsulated conductors in the middle of a forest!
Even if they are required to service areas they cannot make a profit on (which I question if it's actually all that true, but leave that to the side). Even if, there is no excuse for shoddy line work like this.
Electric companies in PLENTY of other states manage to run power lines to lots poorer areas than California has, in dry conditions without shoddy work like this and without causing fires.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This. And while they're at it, move all the big gas distribution pipelines above the ground, so when they leak, somebody will notice the smell long before it can build up a giant pocket of flammable gas and explode.
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Why can't it be a public service?
Why do private companies need to make huge profits? They are using public resources to do it. Public lands. Our rivers and our lakes.
Why does someone need to profit?
You can see the outcome. When a company is only profit driven, they will do everything they can to lower costs. That means, layoffs, lack of maintenance, substandard components and all the rest of it.
In the end, we, as the consumer still pay out the ass for the power they generate, much of which is subsidized by the government anyhow.
So, why not just have the state take it over?
Then there is no "coal industry" to own local politicians and change laws to allow the maximum pollution possible. There would be no incentive to pollute since the state would just have to pay to clean it up anyhow.
They think that they can blame this on global warming? I call bullshit. Global warming and it's effects on humanity has been something people in the USA have been beaten over the head with for at least 30 years now. They knew that global warming would mean greater demand for electricity for air conditioning, that this meant greater threats of storms and wild fires, this is not news. What have they been doing for the last 30 years to stop this from happening?
I will say that PG&E might not have all the blame here, they are in a business that is highly regulated by government. The government of California is likely the most to blame here, and some of this might land on the shoulders of the federal government too.
Even before global warming was in the common vocabulary we had threats of acid rain and other environmental disaster. What did California do about this? They declared the state a "nuclear free zone" meaning that they denied themselves access to the safest and cleanest source of energy available. This was true then and now. Nuclear power is far cheaper and far more reliable than wind or solar power. If they were paying attention to the science on global warming then they should also have been paying attention to the best science could tell them on how to combat it.
This is why I believe that so many politicians are anti-science, they've legislated themselves into a global warming corner. If you want to convince me that the "science is settled" on global warming then why are you ignoring the science on the safest and lowest CO2 energy source we have? Which is the greater threat to California, America, and the world? Is it global warming or nuclear power? If you say global warming then you are fools for shutting down the nuclear power plants you had and not building more. If you say global warming then you are fools for not planning on the effects and costs they will entail decades ago.
Nope, you can't blame this on global warming you fools. This is just bad management from the top to the bottom. I hope you enjoy freezing in the dark.
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YOU tried to make it about CA's taxes
Wrong number man, I never said a thing about taxes or profitability. I can honestly say I have no dog in the hunt you are trying to promote.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You are a global warming denialist. The fact is global warming is measurable, and it affects fire intensity and wind speed, etc. What it does not do is force a company to not do maintenance and lie about it.
PG&E is mismanaged, but your history of denying climate change is real overshadows anything you could say about it. So you're correct, PG&E is at fault, not climate change, in this fire's cause.
That does not make climate change a non-factor, but a much less legally liable entity given the provable negligence at PG&E - however climate change does make huge fires more common overall, worldwide.
Even the mild warming is helping pests move north as the hard freeze line moves north, causing more trees to be infested by killer beetles and fungi/diseases, creating even more fuel. Climate change does play a role.
Your entire reason for being is to pretend that fact isn't a fact.
Uninsulated power conductors, really?
Hey man, all I did was actually read the link I posted, and passed on what a federal judge learned as part of the trial..
from the link I posted:
The judge, however, also noted a lack of insulation for power conductors owned and operated by PG&E as a factor in the fatal wildfires
You are claiming the judge was incorrect? Presumably he was shown quite a lot of evidence.
Yes bad forest management was also to blame. But lots of other places have trees blow into lines without causing major fires.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
FTFY. What is missing is accountability. In this case, IMO, the right way to hold them accountable is to throw about half the management chain in jail for the next three decades, fire the rest, liquidate the assets, and dissolve the company.
PG&E should have been dissolved after Anderson back in 1993 (a.k.a. the Erin Brockovich lawsuit). It should have been dissolved after the 1997 fires. It should have been dissolved again in its 2001 bankruptcy. And again after the 2010 San Bruno pipeline disaster. For a company that starts so many fires and kills so many people through gross criminal negligence, the only plausible answer is to metaphorically kill it with fire.
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They do have nuclear reactors on the beach, though. Give it time.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Basically, PG&E is what happens when governments try to allow a regulated monopoly to provide critical utilities instead of a municipal electric company or a regional nonprofit. Every dollar that went to PG&E's sharedholders is a dollar that should have been used for routine maintenance and upgrades. If that money had been used that way, close to a hundred people would likely still be alive today, just from those two incidents alone. The problem is, the primary goal of any for-profit corporation, no matter how highly regulated, is and always will be profit, and their concern for public safety will always be limited to doing the bare minimum necessary to avoid getting sued out of existence.
If there's no profit in providing electrical services then why would anyone bother to invest in it? Think about that.
I think you let your government schooling interfere with your education. There's nothing inherently wrong with people making money on this. Don't blame this on malice when incompetence would suffice. I'm guessing that the people running this utility live in an area that could go up in smoke if something went wrong. I feel confident in this assumption because as big as California might be there's a good chance that the people involved here run the risk of their own hide getting burned if there is a wildfire caused by mismanagement of the largest utility in the state. If it's not their own life they care about then it's that of their family or friends.
Profit is a great motivator and we can use this as motivation to provide better services and products. Apple and Microsoft don't make computers and software because they are nice people, they do it because it makes them money. What is an even better motivator is keeping things around them from going up in smoke so the people involved won't see their house turned to ashes and having to attend the funeral of a loved one.
These people need to make money providing electricity or they will be forced to make their money doing something else. There must be a profit or the lights go out. You believe a non-profit could do better? Why? The people must still be paid for doing their jobs or they can't afford to eat. This is still a profit even if there isn't a stockholder expecting a dividend. Or you thing a government could to better? Then tell me when a government has ever got something done on time and under budget.
This is not something that can be fixed by removing the profit motive. If these people are not concerned about their own house getting burned down in a wildfire then they simply need to be removed from working at an electrical utility, and quite likely put in a mental hospital and treated for suicidal tendencies.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Standard issue with electrical reticulation is that the general public are so uninformed as to be living in a land of comic book physics.
The industry is full of really responsible people invested in their business going well and delivering a service. The OP beautifully points out how a couple of inflexible limits: a requirement to provide power into dangerous places - uneconomically, liability through perverse legislation and the impact of climate change has come around to ... severely bite the legislators in the ass, and the voting public and consumers.
While it may be fun to win over in some legal match its a zero sum game and hugely wasteful.
Even if it were climate change it would not be the first "bankruptcy" due to climate change. That would belong to the hunters of Doggerland about 10,000 year ago which is where the North Sea is today due to climate change. Now admittedly the concept of bankruptcy was a little different back then, there being no banks, but they certainly traded and were definitely put out of business by climate change.
Payroll is an expense, not a profit.
For the people working there payroll is their profit. If you want good people working there then you need to pay them and pay them well. No matter what you say about non-profit organizations there will be people making money.
Remember that the NFL used to be a non-profit until enough people complained about millionaires sheltering their own personal profits under this part of tax law. There is still a lot of money made in non-profit corporations, saying otherwise is provably false.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
PG&E is exactly what an economist would tell you will happen when government sets a price ceiling and supply isn't allowed to be reduced to compensate. Instead of quantity supplied being reduced (because that's illegal), quality is reduced as much as possible (Same exact economic issue with rent control price ceilings creating slumlords). The whole thing is the State of California's fault, a predictable result of their laws and regulatory mismanagement.
But sure, blame the power company which isn't allowed to make any significant decisions (who to sell power to, for how much and how top roduce and sell it) that California effectively runs via regulation.
San Diego Gas and Electric has the exact same issue as PG&E, just to a lesser extent because they're smaller.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
The Pacific Gas and Electric Company is an American investor-owned utility with publicly traded stock that is headquartered in the Pacific Gas & Electric Building in San Francisco.
Not really a beach though, it's pretty rocky there with steep drop offs. The tsunami inundation zone map for the area is very minor, not even going up to the plant. It's nothing like the Fukushima area. The bigger danger there is potentially from earthquakes.
The major flaw in that argument is that it happened under a for profit system.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
The PUC of California sets a maximum rate and profit level for PG&E and other utilities, and they do this each year. This was what caused the first bankruptcy awhile back when electricity prices were spiking but PG&E couldn't raise rates. This ceiling forces the utilities to find ways to conserve and run more efficiently.
You mean raking the forest floor?
Abandon the gas lines and generate electricity from it instead.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
They dumped toxic waste in the groundwater and then sent residents flyers touting the health benefits of having toxic waste in your groundwater.
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Or just simply used the portion of proceeds earmarked for maintenance on maintenance.
Work bio at MMWD
This what you get with half-arses socialist policies. What they need to do is nationalize electricity production. Make it non-profit and priced according to what is required to properly maintain it.
That's un-American though so instead you get this kind of cap, with the power company trying to squeeze profits out of it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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Here in the UK whilst years ago power cables and telephone cables were stuck on poles they are now buried under the ground wherever possible, usually several feet. Perhaps if that had been adopted in the USA instead of this obsession with sticking them on poles then you'd not have them wiped out by fires in the south, typhoons, tornadoes and hurricanes elsewhere or winter weather in the north. And whilst the initial cost is higher, over the long term they save loads.
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This is how you can get surprised by the champion of 'free market capitalism': I checked in wikipedia - in 2001 changes have been introduced to the way electricity is sold in Cal. and the result is that indeed the price for customers is set by commission and the company is forced to provide as much electricity as the customers want. This can work only if commission increases the prices to cover the costs including the ones caused by speculating individuals. /.ers here would support such action independently of whether everybody can actually do that or not (hint: people in apartment blocks have limited to no chance of providing for themselves). It seems to me that human population density has crossed the line of what is allowed given average human stupidity. At least in California it did.
Even if these speculators were not there or had mercy and did not suck the money out of PG&E it was destined to fall - no commission made of elected individuals can increase the price sufficiently if elections are coming. Usual consequence of such situation is that either government takes active role in providing such regulated goods while PG&E would be just selling it to government or the company goes bust at some point in near future. Such schemes always fail eventually and this has been seen throughout history of mankind - sometimes it just takes longer for zombies like PG&E to fall. How this has anything to do with (however induced and whether existent or not) climate change I really cannot fathom. OTOH the church of man induced climate change is just a fact of life.
I wonder how this will go. Maybe Californians should start producing their own electricity in their homes? I am sure
How about the California politicians? Either for not allowing PGE to run their operation, or for not enforcing laws/contracts that PGE breaks? Or both? Either way, it's the fault of those CA politicians (and the idiots who keep voting for them).
I will agree that climate change made PG&E's situation worse. But the post seems to almost completely absolve PG&E of its own responsibility in creating these fires. PG&E has known for years that its equipment was causing fires. Shortly before the Campfire which devastated Paradise, CA; PG&E was warned by homeowners that its lines were hitting trees and causing sparks. PG&E apparently could not be bothered to trim those trees.
This didn't happen overnight. And PG&E has allegedly repeatedly ignored customer complaints about power lines coming into contact with trees. Remember the movie "Erin Brokovich"? That was based on a true story about PG&E polluting groundwater, causing residents to develop cancer. So PG&E has a history of climactic terrorism. PG&E executives need to be tried for criminal homicidal negligence (80+ deaths from recent fires) and serve long prison sentences.
So either companies are REALLY dumb and hate vast sums of money OR the climate in Calif. HAS changed to one where fires are far more common.
Neither of which your political ideology will want to accept.
So what retarded bollocks will you make up now to explain it away?
The state is already running PG&E. Fixing prices on energy, denying the building of profitable power plants, extreme regulation of labor, supply and demand. Now they're bankrupt while across the country energy companies are some of the most profitable businesses.
Welcome to socialism. Now let the government take it over and raise prices to $0.50/kWh to pay for 'global warming', 'carbon credits' and massive government waste.
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Yeah, irresponsible corporation that are regulated out of existence and can't even trim trees for safety without lawsuits and complaints (https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article219315140.html ; https://stopsmartmeters.org/20... ; https://www.actionnewsnow.com/...)
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No, you're just paraphrasing now. That is in effect what the gp said. They paid that money out in executive compensation. It's like how we paid the telcos billions to build out the last mile, and they gave it away in bonuses to the execs, except that didn't kill anyone. Pge execs should be done for multiple manslaughter.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There won't be any investors willing to put a dime into California power companies now. The state will have to take over the grid whether they want to or not.
California regularly has had natural drought, unrelated to humans, including the mega-droughts (two decades or longer) 850-1090 and 1140-1320, the latter believed to cause the end of the Pueblos in the south west. (These may have been related to the "Medieval Warm Period" (roughly 950-1250) in Europe and larger global changes.) Any competent climate-historian can tell you that the last 150 years were atypically wet compared to the rest of the last 1400 (fourteen-hundred) years... but us humans have such short lives that they seem normal. California's normal state is drought.
Californians have piped a huge amount of water in and imposed reverse-desertification through landscaping (adds shade, soil, ability to buffer rain) and irrigation, and yet this anthropogenic regional wetting can't beat the natural swings.
So while PGE may not be adjusting to a swing, and it may be climate change causing it, this is clearly a case where humans aren't in control the climate. Either way, PGE is at fault for somehow not anticipating wildfires in a region that has them regularly.
you can't get away with a lot of the crap you used to. 50 years ago the fires wouldn't have been so bad and they would have gotten away with it. The next company that replaces them (probably the same folks just reincorporated, hooray) will have to actually maintain that infrastructure, which is an added expense.
The thing about climate change is it's changing how we live and work in lot of way. Mostly though it's just adding expense and making life more difficult. Plus the global economy's already pretty crap for the working class, so it's not like it'd take much to push it over the edge into permanent recession.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
universal services.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Every gas pipeline that has caused a fire in PGE country has been known to be in need of replacement. Every. Single. One.
What are CEOs for if not to be locked up when the corporation they helm (helm was not in my dictionary, wtf Google, nobody at the helm?) kills people through willful negligence. The PGE CEO takes home over $8M. Let's seize literally all of that, and give it to fire victims. And then let's put the CEO in prison for life, like any mass murderer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's time to consider to bury the power lines. Something they do here in Sweden more and more.
You don't seem to grasp the size of North America and why this isn't a cost effective solution. To put simply, the difference in size between California and Sweden is about 20k sqkm. In North America, you can restring an entire street(say 300m long) including poles, transformers and so on for around $30k-40k, if you trench it you're looking upwards of $500k-1.5m depending on whether or not you also have to deal with other utilities. Relaying lines like that sometimes happens when a street is having new water lines, sewage and so on put in at the same time. Higher priorities are placed for areas that have high disaster issues like freezing rain - central-east US, eastern US along the I75 corridor, and up into Canada and, Ontario through the 401 into Quebec and along the St. Lawrence Seaway. In California's case, you can bet your ass that there's been a long humming and hawwing over "is above ground electrical better in an earthquake zone" then below ground.
Sometimes it's not even worth the effort in high flood zones from hurricanes because companies have discovered no matter how *good* of a conduit is being used, how well water proofed it is, how resistant to salt it is. Somehow you get water or salt or end up with a vapor filled tube of salt water which when it fails, is nothing short of spectacular.
The big problem California has is the lack of proper forestry management. 40 years ago, burns were common. If you were buying a house and there was 1" of pine needles on the ground it would be automatically condemned until it was cleaned up. Now you have people who protest burns, protest cleaning up areas with highly flammable ground clutter. Give you a tip though, the entire eastern pine stands ranging from the northern US to Southern Western Canada are ripe to go up. They're effectively dead, tens of thousands of sqkm of dead trees from pine beetles and no burn policies.
Om, nomnomnom...
But every other month there is a story in the local newspapers about PG&E being protested or sued by some green group for "excessive" trimming of trees or doing maintenance work on property some activist purchased to keep PG&E from 'disturbing wildlife'.
California wants its cake and eat it too. It wants carbon credits but not pay for it through excessive energy cost, it wants heavy regulation of utilities but do this at minimal cost and with zero impact. California is one of the most expensive states when it comes to energy and that is WITH the government(s) setting or adjusting the rates.
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Why do they have to ask for a rate hike? They HAVE to make a profit, so they HAVE to raise their rates to meet that demand. They HAVE to maintain their lines so they HAVE to raise their rates to meet that demand as well. The question is, why would a company have to ASK their customers whether or not they can set a price. If you don't like it, switch suppliers.
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As I stated: "the concept of bankruptcy was a little different back then, there being no banks, but they certainly traded and were definitely put out of business by climate change.". Next time you might like to read to the end.
California's energy markets were deregulated 20 years ago
Yes, Solyndra was created to "stop" client change but that's just the other side of the coin.
First off, the drought was a result of natural variation. And anyone that checks reservoir levels today will find were at about the historical average, overall. If we had a drought - it's gone.
The real cause of the fires was the handwringing and NIMBY Gaia worshipers throwing up legal roadblocks to PG&E cutting back trees near power lines.
This was a manufactured (in that environmentalists fought against accepted standards for power line clearance) disaster that is being blamed on a non-event (in that there was no climate-change drive to the drought).
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How as CO2-driven climate change been tested true? After all, 95% of all models are wrong in that they do not measure actual data. They do not test true at all. As Einstein said, "If I were wrong, then one [author] would have been enough!"; the fact that data does not agree with theory/model means the theory/model is wrong. As Richard Feynman elegantly states: if your theory/model disagrees with experiment - it's wrong.
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Better to subsidize nuclear power than subsidize our military scum and their homicide sprees for oil in the Middle East.
Profit != value
There may be social value in having people in rural areas that are getting electricity, even if there is no private profit in it. In the case of many farms, this is true. Some people would say "just cover the farms", but who the hell is going to live on a farm with no neighbors? And you'd have to be a complete moron to argue that we don't need farms.
Money is actually quite poor at reflecting the value of necessities, but is excellent for luxuries. When you have a society where only 2% of the population needs to work in order for everyone to survive, money would be pointless if everyone was unemployed. So the government steps in, plays with some subsidies to make certain basics are "cheaper" than what a free market would create because again, money does not represent public value, only private value.
A simple difference between public and private values are it is in my private interest to dump my pollution and not care about anyone down stream. But just because it's good for me doesn't mean it doesn't cause more overall damage to everyone else. Then there's "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". A person contributes more value to society than they get paid. The per working person average GDP is 6x than of the average working person's income. This also applies to healthcare. Each person who dies to a treatable health issue is a onetime reduction to the GDP of $1mil. Just because the person can't afford $100k in hospital bills doesn't mean it isn't worth covering them.
In that case, would not the wise company use equipment that did not start fires?
Most companies just trim back trees and be done with it; but here in CA our greenies love to protest and sue against trimming trees getting into power lines. So they have to run power into the forests - but are prevented from maintaining access clearances around those lines...
As far as our taxes go, those aren't for infrastructure, they're to fund feel-good initiatives that do nothing. New taxes will always be required to pay for the actual infrastructure changes that should have been paid for already (and of course, those new taxes will, once again, be diverted to other things, requiring yet more taxes).
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PG&E was prevented from trimming trees. It's a common thing to protest and sue PG&E for doing what they're supposed to do. To the point that councilwomen and citizens watch each and every cut to condemn PG&E for being too aggressive in their clearance trims. And while the protest/lawsuit is on-going, there cannot be any trimming allowed. So we get wildfires.
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Next time you might like to read to the end.
You must be new here.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How about PUC do its damn job and watch over the utilities that it regulates, rather than take millions in campaign donations and illegal activities? Oh - it's because even Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown was involved in the scandals... Yeah, let the State regulate everything about the utility, let the utilities buy-off the regulators and Governor - and then when the SHTF, blame the CEO - and not the elected officials. Here's a hint: don't reward the bastards in Sacramento in the first place, by re-electing them (or electing their chosen heir) to their positions.
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ever hear of that movie Erin Brachovish?
An evil company polluted peoples water? and denied it? Fought tooth and nail to deny compensations.
Yea --- that evil company was PG&E
Cancel the business. They clearly do not know how to manage it without a huge societal toll.
Not just let them fail (which we should), but then fire every single sitting CPUC member, and bar them for life from ever running for public office or working for the State Government. CPUC is supposed to oversee these kinds of things - and they sit around earning $142,000 per year. Of course, it's a great way to get paybacks from the Governor (who appoints them), and when you have millions and millions getting funneled from the utilities into the Governor's mansion, well - you tend to put people into the CPUC who will do the bidding of the utility. Toss them all out - even the hand-picked "heir" to the Governor's mansion.
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Much of California's forest is owned and managed by the fed. Get your MAGA rake out and manage it.
Beware of the Leopard.
Well, in their defense, they had to pocket most of that money so they could funnel millions and millions of dollars in bribes-er-contributions to Jerry Brown and other "elected officials" so they would appoint the right people to those $142,000/year CPUC positions...
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PG&E is exactly what an economist would tell you will happen when government sets a price ceiling and supply isn't allowed to be reduced to compensate.
That, sir, is a load of hot cockery.
So just to be clear, even after paying millions of dollars to executives who weren't doing their jobs, PGE was able to turn a profit of $1.65 billion up 18% from the prior year even though their revenues had fallen! How do you think they managed that? As long as they are failing to maintain infrastructure as they are legally obligated to do, every single dollar of that profit represents an effective theft from The People, let alone their customers.
In exchange for their various right-of-way monopolies, maintenance vehicle access and the like, they are obligated to maintain the infrastructure in safe condition, and do business in a fair manner. They are doing neither. PGE is a criminal conspiracy to defraud the people who reside or even simply have financial interests in the area which they "serve". And beyond that: it has killed in the past, it has killed recently, and it will kill again. And those responsible will almost certainly not only face no punishment, but get to retain the majority of their ill-gotten gains.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Because CPUC. The California Public Utilities Commission consists of a bunch of lackeys appointed by the Governor, who get the privilege to set power rates, establish regulations, and provide oversight on spending and maintenance of all utilities in California. Utilities in this State cannot do anything without CPUC oversight and approval - including setting power rates.
It's really a pretty cool example of fascism - the State so heavily regulating an industry that companies are virtually "nationalized"; they are public-in-name-only, as they cannot do anything that (in this case) their Sacramento masters desire, It's a virtual State-owned operation, forced by regulation.
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PG&E is the scapegoat for California's insane utility regulations and forest mismanagement
PGE has killed people before with willful negligence and then covered it up, and that's what's happened here as well. And with the gas line fires in the bay area, for that matter; they were the result of lines bursting that they knew were in need of maintenance already. But they made 1.6 billion in profit in 2017, so clearly they could have done more to be safe.
TL;DR: Bullshit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why do they have to ask for a rate hike? They HAVE to make a profit,
No, they HAVE to break even. Making a profit is optional.
so they HAVE to raise their rates to meet that demand.
No, they don't. They made a 1.6 billion dollar profit in 2017, which was up 18% from 2016. They could spend literally another billion dollars on maintenance and still be making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. And perhaps someone should inform you, since you don't seem to know, that there is no right to make a profit. HTH, HAND!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How about the California politicians? Either for not allowing PGE to run their operation, or for not enforcing laws/contracts that PGE breaks? Or both?
That's a start, but we also need to go after the executives at PGE that are in charge of funneling the money that is supposed to go to maintenance towards executive compensation, and returns to shareholders. This is not an either-or. More important than incarceration is remuneration. We must seize the profits taken by these crooks. Also, of course, they should all be prohibited from serving as any executive of any corporation for ever, or from holding any elected office, forever and ever amen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The state is already running PG&E. Fixing prices on energy, denying the building of profitable power plants, extreme regulation of labor, supply and demand. Now they're bankrupt while across the country energy companies are some of the most profitable businesses.
Nope. "PG&E said its 2017 net profit was up 18 percent from a year earlier at $1.65 billion, but its 2017 revenue of $17.14 billion was down 3 percent over the same period." The simple truth is that if they weren't starting fires, PGE would be immensely profitable. But they didn't do what they were required to do, and now they're being held accountable. And they had the money to do it, but they instead gave the top executives big raises, and paid a substantial profit to shareholders (mostly blackrock, vanguard, and state street.)
The simplest explanation for the numbers is that they have more than enough money to do this maintenance, but they are choosing not to.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, those judges are always right about science! It's why we know that evolution is bunk, because a judge said so!
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How about PUC do its damn job and watch over the utilities that it regulates, rather than take millions in campaign donations and illegal activities?
I'm all for cleaning up the CA PUC, but I'm also all for cleaning up PG&E. They are not mutually exclusive. However, the people who made the decision to not do the maintenance are the executives. It was their responsibility to make sure that the maintenance was done, and they instead increased their compensation and increased PG&E's profits 18% from the prior year... right up until the fires that they started. So yeah, I want house cleaning at the PUC, but I want it at PGE even more. They've been up to this kind of thing for decades.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wow! CA is supposed to insulate their high voltage transmission lines like exactly ZERO other utilities around the world do! We are UBER progressive here!
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Two things that you have to take into account:
1. Population density is lower in Sweden on average, 57/sq mi for Sweden and 251/sq mi for California.
2. Start with the towns and housings close to the towns.
So it's still feasible, just the volume of effort that is actually going to be lower per capita.
The biggest problem is that people and towns are cheapskates that only consider the solution until next election and not a solution for 50+ years.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Yeah, it's not like the real science that gave us phrenology and eugenics. Those were on much stronger scientific footing.
It's not that simple. Being an environmentalist doesn't necessarily mean you are against using clearing fires. Often residents got angry when "controlled burns" or preventable fires got out of control and leveled their neighborhood. Any fire has some risk of spreading outside of its predicted or "controlled" area.
Such residents formed lobbying groups, and they asked for evidence that the techniques being used actually worked. Turns out record-keeping was poor such that nobody could present clear evidence. (The "ecology nuts" some refer to are actually lobbyists.)
Plus, clear-cutting (thinning) was an alternative to controlled burns or "allowed" burns, or at least a supplement to reduce their needs and risk. If you thin the forest occasionally, then the need for controlled/allowed burns would go down, at least in theory.
But both State and Federal funds dried up during the Great Recession, and both clear-cutting and the original techniques fell behind schedule. As is typical during big economic slumps, long-term projects get reduced. And climate-change may have made the problem worse.
Table-ized A.I.
Eugenics is used all the time in farm livestock, pet breeding and even breeding new strains of plants. It's ethical considerations that stop it being used.
Phrenology works fine to measure things like degree of alcohol fetal syndrome a person has.
Most of the problems with both are ethics and being used to push an agenda, often for political or religious reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Most of the time the line doesn't break - but a tree branch falls across the line, catches on fire, then continues down to the ground. In these cases, the circuit breaker won't help - the circuit is never really broken or even disturbed, but the branches in the trees short the line to ground for a few milliseconds (before they burst into flame) and start the fire.
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They are being told/sued not to by various green activist groups both within and outside government. Every time they trim trees some group is on the news that opposes it saying it destroys nature.
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There is no right but there is an obligation to shareholders. Making a profit is NOT optional, except for Soviet Russia. If they don't make a profit they aren't healthy and don't get shareholders to trust them or any cash to invest in the future (or save for green-left lawsuits about them trimming too much trees to prevent wildfires). Pumping a billion dollars into it doesn't make maintenance work like trimming trees go any faster or less opposed by activists.
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They are being told/sued not to by various green activist groups both within and outside government.
Not in the places where they're actually starting fires.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Pumping a billion dollars into it doesn't make maintenance work like trimming trees go any faster
Of course it does. You hire more contractors, and more trees get cut.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
PG&E labor unions have a bidding system and capacity limits for this work though. You can't just pick up a number of workers (if the supply is even there in the job market, which is another discussion altogether) to get the work done. Workers bid for open jobs (eg. trim this section of road) internally via the labor union, if you increase the supply, the wages go down, hence why the labor unions set a cap at how many people can be 'available' for this kind of work.
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With the major electric company for California filing for bankruptcy, what is next?
Do we just stop "doing electricity"?
One cannot guarantee a power line will not fall and cause a fire. One cannot guarantee a tree or a car or whatever will knock down a power line. Also, the costs of the lawsuits don't get paid by the good fairy. They get paid by the *users* of the service.
If the government takes over electrical distribution, will it be better? Will they shut off the electricity every time there is wind or a storm?
It's easy to gripe.
What is the alternative to PG&E distributing and producing power?
Ah. A grown up response! How refreshing.
And your mastery of "alternative facts" is ASTOUNDING!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
In a small area, one can bury power lines.
There is no way in hell one can bury all of the high voltage power lines in California. There are just too many of them and they are in challenging terrain (rock, tree roots, over water for example).
Impossible.
Paradise was built in a known fire trap. The previous fire chief resigned within a month as he knew there was no way to defend Paradise against a forest fire. People need to stop building in fire trap areas and if they want to build then PGE should not be forced to provide service to them.
During the Bankruptcy PGE should be broken up into 2 companies - a good PGE which serves urban areas and a bad PGE to serve firetrap areas and which charges higher tariffs to cover the risk and additional equipment. I am tired of subsidizing rural folks. Housing in the cities is crazy expensive. I dont have the spare funds to subsidize people who want to live in the wilderness.
**Life is too short to be serious**
But of COURSE these people had to turn it into a Left-Right issue.
Because that's all of the very little they know anything about.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I can speak on Illinois.
In states like California, repayment on a properly sized solar install can be 3-7 years.
In states like Illinois and Michigan, that jumps to 10-15.
Also, to generate equivalent power to a Californian setup, you have to increase the size of the array. Further skewing repaynment ammortization.
Also, what are the plans for EOL for used panels. They're not really recyclable.
So, what? Megatons of landfill?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
In terms of operational profits, the California Public Utilities Commission sets the amount of profit each utility (including PG&E) can make. Their profit doesn't even depend on how much they sell or the cost to them of what they sell, it's a fixed number which the regulators decide on. You don't seem to comprehend how tightly controlled they are by the regulators.
So if you don't like them, just go use a different company.... oh wait, the CA government won't let you do that, either.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
If people wan to build in firetraps no utility should be forced to provide power there
**Life is too short to be serious**
What the heck are you talking about? PG&E is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, with symbol PCG. It is not, nor has it ever been owned by any government.
I mean, maybe some government pension fund might own some PG&E stock or something, but that still makes it no more owned by the government than Apple or Google or Facebook.
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Basically, PG&E is what happens when governments try to allow a regulated monopoly to provide critical utilities instead of a municipal electric company or a regional nonprofit. Every dollar that went to PG&E's sharedholders is a dollar that should have been used for routine maintenance and upgrades. If that money had been used that way, close to a hundred people would likely still be alive today, just from those two incidents alone. The problem is, the primary goal of any for-profit corporation, no matter how highly regulated, is and always will be profit, and their concern for public safety will always be limited to doing the bare minimum necessary to avoid getting sued out of existence.
If there's no profit in providing electrical services then why would anyone bother to invest in it?
Because they need electricity for themselves. 56% of the United States by land area gets its power from electrical co-ops. In principle, there's no reason that number couldn't be 100%.
There's nothing inherently wrong with people making money on this
Except when the desire to make a profit causes you to divert safety money into bonuses and stock dividends. To date, no one has been criminally charged in that incident, in part because the corporate veil in this country is way too strong.
These people need to make money providing electricity or they will be forced to make their money doing something else. There must be a profit or the lights go out. You believe a non-profit could do better? Why?
Because the largest power provider in the United States is a little non-profit called TVA, with almost 5x the generating capacity of PG&E. And their customers (direct or indirect) average 8 to 12 cents per kWh while more than two-thirds of my PG&E residential usage is billed at over 28 cents per kWh. Profit in electrical utility companies is, indeed, a very bad thing.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The corporation certainly wouldn't have diverted safety funds into bonuses and stock dividends, because there would be no stockholders.
I mean yes, ostensibly a nonprofit could still divert safety funds into bonuses, but it would likely cost them their nonprofit status.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The good news is that PG&E is now a felon and has lost its right to vote. No, wait.... :-D
It joins with only 16 other companies in having been found guilty of a felony in the United States, and one of even fewer where executives did not end up in federal prison as a result. This may still happen.
It is also one of, I believe, only two corporations ever convicted of a felony for actions directly resulting in the loss of life. The other, Hoechst AG, was found guilty for having concealed evidence of deaths from its anti-depressant drug, Merital, that would otherwise have prevented it from being approved for sale in the U.S. To be fair, Hoechst AG's former parent company was previously convicted of war crimes in Europe for testing drugs on prisoners of war, and PG&E has a long way to go before it equals that level of horror. But still....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It would appear that there's plenty of blame to go around. And while it's all fun and games to point the finger at the big corporation, WTF are you going to do to fix the problem when it's a highly regulated public utility? Sorry, but CA brought this upon itself with screwed up laws, regulations, lawsuits, lack of proper forest management, etc. Do you think some other utility is suddenly going to pop up to replace them? All of these lawsuits end up being effectively paid for by the taxpayers because the cost gets passed along.
Just another day in Paradise
"You don't seem to comprehend how tightly controlled they are by the regulators."
They set maximum profits, not minimum, so it's hard to see what relevance your comment might have to the situation at hand, where the problem is excessive profit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just another reason we need UBI. You could make such systems illegal on the basis that monopolies are harmful.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Much of California's forest is owned and managed by the fed. Get your MAGA rake out and manage it.
So, have policies changed for fed lands since Trump...you brought up MAGA, so I'm assuming you're blaming him.
Are the percentage of fires different between fed controlled and CA lands? If so, you might have a case, otherwise you're just political trolling.
Just another day in Paradise
"Most of the problems with both are ethics and being used to push an agenda, often for political or religious reasons."
Exactly.
PG&E was prevented from trimming trees. It's a common thing to protest and sue PG&E for doing what they're supposed to do. To the point that councilwomen and citizens watch each and every cut to condemn PG&E for being too aggressive in their clearance trims.
Meanwhile here in a flyover state, my electric co-op solved the trees downing powerlines problem by cutting down every single tree within 30 feet of the powerlines and grinding out the stumps. We haven't had a weather-related power failure since. And it looks great. No mangled trees by the side of the road.
You don't see the contradiction within your sentence?
If CPUC sets their maximum profit, then how can the problem be excessive profit? Wouldn't the State set "maximum" prevent them from exceeding it in the normal course of operations, unless your postulating that the State sets their profit level at "excessive".
Anyway, PG&E went bankrupt before based on the "price fix the end rates, but let wholesale rates fluctuate" methodology of the State. They're now going bankrupt again because of their losses related to the fires. How exactly in your mind does "going bankrupt" equate to "excessive profits"? You don't think the shareholders of PG&E would prefer to not have their stock become worthless? That's what happens in a bankruptcy if the assets aren't enough to cover the liabilities. You really think a few years of dividends are going to make up for the massive loss right now?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
If CPUC sets their maximum profit, then how can the problem be excessive profit?
Because the CPUC is also corrupt. You look surprised. Someone should explain to you how the world works. Sorry your parents didn't, mine didn't either and I had to figure it out on my own by paying attention. Maybe you should try it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The biggest problem is that people and towns are cheapskates that only consider the solution until next election and not a solution for 50+ years.
That's not really the problem. The problem is that there's more that can be done for more people with $460k vs $40k to restring a street, especially if the threat of a disaster only happens every 4-10 years. Don't forget that underground utilities have a massive number of other problems like frostlines, trees cracking the casing, weather heave(ground shift from temperature swings) and so on. The costs in these cases come from either the utility or PUC, and are factored over the service period for the lines.
When they restrung my street, it wasn't because of a storm, or anything else. It was because the power lines had been in service since 1890, not even the massive tornado events back in the 1970's required a restring of the lines. In this case the age did, a few years prior they replaced the sewer and waterlines. Not because they weren't working or there were problems, but because when they were put in place they were laid with quality materials. Where cities were using lead pipes still in the 1900's, the town I lived in had voted to go with galvanized pipes which cost around $1/ft more then lead.
Om, nomnomnom...
The CPUC is who I was blaming for the whole mess in the first place....
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.