POSTCARD FROM LOS ANGELES: Power Politics

LOS ANGELES—“It will make the Boston Tea Party look like high tea,” proclaimed San Diego-based consumer activist Michael Shames during an April panel discussion at the ARCO Forum. The topic was the California electrical power crisis, and Shames, the executive director of the Utility Consumers’ Action Network, predicted a popular revolt if consumers were not protected from the vicissitudes of the electricity market.

Electricity prices for consumers have been climbing steadily, and the populace hasn’t risen into open revolt—yet.

But Californians never have been good at organized violence. The bloodiest battle ever to take place on California’s soil was the Dec. 6, 1846 Battle of San Pasqual during the Mexican-American War. Only a few months after the Americans took southern California without firing a shot, the locals rebelled. Twenty-one Americans and six Californios died in the battle; within the year, U.S. General Stephen W. Kearny put down the insurrection and marched triumphantly into Los Angeles.

For now, unrest at the ballot box is more likely than unrest in the streets. And Richard Riordan, the millionaire Republican who just moved out of city hall due to city term limits, is mulling whether he’ll try to march triumphantly up to Sacramento. Riordan, whose conservatism is of the fiscal rather than the Bible-thumping kind, is seen by many as the state Republican party’s best hope for the governor’s office in 2002. (They were desperate. For a time, Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered a possible Republican nominee.)

The crisis conditions of rolling blackouts and exploding wholesale power prices have gotten less severe over the past few months. Nevertheless, California businesses and consumers are beginning to feel the pinch. Anecdotal reports have southern California consumer power bills 70-100 percent higher than they were at this time last year. A Los Angeles Times poll conducted in the last week of June showed that nearly half of Californians are disapproving of the way that Gov. Gray Davis has handled the crisis. There have not been any major blackouts so far this summer, and the state cut a deal to buy power at stable rates. But the fear of the lights going off still flickers in this dusty city.

Last summer, the hottest days of August led local utilities to cut power to various parts of the L.A. area during mid-afternoon. This summer was supposed to be worse.

That would have been bad news for the research hospital where I work. Although it has backup power sources, they take a few minutes to come on. All non-essential machinery (that is, everything but patient’s ventilators and lights in the operating room) lose power when the grid turns off. Such disruptions mean crashed computers, half-completed chemical reactions, and temperature fluctuations in strictly climate-controlled cell incubators. If the hospital fails to switch to its own massive diesel generators in time, the penalties from the power companies are enormous.

But temperatures have been moderate—that is, in the 80s—and last week’s rare July rain cooled things down in Southern California and kept energy-sucking air-conditioners off.

Davis—who just officially launched his re-election campaign last week—and the Democrats seem to have decided that the energy crisis might just knock state Republicans off of the endangered species list. In a long-term contract with power-producers, the state locked itself into stable—if not generous—electricity rates for the near future. After much wrangling, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission agreed to price caps on electricity in western states. But until recently, President Bush was pretty much ignoring the problem. It may have helped that many of the energy companies that could benefit from the state’s power companies were based in Texas. Or maybe he thought the crisis would boost his argument that we need to drill more oil and make his buddies from the oil industry even richer. But the Dems cut a few deals to bring electricity back to the state’s high but reasonable rates.

Thus, for most Californians, the whole mess stinks of politics. Indeed, 74 percent of Californians in the Times poll said that they “strongly agree” that power companies have manipulated prices in order to make a profit. Bush has gotten even worse ratings from Californians than Davis. The poll showed that 65 percent disapprove of the way he has handled the electricity shortage. For now, Davis still has a lead in the polls over Riordan, but the election is many months away. Once the political slugfest gets into gear, Californians may hold Davis responsible for their inflated electricity bills. Nevertheless, the crisis may be just the things the Republicans need to reestablish a significant presence in Sacramento.

Also in attendance at the April panel at Harvard was Debra Bowen, a state senator and chair of the Energy, Utilities, and Communications Committee that has been dealing with the power mess.

She said that there was only a two to four percent increase in power consumption state-wide in 1999-2000, while utility companies were seeing their profits shoot up nearly 1,000 percent in some cases.

“The only conclusion I can draw from this is that several people are planning to retire after selling power to California this summer,” she said.

What’s an honest Californian to do? For now, I’m keeping the thermostat on 80 and making sure not to use expensive scientific equipment when the grid goes down. I’m also doing some reading on Andres Pico, the Mexican leader at the Battle of San Pasqual. That is, if the lights stay on.

Jonathan H. Esensten ’04, a Crimson editor, is a biochemical sciences concentrator in Lowell House. This summer, he is getting reacquainted with the virtues of sunlight.