Revolting – Right in the Solar Plexus

Transitions can be very rough. People are displaced. Traditional jobs die. Expectations can be shattered and replaced. Money, wealth, employment and even migration patterns can be redefined beyond imagination. Ray Kurzweil, a proponent of Singularity Theory, told us that the greatest shift in the 20th century (on steroids, I might add in the 21st) was the acceleration of change itself. He postulated that in the modern era, taking the year 2000 as a single change unit, by the end of the 21st century, mankind will have experienced 20,000 year-units of change.

As early automobiles began trundling down our mostly dirt streets and roads in the early 20th century, towns passed ordinances banning these vehicles because engine noise and backfires scared horses. In 1903, the Wright brothers mounted the first controlled flight of a winged aircraft. All 12 seconds worth. Looking at life today, I think the world screams “accelerated change” loudly.

But factors completely unknown in those early days have mounted parallel environmental and sociological change on an equally grand level. Over-population, over-industrialization, over-limited resource extraction and wanton release of effluents, greenhouse gas emissions have spiked massive migration patterns and added horrific climatic disasters that are literally reshaping the earth. Disinformation has risen to assuage change skeptics: From cracking radios to an explosive deluge of media, yellow journalism morphed into conspiracy theory driven personalized social media.

All of these changes have fomented massive political reactions, pushed world powers to regime-ending world wars spurring a mounting effort to calm accelerated change waters in an escalating battle between cruel but efficient autocracy and gentler but messy democracy. When the future seems destabilizing and unfathomable, threatening life choices in uncompromising erosion of life patterns that had existed for decades, if not centuries, politicians who glorify the past (carefully eliminating mention of the profound negatives of earlier eras) offer gullible, change-terrified people the impossible promise of a return to yesteryear. Since technology is unstoppable (though it can be delayed… much like those towns banning cars noted above), people tend to fall back on religion and false prophets to replace those accelerants of change to explain “reality.”

And sometimes, even those inevitable steps into modernity, pushed by even the most powerful agents of necessary change, are too much, too soon to be absorbed into a true “new normal.” Those who lead these changes, particularly shifts in displacing technology, are often stymied by a new generation of backsliding luddites combined with an over-estimation of what change agents perceive as “obvious.” For example, the literal slam of brakes on the manufacture EV and driverless vehicles, even as artificial intelligence is beginning to dominate our world, stems from an over-estimation of the extent building of the required charging stations, throwing a monkey wrench into the “best laid plans of mice and men.” Nothing speaks louder to this conundrum than “red state despised” California’s plunge into explosive development of alternative energy. Like solar power.

Writing for the November 24th Los Angeles Times, Melody Petersen explores the harsh reality of California’s overly explosive solar power capacity rollout: “California is making so much solar energy that large commercial operators are increasingly forced to stop production, raising questions about the state’s costly plan to shift entirely to carbon-free sources of electricity… In the last 12 months, California’s solar farms have curtailed production of more than 3 million megawatt hours of solar energy, either on the orders of the state’s grid operator or because prices had plummeted because of the glut, according to an analysis of data by The Times… That’s enough to power 518,000 California homes for a year, based on average electricity usage.

“To avoid overloading the power grid, California sometimes must stop producing solar and wind power. So far in 2024, the state has curtailed generation by 3.2 million megawatt hours — enough to power more than half a million homes for a year… The amount of curtailed solar power has more than doubled from 1.5 million megawatt hours in 2021, state records show, and is up eight times from levels in 2017.

“The waste would have been even larger if California had not paid utilities in other states to take the excess solar energy, documents from the state’s grid operator show. That means green energy paid for by California electricity customers is sent away, lowering bills for residents of other states… Arizona’s largest public utility reaped $69 million in savings last year by buying from the market California created to get rid of its excess solar power. The utility returned that money to its customers as a credit on their bills… Also reaping profits are electricity traders, including banks and hedge funds…

“The solar glut also means higher electricity bills for Californians, since they are effectively paying to generate the power but not using it… California’s electric rates are roughly twice the nation’s average, with only Hawaii having higher rates. Rates at Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric increased by 51% over the last three years… The increasing oversupply of solar power has created a situation where energy traders can buy the excess at prices so low they become negative, said energy consultant Gary Ackerman, the former executive director of the Western Power Trading Forum. That means the solar plant is paying the traders to take it.” Wowsers!

The rising Trump administration seems hellbent on ending those energy-directed infrastructure efforts from the Biden administration and returning those “drill baby, drill” vectors to restore traditional fossil fuel burning energy resources. But the United States, fracking away, just may already be producing as much oil as it can. When you remember that the price of oil is not materially impacted by the oil output of a single nation – it is globally-priced commodity – this political vector is more about lip-flapping to placate the gullible neo-luddites and a clear pandering to the oil and gas Trump donors who expect a payback. PS: US oil drillers do not offer discounts to their American consumers.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as I have said many times, Mother Nature (and her quiver of the laws of physics) does not care what we like, what we want or how our politicians decide; if you like the wildfires, floods, coastal erosion, massive storms and intolerable summer heat – not to the mention the result of climate driven migration – you ain’t seen nuffin’ yet!