An Erin Brockovich Moment

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  • by Frank Paynter on May 12, 2024

    Last night Marilyn Wilson unselfconsciously showed me a tattered photocopy of a Gary Larson cartoon: a view from within a room full of chattering, happy people, the devil standing at the door ushering in a bearded fellow in a lab coat. The legend painted on the door says (approximately) “Mystics and Irrational Believers,” the cartoon’s caption is “Scientist’s Hell.” By the time Marilyn was through with me, I felt like the scientist in the picture. But politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.

    Before I was able to squirm away, she had given me:

    • a densely printed page of tabular data associating RF energy with various diseases,
    • a Fortune magazine reprint of a story on energy intensive industries and the ways - and reasons - radiant pollution is being mitigated in manufacturing plants (Gene Bylinksy July 5, 1999 Fortune “New Tools for Cleaning Dirty Electricity”),
    • an article by Arthur Firstenberg called “Telecommunications versus the Environment,”
    • a pamphlet called the Freiburger Appeal,
    • and a thick Power Point print-out of a presentation by an electrician on electric energy pollution mitigation for home and business.

    We were at the Dane County Board Executive Committee session to consider recommending to the full board that they ask the State Legislature and the Governor’s Office to intervene in a Public Services matter, namely the American Transmission Company’s plans to build monstro transmission facilities back and forth across the county in anticipation of a demand that is poorly understood at best. The incentive to build is purely financial. The energy shortfall projections are merely 29 hours a YEAR of electrical shortages beginning in 2024. The analysis doesn’t address such simple solutions as peak demand rate variation, nor more elegant solutions such as co-generation incentives for new housing construction. Based on ATC’s track record, the construction of the transmission lines will likely cost half a billion dollars (US). The more they cost, the more ATC makes.

    The deregulated power industry is run by aliens from outer space intent on looping the Earth with huge high voltage cables, a harness they will use either to drag us all to a fiery doom within our own sun or perhaps to a darker fate in the lair of a huge space spider that feeds on planets roped in by the spider symbiotes sitting on power industry corporate boards. We don’t know which but it would be good to avoid either fate I think.

    Many county residents turned out last night. I showed up late and registered in favor of the motion but didn’t intend to speak. Then, when Marilyn spoke of her own illness and a causal link to electrical frequency pollution that she perceives, when she spoke of a double blind study that linked high frequency electro-magnetic radiation to her illness I was moved to speak too. I have a family member with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and while we don’t know the cause, the effects can be devastating. I don’t necessarily believe in the linkage between power transmission and illness, but I’d like to see the work done openly and honestly that might confirm or deny the suspicions.

    Over the years there have been many attempts to assess the effects of electrical radiation on health and to the best of my knowledge there is at this time no scientifically proven linkage. The cancer clusters, the CFS, none of the syndromes and symptoms reported by my friends in the tinfoil hat brigade have been objectively linked to power transmission. But there is an emerging body of anecdotal evidence similar to the “unproven” health concerns for asbestos workers, for cigarette smokers. At some point it is possible that the statistical inference associating electric power distribution with ill-health conditions will be nailed down by research that will document a causal relationship and not simply a mathematical correlation. At that point, the toxic tort specialists will open up a new market, and the power transmission and distribution industries will be in a world of hurt.

    Call me a misanthropic pessimist, a suspicious and negative skeptic; color me jaded. I believe the fundamental reason for the recent decoupling of electric power transmission and distribution businesses from electric power generation is an attempt to isolate risk, to avoid toxic tort bankruptcy when the industry experiences its ultimate Johns Manville moment and sinks into bankruptcy like the asbestos producers of the mid-twentieth century. Another benefit of decoupling is that where once there was one profit center, now there are three (generation, transmission, and distribution), their interests essentially decoupled, and their investment opportunities broadened to include power market options trading.

    Mothers of “cancer cluster” children seeking damages will sue the transmission company or the distribution company. The government will be shielded from liability because deregulation is the law. The generation companies and the distribution companies will be shielded from liability because the transmission companies own the facilities where proximate cause is most likely to be found. So the transmission companies will go under, but their fixed assets will remain in place wanting only an upgrade to continue in service. But before that happens, the residents of Dane County will burn a lot of coal generating electricity that won’t be used locally but will find its way onto the grid for options trading in Chicago.

    Meanwhile, there is another environmental issue that gets lip service at best. Global warming is a result of combustion, not just combustion of gasoline, but of coal, natural gas, tobacco, burning bags of dogshit on the high school principal’s front porch. Construction of new transmission facilities today to come online in 2024 - 2024 reinforces the combustion model for electrical power generation. Here in Dane County a coal fired plant was built to the east and demand was projected to the west and a transmission line is planned to move those electrons from there to here. Laying aside the quality of the projections of increased demand, the fact that even the power companies only see shortages of 29 hours in 2024, the fact that the people who present the alternatives are the people who will profit financially from the decision: the question is asked, “Which route shall we choose for the new power line?”  The question should be, “Do we need a new power line?”

    My brief recitative at the meeting last night enjoined people to eschew riding the last wave of the twentieth century model of power provision, and to get on the new wave of alternatives that the 21st requires of us. I said that it was a bumper sticker opportunity to think globally and act locally. The committee passed the reolution and moved it out to the full Board.

    Our modest victory at the County Board could give us the breathing room to ask the right questions.

    { 2 comments… read them below or add one }

    Tamar 05.12.06 at 2:28

    Frank,
    This is written so well. You ask very important questions as well as sharing some healthy scientific skepticism. How exciting that you were able to make a difference like that.

    And I say this NOT as a “groupie” but as a *most* discerning blogster!

    McD 05.13.06 at 6:46

    Frank,

    Conventional business logic will always seek growth. If power needs keep rising, business will seek to supply that resource.

    The only recourse to fight conventional business trends is
    political will. It sounds like you attempted to supply some energy to fight conventional business growth.

    Could you consider a political commitment to add more wisdom to the committees that get to make these large strategic decisions?

    Hopefully, the children of boomers get the education they need to tackle to large question of growth at any cost… and re-engineer our world for better use of resources.

    Pendulums swing and when we forget to maintain balance the earth corrects for us and not necessarily with us… The heroes of the next generation will be scientists who find the most pressings issues and devise solutions for new realities.

    When we find and root out the devil we will see that his greatest tools are ignorance, greed and carelessness.

    Nicely written post, Frank.

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