No power, again.

I was reminded yesterday of that great line from the film The Castle, that "power lines are a reminder of man's ability to generate electricity." Well, they weren't yesterday around New Zealand's largest city, were they? Darkness, traffic lights down, businesses closed and tumbleweed blowing through our major city were a reminder that we have a power infrastructure that is always on the edge of collapse -- a reminder that we have a third world power supply from what seems a third rate power-and-lines company (ie., Transpower, whose line was at fault) combined with a third world regulatory regime.

Transpower, may I remind you is 100% government-owned. I trust all those people who favour state-ownership of infrastructure because 'those greedy private companies could never guarantee supply' will now shut the fuck up. And I hope all those who cheer when the Resource Managament Act (RMA) is used to make construction of infrastructure impossible were happy to spend yesterday in the dark. And perhaps too those who favour the shackling of industry by the Kyoto Protocol might reflect that this is how the shackling of industry looks when it kicks in.

Power is the lifeblood of industry, of technology, of everything that keeps us alive. With the combined 'Anti-Industrial Green Dream Team' of Kyoto the RMA -- and state ownership of infrastructure -- we are in danger of unilaterally cutting off our own blood supply.

As I said during Auckland's last power crisis eight years ago,

The environmentalists’ false claims for disasters that ‘might’ occur will be dwarfed by the disasters that will occur if we continue to blindly accept their rantings. You think that the loss of power to our industrial capital for nine weeks is bad news? Just wait until the Dream Team kicks in - you ain’t seen nothing yet!

. . . The Dream Team’s two players are the Resource Management Act and the Kyoto Protocol: The RMA we know about by now; the Protocol, signed by Simon Upton earlier this year... extracts promises that governments of wealthy, industrial nations will ‘work towards the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions’ - the inescapable by-product of the burning of fossil fuels. Stripped of its worthy glow this means nothing less than a promise for the reduction of industry.

The environmentalists’ anti-development crusade reached its climax in this country with the RMA, an act making the future construction of necessary infrastructure (like power stations and hydro dams) virtually impossible. The anti-energy crusade has reached its climax with the Kyoto Protocol, promising measures to strangle our existing infrastructure (like power stations and industrial plants). [Auckland's 1998] power crisis offers a precursor of what life will be like as a result of these measures - together, these bureaucratic monsters will act like a calicivirus on industry, and on all who depend on industry for their survival; which means all of us," said Libertarianz Environment Spokesman Peter Cresswell [in 1998].

I really do hate saying "I told you so." And I really do remind you too that an environmentalism that doesn't put humans first is not an environmentalism that should be given serious consideration.

UPDATE: I should point out that this shambles will highlight more than one important difference between private and state businesses. One particular leitmotif of private enterprise is that very word, 'enterprise.' When private enterprise stuffs up, those enterprises generally realise their survival depends on finding and fixing the stuff-up ASAP. But when state-owned business stuff up, the emphasis is not on repair and gettign things going, it's on political self-defence, ie., the blame game. Watch all the finger-pointing, and you'll see how success and failure are judged in the game of politics.

TAGS: RMA, Energy, Environment, Religion, Global_Warming