In engineering there are credible and incredible failures. Nuclear power plants were designed against what was believed to be a “maximum credible accident.” Then came Fukushima, incredible.

In early December, a report from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) raised the possibility that a huge electric failure, the result of a concerted cyberattack or other event, could knock out electric supply in large swathes of the country for an extended period, weeks even months. A failure with consequences which would have been beyond thinkable before the computer age.

The report, which comes from an advisory council whose mission is to inform the president, has a weight that a think-tank study, for example, would not have. Here, it is the voice of the energy establishment speaking.

I found in reading this report and talking to people in the industry and in academia, it is easy to predict the end of social order as we know it.

It is a painful mind game to try to think how long families could survive without electricity. First off, you would be hot or cold, every appliance in the home would not work. Even if you have a generator, in short order the fuel, natural gas or gasoline, would be gone. How much non-perishable food do you have? I suspect most families would be going hungry after a few days. I would. Cell phones would run down and stay down, and the networks would collapse.

We would be reduced to living like animals without the skills that are inherent to animals. In bad scenarios, families with guns would outlast families without – for a few days.

Survivalists would be proven right as they hung on, maybe for a few months, hunting for fresh food, hoping for clean water, and living off the non-perishable food they have stockpiled. Rumor would dominate as communications failed.

Electric utilities live in a world in which their realities are changing. Wildfires in California and Australia have pointed to a new liability for the companies: accidental ignition through falling lines, likely to get more serious as weather gets more aberrant and droughts become the normal in a time of climate change. That, together with cyberattack, puts them in a place of vulnerability they never anticipated.

Utilities are proud of their expertise – and justifiably so — in responding to short-term outages, even major ones. They rush crews to the scene, and with military zeal get the lines up and the power flowing.

Then came Puerto Rico after hurricanes Irma and Maria, which gave an inkling of what happens when the grid fails: total devastation and maybe as many as 2,975 lives lost.

The NIAC report cites Puerto Rico and emphasizes cascading, blackouts as the grid begins to fail. As it is, utilities fend off daily cyberattacks, and every executive I have interviewed has emphasized that cyberattack is “what keeps me awake at night” – as Jacqueline Sargent, general manager and CEO of Austin Energy, told me recently.

The utility industry, often keen to be reassuring, was part of the preparation of the NIAC report. Scott Aaronson, point man in the industry’s trade organization the Edison Electric Institute, was  involved in the report and has been raising the alarm in interviews since its release.

A new seriousness in the federal government, particularly in the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Energy and the Pentagon, shows that the threat is real and credible. The White House has said nothing.

Changes not dictated by cyberattack defense, but which might aid it, are on the way. Small entities known as microgrids are cropping up. Think of the old utility model with central power stations as a city. The new one is a series of microgrids, more like villages, loosely connected and isolatable, and depending on local generation from solar and wind.

Also, the technology of defense against cyberattack is growing; there is a large cyber-defense industry. It is an escalating battle in which the defenses improve as the threat multiplies, a kind of cold war with weaponized computers.

In the new year, the invisible enemy will be engaged more than ever. But who knows what is enough? In the NIAC report, insiders have sounded the alarm about their own defenses. That is serious, credible.

 

 

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Photo: Lower Manhattan following Power Outage as a result of Hurricane Sandy.

This just in: the Grinch didn’t steal Christmas. Europe executed the heist.

It was surely filched by the cold-weather dwellers of Europe, and the theft was completed by the Victorians who loved all the paraphernalia of the festival – frost, snow, holly, mistletoe, festooned trees, Christmas puddings, wassail, mulled wine, mince pies (which had a combination of meat and fruit), sugarplums, fruitcake, cakes shaped like yule logs and, of course, pervasive red in everything, from poinsettias to front door bows.

All this was lovely fun in the time of Victoria Regina, and it gave us what is now the indisputable seasonal story. Where would we be without “A Christmas Carol” with Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and those fabulous characters which sprang from Charles Dickens’ rich imagination, when the spirit of Christmas gripped the great writer?

All this is wonderful and totally joyous. But what has it to do with the original Christmas in Bethlehem, where a woman gave birth to a baby in a barn stall? We can be sure that family didn’t need to be gathering fuel like Good King Wenceslas, who took pity on a poor fellow, “When the snow lay round about/Deep and crisp and even.”

Sorry, dear people, before you sip another eggnog, think about this: How did Christmas, celebrated around the world, get a snowy complexion? In the Southern Hemisphere, when it’s summer in the season of joy, nary a flake of snow falls. And why does the world fake snow when nature doesn’t provide?

My mother was a purest, a conservative about Christmas. We lived in a semitropical climate, where snow is unknown except by reputation. We were snow-deprived, sun-drenched.

When decorating for Christmas, Mum refused to use cotton wool, shaving cream, or anything else that is commonly used to suggest snow. She was all-in for Christmas but hung straw around the house to remind us of Christ’s manger and local ferns, which she believed grew along the River Jordan at the time of the Nativity. Mum had never been to the Holy Land, so I didn’t know why she thought that green stuff which grew in Central Africa also grew along a legendary river in the Middle East.

Truth is, I’ve examined the banks of the Jordan and I’ve never seen any of the ferns which Mum swore were authentic to Christ’s birth.

The wonderful thing about Christmas is that it’s universal. Everyone loves Christmas and complete with ersatz snow, tinsel, ribbons, artificial holly berries, Santa Claus (Mum wasn’t too keen on that interloper), it’s celebrated with gusto from its beloved place of origin in the contested West Bank (of the Jordan) to the farthest reaches of the world, where it isn’t expressly forbidden by local religious preference.

Another thing about a conservative Christmas as practiced by my mother: She didn’t let my brother and me start our Christmas revelry until Christmas Eve. Then it was as though a cannon had been fired and Christmas lasted 12 days, as in the carol.

The last of the 12 days was grand affair, which we loved as kids just a smidgen less than Christmas Day. The cause of this second celebration was a ceremony called a “snapdragon.” Dried fruit – mostly yellow and brown raisins — was soaked in brandy and ignited. As the flame wasn’t very hot, we children thrust our hands into the fire to grab the fruit. One year, I tried making this on television. I spilled the burning brandy and nearly burned down the studio, according to the fire marshal. “No more,” he said. I’m sure his name was Ebenezer.

Drat, nobody stole Christmas. It’s where it has always been, safe in our hearts. It’s joy, laced with thrill, overflowing with love and tempered by a thought for the lonely, the sick, the hungry, the homeless, the incarcerated, and those wounded in all the ways people get wounded through the year.

A very merry Christmas to you.

 

PARIS — There are those who believe when Britain finally shakes off its European bondage it will prosper as never before. This prosperity will be so compelling that the remaining 27 countries that comprise the European Union will follow suit in pursuit of riches. The end of European integration.

This is a view easier to find in Washington than it is in Paris or in London. There is a sense here of Europe Rising not Europe Disintegrating. Britain will still, despite the contrived case against membership, look to selling to and buying from Europe. After all, the EU will still be there: a huge market just a little over 20 miles across the English Channel.

Europe is beset with sluggish growth. The euro — the currency used by 19 of Europe’s nations — has been a mixed blessing, unable to serve hurting states by devaluing to increase exports. Yet it is the symbol of Europe, particularly to a new generation that has known nothing else and looks more to a united Europe than, perhaps, their parents.

These are problems but not insuperable. From what I heard here at the annual congress of the Association of European Journalists (AEJ), Europeans feel that they really need each other, not least because they are constantly under a sophisticated and relentless attack of fake news and disinformation from Russia. Russia is a huge problem in Europe with fake information and even fake events, like the planting of disrupters pretending to be reporters or staged events suggesting a fascist penetration that does not exist. Daily, Russia endangers the truth in Europe.

The AEJ is, to my mind, as good a place as any to take the temperature of Europe. It is made up of working journalists, not stars or polemicists, but day-to-day reporters from across Europe, from Bulgaria to Spain and from Finland to Ireland. Collectively, they provide unique insight on the mood of Europe.

Rather than Britain’s departure (which nobody in Europe wants), here at the AEJ congress Brexit is regarded as the kind of misfortune that brings people together and leads on to triumph. Rather than Europe’s tragedy, here it is seen as Britain’s tragedy. And rather than Brexit being a precursor to the breakup of the EU, here it is seen as a precursor to the breakup of the United Kingdom.

Otmar Lahodynsky, president of the AEJ, says that England has discovered nationalism, as have Scotland and Wales — suggesting the inevitable breakup of the United Kingdom as it has been constituted since the Act of Union in 1707.

For Europe, the continuing problem is immigration.

While there are rich and poor nations, those in poverty will try to live in those with prosperity and migrate illegally. Not only has this been one of the drivers of Brexit, but it is also a massive problem for Europe, both the internal movement of people from countries like Poland to France, Holland and Germany, and from countries outside, especially Africa where people board unseaworthy vessels and risk drowning trying to reach Europe.

Add climate change to worries about Russia and immigration.

Europeans, much more than Americans, are palpably stricken about climate change and concomitant sea level rise. This adds to immigration pressure and free-floating anxiety about the future — an anxiety that is unifying, particularly for the young.

In London, once my home and now a bitterly divided place, there is agreement that new trade deals will not be written at the speed of a French train. People point out ruefully that it took Britain seven years to conclude a trade deal with Canada — and Britain and Canada l-o-v-e each other as mother and daughter. Who wants a deal with, say, the Czech Republic, with such passion? Not a tempting future.

LONDON — I have a secret. I can’t verify it, but I can share it. It’s this: I think Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II likes President Donald Trump.

Honestly, I’ve been studying video of them together and despite what the press here thinks, I believe she likes him. She’s amused by him. Poor woman, she deserves some amusement; she deserves some international figure who isn’t fazed by the honor of meeting the world’s most important monarch.

Consider what a relief it must be for the queen to see someone as unlearned in matters of protocol as Trump. Legions of heads of state and heads of government have leaned low over her hand while their wives have curtsied, often clumsily despite hours of practice. What a trial all this must be to a woman of 93, who has been subject to this since her ascent as queen in 1952.

Elizabeth must be the hardest-working woman on earth. She’s met thousands of stiff, boring men, day after day. She’s been sung to by countless legions of well-scrubbed schoolchildren and has endured thousands of hours of native dancing, from the Maoris of New Zealand to the Ndebele of Zimbabwe.

The mere knowledge that you’re to go to Buckingham Palace produces a kind of paralysis in most. The honor of the thing with the ghastly small talk they feel they must be ready to speak can only make for a tedium that defies imagination. From great generals like America’s Dwight Eisenhower to mass murders like Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, each has taken the royal paw and whispered idiocies about the weather in London that day.

No one — except possibly Trump — meets the queen without hours of preparation. How to shake hands, how to check that the great moment hasn’t caused you to break out in an embarrassing sweat. Those clothes! Is it to be rented morning wear (Who owns that?) or something less formal. Has your wife ordered correctly? Nothing off-the-peg or too high-fashion — except for Melania who, on this trip, appeared to be working as an haute couture model.

There’s evidence that the queen, after a long life of boredom, finds some relief in two American exceptions: Meghan Markle, the wife of her grandson, Prince Harry, and Trump.

Would the queen, one wonders, have opened Buckingham Palace to NATO for a reception if she hadn’t liked Trump who, for good or otherwise, was the man of the hour: the mad cousin, if you will, expected to metaphorically blow on his soup and say awful things, but still the most important member of the family.

I think the gauche American president was a little reward the hard-working Windsor (the family name, in case you’ve forgotten) who was dealing with yet another family crisis: An American woman has accused the queen’s son, Prince Andrew, of having sex with her when she was just 17 years old.

The rest of the NATO summit was all downhill. Trump left early when the media published and broadcast pictures of others at the summit chortling about him, including his host, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the queen’s daughter Princess Anne and – Oh, the villainy! — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who regaled a small group with gestures, showing how Trump’s aides were open-mouthed at what their boss had said at his press conference.

Anne was already in bad favor with her mother for not joining the receiving line at the palace along with the her more dutiful brother, Prince Charles, and his wife Camilla.

Those who made merry of Trump’s antics might beware. He’s a counterpuncher (which means vindictive) and someone already critical of NATO. A chortle at Buckingham Palace might irreparably harm the defense alliance.

Maybe the queen will have reason to regret her hospitality and warmth toward the boredom-breaking American president. Her majesty won’t then be amused any longer.

The British call it sleeping rough. We call it for what it is: homelessness.

It starts the day when all the support systems — fragile as they often are — fail. When there is no home to go to; no bed to sleep in, no meal to eat, no toilet to use, no place to wash even a face — just the hard, cold and often wet streets that offer no succor. The hospitality of a concrete sidewalk is scant.

That is what faces 4 million luckless children each year in the United States, according to Renee Trincanello, chief executive officer of Covenant House Florida, which operates shelters in Ft. Lauderdale and Orlando. Once they hit the streets, they are vulnerable to every horror that can happen to a child, including sex trafficking. “They also are used by drug dealers to inculcate a habit,” Trincanello told me.

In the United States, homelessness is at a crisis point. Cities are clogged with the homeless from coast to coast. If you travel a lot, as I do, you are aware of how homelessness is at its most conspicuous where there is prosperity — a byproduct of high rents in cities like San Francisco, Austin, New York and Boston.

Very close to the Capitol in Washington, around Union Station, the homeless sleep on the sidewalks, sometimes with the barest needs met by charities — needs like a sleeping bag, if they have been identified and are lucky. Train stations are a mecca for the homeless because they have public toilets and offer warmth. But Union Station has removed most of its seating to keep out the homeless.

To draw attention to the misery and extreme danger of children sleeping in the streets, and to raise money, Covenant House branches in the United States, Canada and Latin America organize sleep outs. Once a year, executives like my friend Jan Vrins, managing director and leader of Navigant’s global energy practice, takes a sleeping bag, puts it on top of a cardboard box and gets a hard night’s rest on a parking lot pavement.

Vrins says, “It isn’t fun to sleep in a concrete parking lot on a carton box with a sleeping bag. But the time we spend with these youths before we sleep out is wonderful. First, we have dinner with them and have sessions where they share their stories.” Afterward, the children are safely tucked up in the shelter and the adults repair to the parking lot.

In every case, Vrins says, something has happened to them. “Their families have broken up, sometimes because of addiction; there have been storms, as in Puerto Rico, and they end up in the shelters. So, climate change is leading to more kids on the street,” he says.

Vrins says that he was introduced to Covenant House by an executive from Florida Power & Light. “That was 11 years ago, and I got hooked,” he says. Now he is Covenant House Florida’s vice chairman.

Trincanello, who is married with two daughters, has spent her career with Covenant House. She told me that her father wanted her to be a lawyer, so she pushed back and became a social worker.

If you sign up to sleep out with Covenant House, whether it is in chilly Toronto or as, as Vrins notes, more benign Florida, you will join some of the cream of America’s executive talent from Accenture and Black Rock, to Cisco, KPMG and other companies. In fact, prominent companies field “teams.”

Vrins, who is married with two sons, heads the Navigant team. Each sleeper is expected to raise $1,000 for Covenant House. This year, he laid down on the concrete in Ft. Lauderdale on Nov. 26. He says 130 people slept out there and raised $270,000.

A native of the Netherlands, Vrins is one of those gregarious people who puts his arms around you with his smile. He speaks with passion and love of the homeless children in their crises. Trincanello, who I have not met, has a voice as warm as a winter hearth. I can imagine it melting fear in a scared child. Together they do work which is not a molecule short of noble.

Vrins says of sleeping out: “When you wake up in the morning, you feel blessed. When homeless kids must look for the next place to spend the night, you feel blessed.”

The Democrats have no need to fret about what they’ll get for Christmas this year. Their worry shouldn’t be the gift, but rather how they choose to open it.

The gift is global warming.

Don’t call it climate change; that fuzzies the issue. Call it for what it is: global warming. It isn’t change but heat that is melting the polar ice cap, stripping Greenland of its ice sheet, opening Arctic shipping lanes and sinking Venice, one of the jewels of civilization.

Global warming isn’t an existential threat but a real problem that is here, real and now. It is happening today, this hour, this minute, this second.

President Trump has taken his stand. He said of the rising seas and wild weather, which are science-supported evidence of global warming, “I don’t believe it.”

That is a political gift, shimmering and alluring. That is a target affixed to Trump. That is an image as evocative as Nero’s fiddling or Canute’s apocryphal ordering the waves from the incoming tide to stop. That is an opening wide enough for the Democrats to drive a truckload of election victories through.

Democratic strategists need to tell their candidates, “The climate, stupid!” All they must do is to hammer the Republicans and the administration relentlessly on the matter of global warming.

But this gift, looking so unassailable, may be undermined by the current stars on the left of the party. They have a sledgehammer approach and they may do damage to the gift before it is unwrapped.

Their passion is for the simplistic-but-seductive Green New Deal. It defines the problem as fossil fuels and wants to ban them. Then it prescribes the fixes. Bad move.

The cost and disruption of the fixes are ignored. That is why former Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz — a man who knows a lot about both politics and energy — is pushing a concept he calls the Green Real Deal, which aims not to eliminate all fossil fuel use but to move to “net zero.” It means that many technologies will be used, including nuclear power and carbon capture and storage. It means that some fossil fuels will be used so long as their impact is mitigated by gains elsewhere.

These finer points of energy policy and environmental mitigation are too complicated for an election debate. They give too many opportunities for opposition ridicule. Too many handles for the Ridiculer in Chief and his acolytes to grab.

The Democrats need to repeat that the Republicans denied global warming even as the seas are rising. They need to sound the alarm that Boston, New York, Charleston and Miami may be headed for disaster very soon. They need to repeat it over and over, and then some more.

When running an election, a simple, repeatable message, without the details of how the goal will be achieved, wins the day. Bill Clinton’s message served up by James Carville, “The economy, stupid!” won the day. Trump’s enticing “Make America Great Again” cry resonates.

The Democrats need only to dwell on rising sea levels and that the Republicans have repudiated the science. “The seas are rising and we’re going to do something about it,” is a reasonable Democratic message.

Nixon showed us the effectiveness of framing the problem and hinting at a solution. “I have a plan,” he said about Vietnam. He didn’t mention it included bombing Cambodia.

The Democrats can win on a strong climate message. The seas are rising, wildfires ravage California year after year, Puerto Rico and other islands have been devastated by high-category hurricanes, and we may lose Venice.

A slam dunk in 2020? Don’t count on it. The Democrats likely will lard the message with social concerns, impossible marketplace tinkering and, in so doing, smash their winning gift as they open it. The Democrats are good at that, fatally so.

The word is exaptation. It will change the future, and it may save your life.

It is a word traditionally used in evolutionary biology. But now in scientific and high-tech circles, it is used to describe finding and adapting processes and compounds to uses for which they were not originally intended.

In biology, exaptation is used to describe how an evolving species uses a trait in a new way. The classic cited example of exaptation is prehistoric creatures that developed wings to keep warm. A later iteration in the same species finds wings can also be used to fly.

In today’s use of the word, it means cross-fertilization of old discoveries with new technologies; extant remedies applied in new ways.

For example, a medicine that was created to treat one disease may be used effectively for another. A drug destined for a specific cancer may be used to treat an immune disorder like Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. A material developed for space travel may be ideal for strength and lightness in an automobile.

All this takes on much greater importance in the age of mega data and computer capacity to delve into it and find treasuries of new uses. Today’s machine learning enables the data to be squeezed and pummeled into yielding extraordinary applications and solutions.

“The challenge is to break down silos and to get companies to democratize their data internally and externally,” says Ryan Caldwell, CEO of MX, a financial technology company.

Now a forward-thinking NASA engineer wants to put this approach — this multidisciplinary, multi-material, multi-compound, multi-procedural, multi-operational data approach — on a fast track, accelerating cures and solutions.

He is Omar Hatamleh, chief innovation officer, engineering at NASA Johnson Space Center and executive director of the Space Studies Program at the International Space University.

Hatamleh, a polymath with a fistful of degrees, is establishing Infinity Institute, a new kind of think tank that will accelerate cross-industry innovation over the whole spectrum of discovery and application.

Think discovery and rediscovery as the findings of the past are linked to the needs of today, and as findings in one technology can pollinize unrelated technologies. Essentially, it is the story of NASA and the collateral developments from the space program. Exaptation at work.

The genesis of the Infinity Institute is to be found in a series of four annual NASA cross-industry innovation conferences — the last just concluded.

They were notable for what was not on the agenda: no large discussions of money or the lack of it; no whining about government or regulations, or court decisions. Just a world of science, ideas and the bond between the seemingly incompatible, which when brought together inform each other. A cellist, Jennifer Stumm, described the math in Bach and what that means for science. A NASA scientist, Steve Rader, described how to find affinity ideas through the Internet of Things. An animated filmmaker, Charlie Wen of Marvel Studios, revealed synergies with industrial design.

In the last of these conferences, data expert Caldwell described how he used the very kind of data management and interrogation Infinity Institute has in mind to save the life of a colleague at MX.

When Brandon Dewitt was diagnosed with terminal cancer in his lungs and face at age 33, and given six months to live, Caldwell went to work to break down the medical silos, which enclose so much medicine and hide so many research results. A new treatment being tested in Oregon, which he found, shrunk multiple tumors in Dewitt’s lungs and cheek and saved his life.

When Caldwell’s 2 ½-year-old daughter, Chloe, was given the wrong medicine in an emergency room, her heart stopped cold. Doctors said would live only a short time without a heart transplant. Caldwell and his wife went to work: They established a war room with computers and whiteboards and bored into the research. A therapy was found and Chloe, now nearly 4, is doing well.

Hatamleh’s first target for the new, sweeping concept of exaptation is cancer.

You would think that cancer is well-researched, but Hatamleh believes the exaptation route is the way to go: “We want to break down barriers, go across industries and identify emerging technologies from various industries and explore their application in other fields.”

He believes he can half the death rate from cancer in 10 years by cross-pollinating technologies and therapies and using the kinds of techniques and ideas on display at his unique innovation conferences.

The Democratic deep state — it is not made up of Democrats in the bureaucracies but rather those who make up the core of the party — is in agony.

Solid, middle-of-the-road, fad-proof Democrats are not happy. They are the ones most likely to have thrown their support early to Joe Biden, and who now are eyeing Elizabeth Warren with apprehension and a sense of the inevitable.

Warren exhibits all the weaknesses of someone who, at her core, is not a professional politician. She blunders into traps whether they are set for her or not. She is vulnerable to the political equivalent of fatal attraction.

Biden lurches from gaffe to gaffe and is haunted by the positions he took a long time ago. Some of his social positions turn out to be like asbestos: decades ago, seen as a cure-all building material, now lethal.

Where Biden stumbles over the issues of the past, Warren walks into the traps of today. She is one of those self-harming politicians who shoots before she takes aim.

When Donald Trump mocked her claims of Native American ancestry, Warren took the bait and ended with a hook in her gullet. A more seasoned politician would not have been goaded by a street fighter into taking a DNA test, resulting in an apology. Ignorance met incaution, and Trump won.

Warren also swallowed the impeachment bait of the left, ignoring the caution of centrists who worried about the outcome in an election year. If the Senate acquits, Trump claims exoneration.

Then there is the Medicare for All trap into which Warren not so much fell as she propelled herself. Because Bernie Sanders, who reminds me of King Lear, and his field commander Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others on the left favored it, Warren had to leap in, ill-prepared.

The prima facie logic is there, but the mechanism is not. It is easy to see that Medicare is a very popular program that works. It is also easy to see that the United States pays more than twice as much on health care as any other nation.

Those, like myself, who have experienced state systems abroad, as well a Medicare at home, know the virtues of the single-payer system with patient-chosen, private insurance on the top for private hospital rooms, elective surgery and pampering that is not basic medicine. But we also know that the switch to Medicare for All would be hugely dislocating.

Employer-paid health care is a tax on business but substituting that with a straight tax is politically challenging, structurally difficult and impossible to sell at this stage in the evolution of health care. It likely will give a new Democratic president a constitutional hernia.

Warren seems determined to embrace the one thing that makes the left and its ideas electorally vulnerable: The left wants to tell the electorate what it is going to take away.

Consider this short list of the left’s confiscations that the centrists must negotiate, not endorse: We want your guns, we want your employer-paid health care, we want your gasoline-powered car, and we want the traditional source of your electricity. Trust us, you will love these confiscations.

Those are the position traps for Warren. To make a political sale — or any sale — do not tell the customers what you are going to take away from them.

It is well known that Republicans roll their eyes in private at the mention of Trump, while supporting him in public. Democratic centrists — that place where the true soul of a party resides, where its expertise dwells, and where its most thoughtful counsel is to be heard — roll their eyes at the mention of all the leading candidates. They like Pete Buttigieg but think him unelectable. If elected, they worry that Warren would fall into the traps set for her around the world — as Trump has with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un.

Politics needs passion. “She is better than Trump,” is not a passionate rallying cry.

 

 

 

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Photo: EXETER, NH – MARCH 15, 2019: Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren Campaigns in New Hampshire

California is burning. It was yesterday, it is today, and it will be tomorrow. The price in human life is enormous — in animal and plant life, too. The price in human suffering is gigantic, and the price in property damage is incalculable.

Even while unprecedented high Santa Ana winds are blowing devastation, electric utilities are looking for fixes that accord with the new realities brought about by global warming. Worse is yet to come, they fear.

In January the Edison Electric Institute, a Washington-based trade association, assembled a task force of electric utility CEOs to find solutions. The choices before them are not appealing.

The problem is California may be in the vanguard of fire-prone states, but it is not alone. Many states with heavy forest cover and long electric lines have reason to look to the future with apprehension. What amounts to a perfect fire storm in California could happen in states from Illinois to Louisiana, and from Virginia to Oregon.

Here are the options facing the electric utility CEOs:

—Vegetation control. This is essential, as Rod Kuckro, a reporter for E&E News, points out. But vegetation control — simply cutting down trees near electric lines — is easier said than done. Kuckro, an astute utilities journalist, says that Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), the utility that has borne the brunt of the blame and whose northern California service area is ground zero for fire, has 125,000 miles of power lines. These are threatened by millions of dead trees, plus the normal threat to power lines from falling trees, dead or alive.

Kuckro says the vegetation issue is complicated by a severe lack of manpower skilled in tree management. Trees must be cut and removed, or they will become fresh fuel for fires.

—Surveillance technology. Long-term technology is going to be decisive. Utilities will need a great deal more real-time data about their lines. Line surveillance, always a utility priority, is becoming job number one, and they are looking to the digital frontier.

Surveillance by men on foot and horse gave way to men and women in helicopters and all-terrain vehicles. Now comes the age of drones and data.

Morgan O’Brien, CEO of Anterix, which offers secure broadband communications to utilities, says with broadband technology and judiciously placed sensors, “a utility control room could know about a falling line in 1.4 seconds.” Time enough to cut off the power and start a repair crew on its way.

But this kind of data solution will take time and, like all the solutions, money. This will be difficult for PG&E, which is already in bankruptcy because of fire claims from last year, and the year before.

—Undergrounding. This sounds so reasonable, so logical. But in most places, it is not an option and not in earthquake-prone California. The cost of burying lines, where they can safely be buried on the PG&E system, is estimated to be as much as $3 million a mile for residential lines to $80 million a mile for high-voltage cables. It would take decades to bury even a few of its lines. And the cost is almost beyond contemplation.

—Microgrids. These are often mentioned. These are autonomous entities usually serving a paper mill, a university, a shopping center or sometimes a whole community. Microgrids self-generate, mostly with gas or solar, and sell surplus power to the utilities; and, in some cases, they act as storage systems for their host utility. Their advantage in a fire-prone region is that they can be isolated from their host grid. Therefore, the lights stay on if the big grid is shut down prophylactically, explains Mike Byrnes, senior vice president of Veolia North America, an energy and environmental services company.

Recently Jacqueline Sargent, general manager of Austin Energy, told me that cybersecurity concerns keep her up at night. For many utility managers that threat is now joined by an existential threat from one of man’s oldest enemies: fire.

If you are the manager of a utility in a blue state, you might also worry whether the federal government will help in a fire disaster. To date, President Trump has let California burn: no federal declaration of a disaster and, accordingly, no federal disaster relief, no troops. Hell, not even a presidential flyover for beleaguered California.

This is not benign neglect. This is vengeful neglect. Remember Puerto Rico?