What's the Real Story Behind California's Energy Shortage?

There's a lot of myth and rhetoric floating around. Some, including  President Bush, have tried to pin the crunch on environmentalists  and clean-air standards, but energy experts point to poorly  planned deregulation and mistakes by the utilities.

To provide some perspective, we collected several excerpts from  editorials and opinion pieces on the issue.

The Bush Administration has pointed to environmental standards  as the cause of California's energy shortage. But, as the Los Angeles Times said in a recent editorial:

"In fact, it was regulatory uncertainty and  economic decisions by utilities and private generating companies that caused the lack of new plants."

The Bush administration also claimed that California's energy shortage shows that we need to drill in the Arctic Refuge. But as the Los Angeles Times noted:

"Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,  President Bush's signature energy cause, would not generate one kilowatt of electricity for  California. It wouldn't even produce any oil for an estimated 10 years...

The amount of oil thought to be there is not enough to significantly ease the United States' dependence on foreign oil. Nor is it enough to outweigh the value of this region as a wilderness home to caribou, wolves, bears, musk oxen and hundreds of other species."

The New York Times also noted that

"It is wholly specious to suggest, as Mr. Bush  does, a connection between opening the refuge and California's energy problems. Less than 1 percent of California's electricity comes from oil. California's fuel of choice is natural gas, and if Mr. Bush wants to find natural gas, there are far better places than the coastal plain to look for it."

  The Times also states, that though we need a balanced energy  strategy,

"The first step in that strategy should not be to start  punching holes in the Arctic Refuge... the relatively trivial amounts of recoverable oil in the refuge cannot possibly justify the potential corruption of a unique and irreplaceable natural area."

The entire editorial "Wrong Way on Energy" (Jan. 31) can be  found at:

  http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/31/opinion/31WED1.html

Paul Krugman of The New York Times noted in a recent column, "Smog and Mirrors" (Jan. 31), that though George W. Bush placed  the blame for California's shortage on air-quality standards,

"His assertion was swiftly contradicted — not just by environmentalists and California officials, but by the energy industry. A spokesman for  Houston- based Reliant Energy, which operates  four Southern California plants, told The Los Angeles Times that assertions that environmental  regulations were holding back power production  were "absolutely false."

Nor, apparently, did environmental regulations play  much of a role in California's failure to build new  plants in the years since deregulation..."