Stop Bickering and Fix the Power Grid

The blackout of 2003 did more than cut off the lights for 50 million people. People couldn't use their computers to get to the Internet. They couldn't reach their children and friends on cell phones. The August power outage hit whole systems of information, communication, and safety. That's because we have created an information society that depends on highly complex, networked, and interconnected technological systems -- and we are not managing them at all adequately. Indeed, they are increasingly run not on the basis of science or engineering but on ideological preferences, not for the overall public good but for regional or parochial interests.

The blackout is merely the latest and most dramatic example of this trend. For years, engineers, regulatory agencies, utilities, businesses, and consumer groups warned that the transmission grid needed upgrading. The U.S. was shifting from a regional system of regulated monopolies to a more deregulated national market for electricity, and the grid required uniform, national rules of the road and more capital investment. Simple problem to address, right? Yet the solution has been defined in political terms, as being for or against states' rights, or pro- or anti-deregulation. Fixing the grid has never been seen simply in terms of getting it to work better.