, Columnist
How Can California Be Left in the Dark?
America’s biggest and most innovative economy should not treat a blackout as some kind of unavoidable natural event.
Healdsburg, California, Oct. 27, 2019.
Photographer: Phil Pacheco/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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America continues to innovate wonderfully in cyberspace, but when it comes to solving actual, physical-world problems, its record is deteriorating. The fires in Northern California — and the resulting power blackouts, affecting millions and running for days on end — show just how many nodes of failure Americans are willing tolerate or even encourage.
The practical and moral failings in this matter are so numerous it is hard to know where to start.