Of course we don't yet know what tripped the 500-kilovolt (kV) high-voltage line from Arizona to California to start the cascade of lost power to the entire San Diego metropolitan area, but it was certainly a wake-up call for what we would have expected if President Obama had not reined in the EPA.
His advisers suggested that allowing the EPA regulation to go through could result in blackouts.
Again, we don't know what tripped the high-voltage line (they say it wasn't terrorism) but it reminds us (at least it reminds me) how perilously close we are to meeting (or not meeting) peak energy demands. [Update: on the evening of September 8, 2011, it was being reported that it was human error; one man repairing a piece of equipment.]
Letting the EPA tail wag the dog is a recipe for disaster. (Is that mixing metaphors?)
