Planned blackouts as method to reduce climate change?


The following link is from the LA Times, but at first blush it looks like something from the Onion.

This just goes to show how out of touch people are with the utility system that is the lifeblood of our society.  Does anyone think that a few hours of a fossil fuel plant’s operation will have a significant effect on the climate?  The California wild fires last year released multiple years worth of state GHG emissions.  Worldwide GHG emissions increased by 2.5 billion metric tons over the past couple of years, 40% of that from increased coal generation in China, India, Africa, and some third world countries.  Those things amount to GHG Emissions orders of magnitude larger  than the emissions of a few generating plants for a few hours per day.

What the blackouts will cause is death, especially in older and poorer areas,  and major financial damage as businesses leave the state for somewhere where they can operate without fear of having their processes shut down at undetermined times which can severely damage equipment and material in process.

Would an occasional blackout help solve climate change?

BY SAMMY ROTH STAFF WRITER 
LA Times

JULY 20, 2023 6 AM PT

This story was originally published in Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

What’s more important: Keeping the lights on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, or solving the climate crisis?

That is in many ways a terrible question, for reasons I’ll discuss shortly.

But it’s been on my mind as a ferocious heat wave roasts California and other states — and as I’ve watched Glendale respond to a Sierra Club lawsuit over the fate of the city’s gas-fired power plant, just across the L.A. River from Griffith Park.

Read complete article >