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Common Sense folly ideological culture porkbarrel politics

A Futility Triptych

Port Angeles is a quaint town on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, in Washington State. It now sports three state-​of-​the-​art wind turbines. Which were purchased with more than just generating electricity in mind.

“They were also meant to educate folks about wind power,” City Councilwoman Sissi Bruch said recently.

And the activists, politicians and bureaucrats responsible for the $107,516 purchase achieved that, surely. Just not the way they intended.

You see, based on current Bonneville Power Administration rates, the turbines — described by Paul Gottlieb of the local Peninsula Daily News as “windmill-​like” — are expected to “produce $1.50 a month in savings.”

The city council members express regret about that, and admit these monuments to enviro-​consciousness are a boondoggle. But they insist: they never expected the generated electricity to pay back the investment. From what I can tell, the generated electricity won’t even pay back their maintenance cost, though Mr. Gottfried did not clarify that in his Daily News report, mainly because the maintenance costs are as of yet unknown.

Further, as a result of Port Angeles’s wet, salty-​air environment — they are located in a park by the Strait — they are not expected to last past 25 years.

But it gets worse! They are not even running yet. They await Underwriter Laboratories inspection and approval. They stand motionless.

Monuments to the futility of wind power.

OK, the futility of wind power in most locations.

The turbines do look cool. I like their vertical design. I merely suggest one alteration (for efficiency of message): the blades should be shaped as dollar signs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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wind, turbine, boondoggle, wind power, climate

 

Categories
folly porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

A Bullet Train to the Head

Romanticism. The yearning for greatness; the need for speed. Efficiency! It’s all there in California’s high-​speed rail project — hopes and dreams and a sense of the grandeur of progress.

And yet the bullet train project, approved by voters in 2008, is a fiasco.

One can blame the voters, I suppose. At least the 53.7 percent who said yes to a referendum authorizing a 9.95 billion bond. Just to get the project started.

But we shouldn’t, really. All the people pushing the bullet train notion (from Los Angeles to the Bay) said that most of the investment would come from private investors. Further, it would require no ongoing subsidies.

Those assurances, however, “were at best wishful thinking, at worst an elaborate con,” writes Virginia Postrel for Bloomberg.

How bad is it? Total construction cost went from a $33 billion to $68 billion — despite route trimming. The first segment, which is understood to be the easiest to build (shooting through an empty stretch), is four years behind schedule, and still lacks necessary land.

The list of failures goes on and on, and includes a dearth of investors. And then there’s the estimate of the company who got the first bid on the project. It says that the line will almost certainly not be self-sustaining.

“The question now,” Postrel concludes, “is when they’ll have the guts to pull the plug.”

Corruption, hope without realism, business as usual — all these are revealed in the project. And wasn’t the second season of True Detective about this? Let’s hope this real-​world fiasco ends with less bloodshed.

Californians have already lost enough in treasure!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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California, high speed, rail, boondoggle, waste, illustration