If I climb the nearest ridge on a frosty morning I can see the steam plumes from two electric power plants, one distant and one not so much. I wonder if they’ll still be making steam on the next frosty morning…
Bravely eschewing such unprogressive notions as “separate branches of government,” Dear Reader seems to have done – or at least promised to do – something rather rash. Precisely what he has done remains to be seen, of course, but if it has any substance at all its effects are likely to show up here first.
Due to the peculiarities of small-town economics, I know more about that nearest power plant than I’d normally care to. In the very old but rather pointless little town nearest the Gulch, it’s by far the biggest employer. And like the town, it’s quite old and decrepit. Large, important bits keep falling off. The little town’s two motels do incongruously good business as the corporation that runs the plant keeps having to send expensive work crews to duct-tape the bits back on. The plant doesn’t even try keeping up a pretense of profitability. Yes, of course it burns coal.
So how that plant will ever stay running once its undoubtedly already unacceptable “carbon emissions” are legally mandated to zero, I truly have no idea. You might think that would be cause for schadenfreude since I have these convenient solar-power thingies on my roof but that would be shortsighted even for me. Without grid power to pump their water and refrigerate their meat and veggies, I’d expect hoards of starving Mormons to show up at my door within moments, looking for things to loot, rape, burn and pillage. I prefer to keep them over the horizon, listening in bovine contentment to grid-powered broadcasts of their really excellent choir while we in the Wasteland get on with our days in peace.
But alas, all that is in the past. I suppose the neighbors and I should get to work on the Compound now. We’ll consolidate our solar panels and wind gennies behind layers of improvised walls of chicken wire and strawbales, against the inevitable days when the Hoards arrive, waving impotent blenders, space heaters and electric weedwhackers, demanding their fair share of our Juice…
An old plant was closed down near here a few years ago, right after a big new plant was built nearer the bigger town of Gillette. Both were coal fired. The good news was that the new plant was built practically on top of a coal mine! It’s been very profitable, and employs a lot of people here.
You have to wonder at what point people are simply going to quit putting up with Obummer’s insanity.
I have a half-formed thought about fences making good neighbors. And guns. Don’t forget the guns. When the masses arrive waving their unplugged blenders, you can politely say ” Stay outside my fence, please, or face the consequences” and you can sleep soundly at night.