A Hell of Our Own Making

Fire and Ice by Robert Frost

(Wallpaper safari image)

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

We first pondered Robert Frost's short and superficially simple poem in grade school. By then we were familiar with scientists' predictions about the fate of our planetary home: the sun will become a red giant and envelop the earth, which, if it somehow remained intact, would spend eternity frozen in the orbit of a dead star. But our elementary minds couldn't fathom the poet's allusions to the emotions of desire and hate. Hey, we're talking science here! (Wikipedia: "John N. Serio claims that the poem is a compression of Dante's Inferno.")

As we contemplate the disasters that are unfolding in California--wildfires, high winds, evacuations, and power shut-offs--we are catching a glimpse of what the poet is referring to. With thousands displaced, the damage only beginning to be assessed, and new fires popping up, some prominent politicians are laying blame, resulting of course in counter-accusations:

The Soda Rock Winery, Healdsburg (Chronicle photo)

Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to deflect political blame. “It’s about dog-eat-dog capitalism meeting climate change. It’s about corporate greed meeting climate change. It’s about decades of mismanagement,” Mr. Newsom declared. But Democrats for years have treated PG&E as their de facto political subsidiary. The wildfires and blackouts are the direct result of their mismanagement...

Yet PG&E received no safety fines related to its power-grid management over the last several years. The commission has instead focused on enforcing the Legislature’s climate mandates.

State law mandates that utilities obtain 33% of electric generation from renewables such as wind and solar by 2020 and 60% by 2030. Utilities must spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to reduce the cost of green energy for low-income households. PG&E has prioritized political obeisance over safety.

In 2018 PG&E spent $509 million on electric discounts for low-income customers in addition to $125 million for no-cost weatherization and efficiency upgrades for disadvantaged communities. Utilities also receive allowances from the state’s cap-and-trade program—$7.5 billion since 2012—to pay for other “ratepayer benefits” that reduce emissions.

In a discussion with a climate-change activist over the weekend, he named PG&E as the cause of the entire disaster. I said that PG&E is a regulated monopoly and is following the directives of the Public Utilities Commission. "So it's the government's fault?" my friend asked. No. It's all our fault--we elected the politicians who gave the marching orders to PG&E.

Besides, if I blamed the government or the Democratic Party--which are synonymous in California--we'd get into a heated, purposeless argument.

One thing that we and Robert Frost can all agree upon, albeit for different reasons: we are in a hell of our own making.