If You Think Energy Security Is No Big Deal, Just Look What Happened to Cuba's Electric Grid

It takes a while for the effects of statism in its various forms to destroy everything. This is because there is accumulated fat to live off; wealth in funds, infrastructure, reputation and values that, like a coat of paint, can cover a lot of sin and waster for longer than we might like to think. The devil never gets cheated in the end though. Cuba nationalized its grid over six decades ago. Last week the power went off everywhere with the following results described in a superb post by Martin Gurri:

Fast-forward to last Friday, when the electric grid in Cuba suffered a complete collapse. This is not an exaggeration or a metaphor. The entire island went dark—even Havana, which has been protected from the worst of the recent blackouts. It was a civilizational breakdown. The economy quite literally ground to a halt, as factories and stores were ordered closed by the government. From elementary schools to universities, the educational system was put on pause. Hospitals turned people away. For three days, Cuba, already tattered and abused, entered a special circle of hell reserved for the most mismanaged nations on earth.

The material catastrophe is self-evident and can be measured empirically. The depth of human suffering is impossible to gauge from a distance. Without refrigeration, food—always hard to obtain—was spoiled. Mothers lacked milk for their children. Without fans or air conditioners, everyone, including the very young and the very old, was exposed to Cuba’s blistering temperatures. Without elevators, the old and the sick who lived in apartments were forced to sleep outdoors, in the heat and among the mosquitoes. Without traffic signals, venturing to the streets became a death-defying nightmare. Without light, the human mind itself begins to shut down—the Cuban public, frozen in place by an incompetent and antiquated regime, sank to almost metaphysical levels of hopelessness.

Don't think it can't happen here. It has and the possibilities of ever more major blackouts and routinely growing brownouts grow with every baseload-energy killing and totally unreliable new solar and wind fantasy entertained by our corporatist and politically correct governments. Our grids are in much danger. Much of our infrastructure is lousy to say the least. And, we keep complicating things by forcing more solar and wind into our grid at huge direct and indirect costs.

As they say, won't can't go on won't. Fortunately, necessity is making the West reconsider nuclear energy, but that's not enough. We need to stop with the anti-fossil fuel campaign, unleash it all and bury everything connected with the Green New Deal unless it makes economic sense without the massive subsidies, favors and restraints on competition now in play seemingly everywhere. We need to end the mismanagement of our own energy security before we go as dark as Cuba.

#Cuba #Grid #Solar #Wind #EnergySecurity #FossilFuels