I Remember!

(Posted by John.)

As much as Bush is full of shit when he says "nobody anticipated the levees breaking", he's even more full of shit if he thinks that the energy problems we're seeing as a result of Katrina were unexpected.

The Rocky Mountain Institute has been banging the drum of what they call "Brittle Power" for decades now. On page 2 of Chapter 1, they point out:

The United States has reached the point where:
a few people could probably black out most of the country;
a small group could shut off three-fourths of the natural gas to the eastern U.S. in one evening without leaving Louisiana;
a terrorist squad could seriously disrupt much of the oil supply to the nation or even to the world;
one saboteur could incinerate a city by attacking certain natural gas systems;
a few people (perhaps just one person) could release enough radioactivity to make much of the U.S. uninhabitable;
and a single hydrogen bomb could probably do all these things simultaneously.

The problem is highly-centralized, poorly placed energy infrastructure. Seriously, would you base that much refinery capacity in New Orleans?

Reading Brittle Power - as with everything by the RMI - is very educational.