I'm all for "right now" concerns. That's why I am sick of hearing about all these "one day/maybe" technologies which are not helping us right now.
I'm concerned about people and communities too, kuwisdelu (damned if I know what your screenname means or how to pronounce it).
This is why I want to see less of these monster-sized regional utilities (such as Connecticut Light & Power servicing the entire state of Connecticut) and more of smaller local-level utilities (like Chicoppee Electric Light Company serving JUST the city of Chicoppe, Massachusetts). Smaller scale enetrprises which set their sites on servicing smaller geographic areas are better IMO.
It took over two weeks last year in 2011 after the October 30th snow storm for Connecticut Light & Power to repair thousands and thousands of broken electrical lines throughout their grid. Those fancy rich Connecticut suburbanites were in the dark for two solid weeks. (And boy were they PISSED!!)
However ....
Up here in Massachsuetts, Holyoke Gas & Electric, which is a small utility company serving JUST the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts, was back on line in less thna 24 hoiurs.
Same with Chicopee Electric Light Company servicing JUST the city of Chicoppee --back on line in less than 24 hours.
Same with Westfeld Gas & Electric servicing JUST the city of Westfield, Massachusetts --back in line in less than 24 hours.
It's easier when only about 100 electrical lines go down over an area of less than 40 square miles (40 square miles is about the area of a typical small-to-medium-sized city here in New England). But it's a lot harder when over a hundred thousand lines go down over an area of about 20,000 square miles (roughly half the geographic area of the State of Connecticut).
If your tribe had its own small hyrdo-electric dam or its own geothermal generator plant and limited 100% of the sale of its energy to the tribe, then that utility would take good and proper care of your people because they would be that utilty's ONLY customers. But these huge mega-corps that come in and devour the local resources then pack up and leave after bleeding them dry -- no loyalty, no connection, no community, no human obligation whatsoever. Just corporate vampirism and hit-and-run capitalism at its worst.
Smaller is better in these instances. Local is better too. Smaller and local allows for ease of management and greater flexibility when a crisies arises. And local ownership has a human factor to it in that you KNOW the people you are servicing. You know them and you know their kids and you probably even play racketball with them and go to church with them. But when corporate headquarters is somewhere off in Dubai or Shanghai, what incentive is there for a company to move their ass a little faster to get your power back on for you?
I fear for the day when we STOP with the fossil fuels and say "Wow, maybe we need to retool our entire nation's energy infrastucture to something else. But the current infrastructure of super-regional utilities is just so vast that a retrofit would take years and trillions of dollars!" I fear that a triage situation will be resorted to as far as who gets serviced first and more thoroughly. I further fear for how corporate vampire capitalism will respond to such a call for triage, and I fear for which people groups (depending on what regions they live in and how much of a voice they do not have) will get sacrificed on the altar of "progress."
