Page 13 - Sonoma County Gazette April 2019

POWER cont’d from page 11
Transforming PG& E into a public-owned-utility and removing the company from the power generation business will likely require passing state legislation. The California Public Utilities Commission could move the process forward by making it easier for Community-choice agencies, which already serve more than 2.4 million of the 5.4 million customers in PG&E’s service territory, to grow and expand.
California’s community-choice policy allows municipalities to take charge of their own energy procurement. Local energy suppliers like Sonoma Clean Power and Marin Clean
Energy better reflect
local interests, including
renewable energy, local
power generation, and
a desire to align power
generation with local
economic development.
A growing chorus of
analysts maintain that
the government needs to
ensure that communities
have the authority to
pursue affordable clean
energy. Many will recall that PG&E spent $46 million of rate payers’ money in an unsuccessful attempt to pass Proposition 16 aimed at limiting the creation of community public power agencies like Marin Clean Energy and Sonoma Clean Power.
Across the state, 750,000 customers have installed solar to reduce their electricity costs, taking advantage of power production that doesn’t require extensive transmission hardware. A public-owned-utility would be able to pursue vital public benefit opportunities such as installing backup batteries with solar panels at key sites like hospitals and fire stations or more elaborate microgrids throughout the state.
We must find a safer way to provide electricity and gas for
California’s residents in the face of climate change. The old
financial model is not working.
Robert Girling, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus in the School of Business and Economics at Sonoma State University.
A Story on “Stuff”
By Angelique Rivera
I was handed the statement that our home had to be emptied completely...
immediately. Now. Nownownownownow.
My stuff had gone from treasure or necessity to an obstacle to be removed.
Inconvenient. Stop looking at it, stop thinking, just get it out. I became numb to it. When someone asked a question it was work to think. My mind was on one task and had closed to any kind of processing. Get it out.
One friend who had lost almost everything including the roof over his head told me he actually felt free. That losing the responsibility of his stuff had been a relief.
Our stuff IS a responsibility. A burden. I no longer own my stuff at this point, it owns me. A couple weeks ago I would look at my home with pride. Now it’s just another war story on the River. Just one more tale in the 2019 Flood. I am a statistic.
For many years growing up, a little cartoon snipped from the funnies was taped to the fridge. Two men in front of a giant pile of garbage next to a shack that read “dump”. One says to the other, “amazing ain’t it, how possessions accumulate “?
How easy it is for our possessions, our stuff to become trash. When the choice is taken away from you and you have to let it go you realize it wasn’t really important as you thought it was.
I learned detachment yesterday. That all that stuff was not mine. It was on loan for a time. Like a bic lighter, it travels one stop to the next. Just let it go. It’s only stuff. Nature abhors a void. More stuff will take its place.
This experience I think will make me more thoughtful to what I bring in, what is important. I have my family and my friends. I know where the important things are.
4/19 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 13
Everything else is just stuff.