Comment on In California, plans to move low-income neighborhoods off of gas advance

• exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Natural gas is abundant and cheap in North America, and transporting gas overseas has always been inefficient and expensive, so each continent tends to have their own price for natural gas.

  Electricity is expensive in California in large part because the transmission lines cause devastating wildfires, so the rates now includes the cost of preventing fires by continuously trimming trees and other vegetation near power lines, and paying off past liability for billions of damage in previous fires.

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  • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Everyone says the transmission lines cause devastating wildfires but that’s the proximate cause. It’s like if we went to a gas station and there was an enormous leak with a giant pool of gasoline filling the parking lot and then we blamed a lady wearing a wool sweater for giving off the spark that starts the whole thing ablaze.

    The problem with wildfires in California is twofold: 1) not enough controlled burning (due to underfunding and lack of staff) and 2) too many homes built in the highest risk areas.

    I think part of this issue is the California government’s boneheaded fight with insurance companies which seeks to prevent them from appropriately pricing the risk for home insurance. One of the most valuable things insurance companies (as hated as they are) do for society is develop highly sophisticated risk models for wildfire and flood damage. When allowed to, they incorporate these models into the premiums they charge for home insurance in different areas. This would ordinarily make it extremely expensive to insure a home in the highest risk areas, creating a market disincentive to build there, but Californians insist on fighting this (shooting the messenger) through the political system.

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