Book Review: California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric–And What It Means for America’s Power Grid by Katherine Blunt
Katherine Blunt created a stunning piece of investigative journalism, interviewing 200 sources for her look at PG&E and its import in national energy grid considerations going forward. As someone who grew up in the SF bay area, this was also an interesting read on “how we got here” with Californians wildly perilous exposure to wildfire risk. The book also covers a series of wholly unprecedented cases that necessarily touched on “where to go from here”, as well as back-to-back Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, and the intense human drama of corporate homicide charges.
Katherine Blunt also summarized how San Francisco and San Jose (CA) made overtures to purchase their energy supplier during PG&E’s second bankruptcy proceedings so that they could put safety and maintenance of their energy systems in the hands of the public, until they were stopped by Governor Gavin Newsom. Newsom single-handedly halted these efforts so that the status quo was maintained – that California energy’s safety and maintenance stayed under the control of a for-profit corporation (and its changing composition of shareholders (e.g. hedge funds, with an increased stake in the company’s assets after the second bankruptcy proceedings) with little incentive to invest in maintenance and repair of existing systems (and after a century of proven neglect of this needed maintenance). She ends on a hopeful note about recent public statements by the energy supplier on its plans to put wires underground at great expense, but with a better outlook on safety.
I really enjoyed how Blunt zoomed in on one victim’s family who had made entries on the dockets so that their voice did not totally fall by the wayside, as they pointed to the absurd principle that victims were “made whole” years after having everything destroyed and many killed by getting a share in the company’s future risk (right as PG&E entered junk bond territory). Essentially, they had their fate tied by the court with their victimizer. Blunt also sharpened the drama by discussing the history of specific poles and hooks in PG&E’s grid, including one hook PG&E knew hadn’t been inspected in 50 years despite also knowing that it needed it.
(A version of this was originally published on Goodreads and Storygraph.)
