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SoSoUnhelpful t1_j9sg5wl wrote

I can’t decide if this is what the slow collapse from climate change looks like - more and more extreme events that we can no longer adequately prepare or respond to.

Or if the corruption has gotten so bad, things will only get worse from here on out, as funding for adequate and reliable infrastructure and services goes into the pockets of the corrupt and wealthy instead.

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DPool34 t1_j9sozvj wrote

I can’t decide either. A significant portion of the population thinks climate change either isn’t real or that it will only have a small effect on us.

We’ve come so far as a species because of science and technology. We’re interacting right now because of it. If our lives are on the line, we go to science. Science tells us the climate is changing and some people baselessly deny it or think it’s some conspiracy.

Things of this magnitude should never be politicized. It’s a force of nature. The climate doesn’t care what you believe in. We’re all at its mercy.

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ToxicAdamm t1_j9tlnwf wrote

This article is about power outages that happened in 2 very specific locations in America.

Heavily wooded areas that were affected by seasonal ice storms. Since our power grid is above ground, falling limbs is always going to be an issue.

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iwantsomecrablegsnow t1_j9uskd2 wrote

I live in one of these areas. The power companies do absolutely zero maintenance on the poles and lines. They don’t trim trees and branches at all. There are 800+ lines down in Michigan. They are down because the trees weren’t trimmed and iced up then collapsed on the line. This would have been significantly reduced if appropriate tree maintenance was done.

I’ve not had power for 2.5 days and they haven’t even assigned a crew to my neighborhood. The crews around here have been working on clearing downed lines and trees for the last 60 hours. They haven’t even started restoration processes or even assigned a crew to a restoration or outage area.

This issue was exasperated by the power company not conducting proper preventative maintenance. It is not a freak accident. My power company had record profit last year and a year/year profit increase of 17%. They are not reinvesting anything for proper maintenance.

There are more crews assigned in other counties and their power is being restored faster than mine, even though my county has 2/3x the population and population density. For some reason, we have less crews actively working to restore power than rural counties that have are not being prioritized over rural outages and towns with 2,000-10,000 people. Based off the outage maps, I estimate that rural counties have 4-5x more crews actively working on outages.

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big__toasty t1_j9u6gva wrote

Nah bro, your comment is too reasonable. You can't expect people to actually know how the power grid works /sarcasm

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rumblepony247 t1_j9u8f24 wrote

Do you mean to tell me, that this is a normal result of certain types of weather events, that they have always occurred (more severely in the past, faster restoration now, thanks to technological improvements), and that Reddit is screaming that the sky is falling because they now have access to a website that shows them how many customers are without power at any given time?

Blasphemy! It's because everything is going to hell in a handbasket!!

/s just in case

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ShamusTheClown t1_j9tamc7 wrote

They're the same thing, actually.

As climate change constrains and limits resources ^((uninhbitable land, reduced food production, unpredictable weather harming logistics, etc.)) Coroporations and governments come into more and more competition over them. When you pair a shareholder-capitlaism economic model that demands infinite growth, with a world of shrinking resources, you inevitably create conflict.

In that environment, you cannot afford to invest resources in preparation/prevention, because every $ MUST go to shareholder value. So inevitably, you don't manage your risks and then catastrophe strikes becuase climate change has altered the actual risk scenarios.

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