Photo: U.S. Army soldiers work to control Dixie Fire in 2019. Credit: Flickr/
National Interagency Fire Center
Tina Landis is the author of the book Climate Solutions Beyond Capitalism.
Millions across a region lose power during extreme heat waves, with power outages sometimes lasting days at a time. You may think this is occurring in a region of the Global South with less developed energy infrastructure. Think again! It’s now a regular occurrence in the fifth largest economy in the world: the state of California.
With climate change driving temperatures higher and increasing fire risk, wildfires are becoming more severe and frequent in the drought-stricken West. Although climate change is a major contributor to the increasing frequency of fires, over a century of fire suppression and outlawing of prescribed burns have caused wildfire fuel to build up, adding to the intensity and size of these fires.
Instead of addressing the root causes of wildfires, in 2012, the California Public Utilities Commission approved a policy that allows private utilities to shut off power to customers during high wind, high heat events as a measure to prevent wildfires from being sparked by electrical infrastructure.
Since the catastrophic Camp Fire in 2018 that was sparked by PG&E electricity infrastructure which killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise, PG&E has regularly used Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) as a wildfire prevention tactic. The following year in 2019, the Kincade Fire was sparked again by PG&E lines despite the PSPS program, which failed to shut off power before the fire was sparked. The PSPS also failed to prevent the Dixie Fire In 2021; after a tree collapsed onto a distribution line, creating an arc-fault, and after PG&E customers reported an outage, indicating a problem, PG&E continued to energize the circuit for over nine hours – slowly heating the ground and igniting fuels into an inferno while the meters kept running.
It seems that in the richest state in the richest country in the world, we could have wildfire safety while still maintaining power to homes. Why does the state allow PG&E and other private utilities to use the PSPS program to avoid wildfires? It really comes down to protecting the profits of these corporations and protecting them from liability for sparking wildfires. It’s not a solution to the climate crisis, but a bandaid that causes a whole domino effect of other problems.
For wealthy Californians who have rooftop solar and back-up battery systems or who purchased generators to power their homes when power shut offs occur, the PSPS program causes little to no disruption to their lives. But for working-class residents who cannot afford back-up power systems, the PSPS program is not only disruptive, but can be deadly. Often the power shut-offs occur during heat waves leaving people without air conditioning or even fans to keep cool. Extreme heat is the number one climate change killer, more so than hurricanes, floods or other weather extremes.
Those who rely on medical equipment and refrigerated medicines lose those life-saving mechanisms when power is shut off. Low-income residents who are barely scraping by on a good day, lose all their refrigerated food when shut offs occur and plummet deeper into food insecurity. Days without power may also mean lack of communication systems with no way to charge cell phones or use the internet. And it can also mean lost wages if the business you work at cannot operate during a PSPS event.
A 2023 class action lawsuit against PG&E sought $2.5 billion in damages for spoiled food and medicine and lost income that occurred during PSPS events in October and November 2019, when over a million residents were left without power. The California Supreme Court recently sided with PG&E and blocked the lawsuit from moving forward.
And for those running back-up generators during PSPS events, all the emissions from fossil fuel-powered generators adds greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere and contributes to pollution buildup within a neighborhood, much more so than a power plant does due to lack of emissions controls on generators and siting of power plants away from residential areas.
We know that even with immediate comprehensive action on climate change, wildfire risk will continue to be an issue in the West. Instead of relying on PSPS, power lines should be put underground to avoid sparking fires. And if the private utilities refuse to do it, but would rather hand over funds earmarked for safety and maintenance to wealthy shareholders instead as PG&E has repeatedly done, then these corporations should be taken under public control and safety measures prioritized.
Climate change is a type of class war with the working class and poor impacted the most and driven deeper into poverty with each extreme weather event, while the wealthy investor class continues to reap record profits.
There are many other climate solutions that can be implemented that would cool the climate and reduce wildfire risk, such as restoring wetlands and river systems to hydrate the landscape and reduce drought impacts, increasing prescribed burns to reduce wildfire fuel buildup, restoring native perennial grasses that stay green all year round unlike the invasive grasses that early European settlers introduced, and rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions from energy, transportation, industry and agriculture sectors. All of these solutions would cool the climate over time and reduce fire risk. But under capitalism, ensuring profits for corporations supersedes all else, even humanity’s very existence.
We must oppose the PSPS program as a solution to wildfire risk and demand public control over our energy system. A public utility could rapidly implement the transition to renewable energy, underground and upgrade transmission lines, and lower electricity rates while keeping the power on for all residents.
