There is ‘out of touch’ and there is outright tone-deafness, and the head of a large California power company just set the new standard for the latter.
You may have heard that California energy company PG&E has been engaging in rolling blackouts for several weeks after the producer was blamed for several large, deadly wildfires over the past few years.
The blackouts, which can last several hours a day and affect hundreds of thousands of Californians (though none in the far-Left-leaning cities where Democrats are trying to protect their voting supermajorities), have left residents impacted by them with a quandry: How to not only get by in a modern era without electricity, but how to preserve food perishables.
Well, PG&E President and CEO Bill Johnson has a solution for you: Food banks.
Not even kidding.
As reported by The Organic Prepper, Johnson was asked during an interview with a local ABC News affilate, “What do you say to people who just can’t afford to restock their fridges and are losing all this food they’ve had in their households after these shut-offs?”
To which Johnson replied:
“These events can be hard on people, really hard on people, particularly people who have struggles anyways and there are community-based things you can do, food banks, these kind of things. But for us, you know the main thing is we didn’t cause any fires, we didn’t, for these people we didn’t burn down any houses, the Kincade fire is still under investigation, I got that, but one of the things we did was give them the opportunity to actually refill their refrigerator ’cause their house is still there.”
Did you get that? Residents who are losing food and can’t keep any perishable items in stock because the power outages are frequent and lasting can just hop in the ol’ SUV and visit a food bank.
Or something. And that’s okay because, hey, at least they won’t lose their entire home to a wildfire that PG&E didn’t cause.
Power company is not in an enviable position
Needless to say, the clueless answer outraged several people who let Johnson have it online. But on the other hand…what choice does he have? What other options are there?
“The blackouts are the power giant’s solution to dangerous sparking power lines caused by high winds. These sparks have been blamed for many of the wildfires that have devastated California and caused billions of dollars in damage,” The Organic Prepper reports. “PG&E is in the position of being held responsible for its power lines starting the fires that have devastated California and caused over 80 deaths.”
So in other words, the company is not in an enviable position. (Related: If green energy is so amazing, why is California’s power grid about to crater?)
Some say that because of the state’s radical environmentalism — both on federal- and state-owned land (the federal government owns much more land than the state does) — PG&E has been forbidden from clear-cutting dead brush and timber away from its power lines and generators. And because California is an arid state, even the slightest spark from a power line or transformer can cause massive fires (and loss of property and life).
But the food bank comment was just a tad insensitive. Or maybe very insensitive. Either way, perhaps a better response might have been to inform listeners and residents affected by the outages what the company’s position is, why the company has taken the approach (power outages) it is taking, and — importantly — how long the outages are going to last.
Because the last we heard, Californians are looking at a decade’s worth of power outages to come. And that’s a long time to go without any fresh produce.
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