Wow. Just…. Wow…

If you’ve ever wondered how financial profits can put the public in jeopardy - this explains it all.

"California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric and What It Means for America's Power Grid" is a critically important book that not only traces the history of PG&E and both the innovation and neglect of equipment that has led to multiple tragedies such as the Paradise Fire. Blunt's research is thorough and she does a great job of laying out the many missteps that ultimately caused the destruction and loss of lives and communities. Part of the challenge goes back to the privatization and deregulation of utilities (remember Enron) as well as legislative actions and inactions that allowed a repeal of a depression-era federal law that limited utilities from expanding outside geographic regions thus paving the way to mergers and acquisitions and Wall Street's interest in shareholder value. The big consultants are brought in at various times for "transformation" and Accenture said that their are low levels of gas links for PG&E compared to other utilities; what they did not point out is that the reason for this was that supervisors were rewarded/incentivized when their crews reported the fewest number of gas leaks. She also takes us to the court-rooms where municipalities and victims try to seek justice - and thanks to a California law called the "Watson Warning", PG&E could be charged again since they were already twice convicted as knowing and failing to safely maintain the pipelines and powerlines. The question remains whether public utilities should have a new ownership structure (cooperative or public utility) but that would have huge economic implications for the State of California. Until then, the hedge funds and other vultures can pick at the bones of these utilities to ensure that they are getting the EPS (Earnings Per Share) they expect - one of many examples of the cost of corporate greed.

I highly recommend this book.
Thank you to Netgalley and Portfolio (Penguin Group) for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.