Some 200,000 people in the Portland, Oregon, area have handed control of their home thermostats over to an energy company.
What is there to say about a population willing to hand over control of its thermostats to an energy company instead of demanding its government provide enough energy to keep it comfortable?
These people are gerbils.
I’m sure that in their own deluded minds, they have convinced themselves they are noble and virtuous by making this sacrifice for the good of Mother Earth, but that’s simply not true. Mother Earth is fine and will remain fine even if Democrats decide to exit the Dark Ages and join the Age of Enlightenment where there’s more than enough energy for everything and everyone.
“If you’re a Portlander with air conditioning who is used to keeping your thermostat low through the summer months, you may be in for a surprise Monday evening,” reports Portland’s local CBS station.
“Portland General Electric [PGE] will soon begin adjusting home temperatures for those enrolled in the Smart Thermostat program,” adds the report. “This means the electric company has the ability to take over your regular settings during peak energy hours.”
And when is that “peak” time? Between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. when everyone’s home, looking to relax after a hard day.
“Your thermostat will pre-cool your home during the hour before the event starts, when energy demand is lower,” per PGE, “and then it will adjust 1 to 3 degrees during the Peak Time Event, to reduce strain on the grid when energy demand is high.”
You can override these settings, but it might cost you whatever credits this program puts on your power bill.
If you can believe it, 200,000 PGE gerbils enrolled in these programs.
Let’s begin with the fact that the human body is quite sensitive to temperature changes, and one to three degrees can be the difference between comfortable and uncomfortable.
Then there’s the ludicrous notion of giving an energy corporation (or any corporation) access and control over your thermostat. Are these people nuts?
What I always return to, though, is the insanity of a wealthy, twenty-first-century country, swimming in natural resources, being unwilling — not unable but unwilling — to provide its citizens with enough energy to remain comfortable in their own homes.
This anti-science war on energy is nothing less than wanting — for no practical reason — to take us back to the Dark Ages, when we relied on medieval sources of energy, like the sun.
And who do these superstitious enviro-nuts believe…? A bunch of witches who have been wrong 54 times out of 54 times.
There you have it… Another example of Portland getting what it voted for.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
