Most of human history has featured sloooooow progress. Occasional fast jumps forward, occasional shocking drops backwards, but overall a slow progression towards higher technology and better outlooks. The last two or so centuries, though, have been a virtual rocket launch upwards in terms of standards of living, life expectancy, the power available to individuals, the distance a person could travel, etc.

It’s always fashionable to wonder if we are in End Times.  Stories like this tend to make me thing that we might actually be:

California Could Go Dark This Summer to Prevent Wildfires

Short form: California has a had a problem in recent years with wind blowing down power lines into trees, sparking massive wildfires. So the idea is, during windy periods shut down electricity to some cities that had the poor manners to be out in the wilderness. One might wonder “wouldn’t it be better and safer to simply cut down the trees near power lines? To make sure that there is a low risk of fire in lanes around the lines?” That way cities wouldn’t need to go dark, cutting off not only economic activity, but also shutting down air conditioners and refrigerators. Cutting off cities will shorten lives.

Ah, but this is California. Cutting down trees might upset some spotted owls or giant garter snakes or some such. Someone might cut down a tree and make a buck by selling it to a lumber mill or, GASP, burning it for heat.

Better to just tell people to get used to a New Normal of standards of living revising *downwards.* Sure, the article says that people are planning on setting up solar panels and banks of batteries to take up the slack when the power goes down, but let’s face it: if people start living *better* on alternative power, regulators will simply come along and tack on enough red tape and taxes to make it nightmarish. Witness Illinois plan to make owning electric vehicles prohibitively expensive. This will hit supposedly life-improving technologies like self-driving autos, which will doubtless have either corporate sponsorship (the windows will display ads rather than letting you look outside), or the government will add onerous new fees… or, quite likely, both. And in any event, making cars self-driving will mean that fewer and fewer people will actually pay attention to what’s going by outside, and will pay more attention to their pads and phones, meaning that smaller “sights” will go by unseen, and will fall into disuse and decay.

Or maybe I’m wrong, and California and Illinois will lead America into a prosperous new era of freedom and expanded options and increased-yet-cheaper power available per person. I’ll get right on looking forward to that.