All week I have been flooded with reports that the offi­cial cause of the 2003 elec­tri­cal black­out was not, as reported, untrimmed trees and over­heated trans­mis­sion lines. The largest black­out in US his­tory, more than 9,300 square miles, may have been caused by Chi­nese hack­ers gain­ing access to net­works con­trol­ling the elec­tri­cal grid. US intel­li­gence offi­cials have advised the Cyber Secu­rity Indus­try Alliance that foren­sic evi­dence sug­gests the PLA (Peo­ples’ Lib­er­a­tion Army) was behind the blackout.

The planet as a whole suf­fered mul­ti­ple elec­tri­cal black­outs last week from Belize to Iran and Nicaragua to South Africa. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of homes and busi­nesses in the UK lost elec­tric­ity when nine power plants stopped work­ing. Many of these out­ages are a result of fuel short­ages and may have noth­ing to do with cyber hack­ers but all were exac­er­bated by the cen­tral­ized grid sys­tem. In the case of the UK power out­age, one plant, a nuclear reac­tor by the way, in the cen­tral­ized elec­tri­cal grid failed tak­ing eight more down with it.

As yet, there is no sug­ges­tion that the UK out­age had any­thing to do with net­work intru­sion and the pri­va­tized util­i­ties are mum on the cause stat­ing dis­clo­sure might raise whole­sale energy prices. There is strong evi­dence that a Chi­nese PLA hacker, attempt­ing to map the Florida Power & Light net­work brought about the Florida black­out in Feb­ru­ary. These events are all strong national secu­rity argu­ments in favor of decen­tral­ized power generation.

Also, this week, I was sent pho­tographs of the largest oper­at­ing con­tainer ship in the world, the Emma Maersk. The Emma Maersk with its 207’ beam and cargo capac­ity of more than 14,000 con­tain­ers chock full of tele­vi­sions, tires, toys and appli­ances can tra­verse the Pacific in four days. This fast tran­sit and refrig­er­ated con­tain­ers allow the ship to bring per­ish­ables, seafood and exotic fruits, as well as trin­kets from China.

As the Emma Maersk and other con­tainer­ized cargo ships off load in Seat­tle or Long Beach or San Fran­cisco and return to China, they ride much higher in the water. The US has noth­ing to trade in return and the con­tain­ers go back empty and our dol­lars and our inde­pen­dence go with them.

Out­sourc­ing jobs to other coun­tries has made the US depen­dent upon more than for­eign oil. We have become depen­dent upon cen­tral­ized cheap labor to sat­isfy our thirst for plasma tele­vi­sions and cell phones and even food to the detri­ment of our own econ­omy. Even worse, we then turn around and bor­row back the money we export so eagerly to coun­tries like China in order to finance our occu­pa­tion of Iraq and cor­po­rate tax cuts.

The best way to shore up our local econ­omy is to keep our dol­lars local. The best national secu­rity pol­icy is to decen­tral­ize energy pro­duc­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing and food pro­duc­tion. Micro­grids would be imper­vi­ous to cyber attacks and we have plenty of clean wood waste locally to fuel com­bined heat and power gen­er­a­tors that cap­ture car­bon emis­sions. Pro­duc­ing power locally means we have more dol­lars to rein­vest in local infra­struc­ture and to pro­vide for social services.

Grow­ing and eat­ing local food is health­ier and helps farm­ers here rather than fac­tory farms in Asia. Fre­quently, I receive solic­i­ta­tions from for­eign man­u­fac­tur­ing firms to sub­mit pro­pos­als on pro­duc­ing my wind tur­bine. My clos­est like kind com­peti­tor man­u­fac­tures in Guadala­jara for a frac­tion of our antic­i­pated cost but we believe invest­ing in the com­mu­nity and pro­vid­ing liv­ing wage jobs has long term ben­e­fits that exceed short term profits.

Nation­ally, the pol­icy con­tin­ues to sup­port trans­fer­ring our inde­pen­dence and secu­rity to coun­tries like China. Here in Coos County the effects of US trade poli­cies have been felt since the early ‘80s and the peo­ple have strug­gled and sur­vived but just barely. It is time to dig in and con­vert our local assets into a healthy econ­omy and stop import­ing, food, goods and energy and decen­tral­ize now, our inde­pen­dence depends upon it.