To avoid a blackout, electricity generating companies must lower generation in line with low demand.
I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.
To read a paper book is another experience: you can do it on a ship, on the branch of a tree, on your bed, even if there is a blackout.
In the 1970s in New York, everyone slept till noon. It was a grungy, dangerous, bankrupt city without normal services most of the time. The garbage piled up and stank during long strikes by the sanitation workers. A major blackout led to days and days of looting. The city seemed either frightening or risible to the rest of the nation.
Among the many important provisions in the energy bill are the creation of an estimated half million new jobs, increased oil production, blackout protection, controlling fertilizer costs by stabilizing natural gas prices and enacting new efficiency benchmarks.
The next time you experience a blackout, take some solace by looking at the sky. You will not recognize it.
The physical evidence does not change because of public pressure or personal agenda. Physical evidence does not look away as events unfold nor does it blackout or add to memory. It remains constant and is a solid foundation upon which cases are built.
From a reality perspective, I'm sure part of that is true, but this is the largest blackout in U.S. history. If that is not a signal that we have got a problem that needs to be fixed, I don't know what is.
I suspect the psychological pressure associated with that crisis caused the first mental blackout I had ever suffered. It contributed to a deterioration in my health that later required the insertion of a heart pacemaker.