California's climate control freaks

Washington Times Editorial:

In their zeal to impose their vision of climate-controlled utopia, California bureaucrats are expected to grant themselves the power to control thermostats inside the homes of Golden State residents.

Press reports indicated the California Energy Commission is likely to approve the authority next month, the rationale being that the government knows best about preventing power outages during times of extreme weather and bureaucrats should have the option of setting household temperatures and imposing rolling power blackouts.

Arthur Rosenfeld, a member of the commission, explained it this way to the New York Times: "If you can control rotating outages by letting everyone in the state share the pain, there's a lot less pain to go around."

In other words: if a customer is hurting, that means his neighbor should suffer, too. Equal misery for everyone.

While standardized measurements and indicators are needed to ensure the safety and functionality of everything from water heaters to refrigerators and air conditioners, these standards are meant to regulate a product's manufacturing, not its use. Government has long tried to regulate human behavior, proposing bans on everything from smoking to trans fats. But people — from a mother whose child is suffering from chills to an insomniac who sleeps better where it's cool — don't need Big Brother looking over their shoulder.

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California has this problem because the control freaks limited the supply of electricity production which creates the shortages to begin with. Controlling the thermostats will exasperate another problem that control freaks in California have created. Housing in the most climate comfortable areas has been restricted by environmentalist. Meanwhile in the desert valley where it gets real hot there is greater need for air conditioning, but those homeowners will probably suffer much more from the thermostat restrictions.