The finger-pointing escalated this week as some Republicans argued that a major utility company run by Democratic appointees has “woke” policies on diversity and tree-trimming that are the causes of customers’ woes.
There’s bipartisan and widespread consensus that Nashville Electric Service, which serves the city as well as surrounding counties, mishandled the storm, struggling to mobilize enough workers and equipment to quickly clear fallen trees and restore service.
Obviously DEI training isn’t to blame.
But the point about a new tree-trimming policy seems logical at first glance. Does anyone know if it is valid?
The complaint about the new tree trimming practices is “valid” in the same way that bitching about renewable energy replacing coal-fired power plants is “valid.” The new “species specific pruning” practices are actually better in the sense that they promote the long-term health of the trees instead of indiscriminately butchering them in a straight line with an overgrown hedge trimmer, but giving a shit about that instead of doing everything the cheapest most shortsighted way possible is the ultimate sin, according to these demented assholes.
But didn’t the new tree trimming practices result in some of the trees being too close to the power lines? Doesn’t seem to be all that smart of a strategy to me.
Probably not!
It’s not as if the Republican dipshit actually knows anything about the subject. He’s just mouthing off with a self-serving post hoc fallacy. In reality, he has no fucking clue whether the pruning was done correctly or not – and it probably was done correctly, given that the workers hired by the utiilty were actual arborists – because the mere fact that the power lines fell is not by itself proof of error. It’s entirely possible, for example, that the storm was so extreme that no reasonable amount of pruning (i.e. anything short of clear-cutting) would’ve saved those wires!
And if the utility had gone “anti-woke” and clear-cut them, he would’ve just been bitching in bad faith about that instead.
Do they not do clear-cutting for power lines there? The high voltage lines all have a minimum distance that has to be clear of trees where I’m from. Otherwise there would be issues every single year, maybe multiple times a year.
Or is this for residential areas with regular power lines? In that case I’ll agree that clear cutting isn’t a necessity and we’ll just have to accept the occasional freak accident for the sake of maintaining tree canopy in our cities, which is very important, especially in a hot climate where trees provide shade from the scorching sun.