You can imagine the story conference in Hollywood pitching “Darkness at Noon”, the picture about California’s power outage. It’s like “Titanic” but there’s no water. It’s like “The Towering Inferno” but the building’s not burning and the lights are out. It’s like “You’ve Got Mail” but Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan don’t fall in love online; they spend the night stranded in an elevator and end up as evangelists for wind power.
To play Governor Gray Davis, you’d love to have Ronald Reagan but you’d take Leonardo DiCaprio. You’d show old film footage from Jimmy Carter’s energy crisis in the 70s and the Watts riots in the 60s. The story’s got everything… it’s a shocking man-made disaster in the hotbed of hi-tech, surging power politics, greedy utility executives, and irate rate payers. Here on the Connection: the high-stakes, low voltage California shocker. Batteries not included.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
William Hogan, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University
Joel Kotkin, author of “The New Geography”
Ralph Nader, Founder of Public Citizen
James Sterngold, National Correspondent for the New York Times in Los Angeles