EoW March 2011

Transat lant ic Cable

The campaign is supported both by left-leaning individualists and by conservatives associated with the Tea Party, the anti- government political movement that played a prominent role in the 2010 mid-term elections. Its members were key to the successful Republican bid to wrest control of the House of Representatives from President Obama’s Democratic party. The Tea Party takes its name from the dumping of tea in Boston Harbour in 1773, the anti-tax gesture that has become an iconic event of the American Revolution. Some of those objecting to PG&E’s meters regard the monitoring of home appliances as intrusive, while others perceive a health threat in the meters’ radio-frequency radiation. Whatever the impetus, the highly vocal opposition has been effective. In Santa Cruz County, south of San Jose, the Board of Supervisors recently extended a year-long moratorium on installations. And officials in Marin County, north of San Francisco, approved a ban on the meters in the unincorporated, largely rural areas that are home to about a quarter of the population of the county. The ❈ ❈ Herald Tribune considered the health concerns aroused by the smart meters. These centre on a phenomenon known as “electromagnetic hypersensitivity,” or EHS, whose complainants trace a variety of symptoms (dizziness, fatigue, headaches, sleeplessness, heart palpitations) to radiation

Energy

After more than seven million installations, a backlash against ‘smart meters’ erupts in Northern California

“The meters are a crucial building block for what the Obama administration and the industry envision as an efficient ‘green grid.’ The goals are to help utilities allocate power more smoothly and to give people more information on how they consume energy and incentives to use less.” Felicity Barringer, of the International Herald Tribune, was referring to wireless meters which transmit real-time data on patterns in the use of electricity. Since 2006, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has installed more than seven million of them, but the Northern California utility now finds itself up against fierce opposition from people who claim that the meters threaten their liberties and their health. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Ms Barringer reported: “Stop Smart Meters” signs and bumper stickers have been multiplying, and protesters have been arrested for attempting to prevent deliveries of the devices. (“New Electricity Meters Stir Fears,” 30 th January).

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EuroWire – March 2011