Clarissa's Blog

In Ukraine we regularly experienced shortages of electricity. I’m from the Northeast where the climate is like that of Montreal, Canada. Harsh, snowy winters and sweltering summers. Every winter electricity would be turned off at least once a week and we’d sit in the dark with no heating. Every summer we’d go for 3 months without hot water. One summer we had no running water at all. You can imagine the joys of that in a large industrial city of 1,5 million.

This happened because Ukraine was completely dependent for energy on a hostile neighbor. It was a poor, energy-dependent country whose population had been beaten down by 70 years of totalitarianism and didn’t know how to object. Since then, a new post-totalitarian generation grew up, and the current government is tying itself into knots to solve the energy problem.

That extremely rich states like California and Texas should have blackouts is a disgrace. Russians are not completely wrong to mock. In Ukraine, at least, nobody used the blackouts to advance some pathetic pet theory, so that was a relief.