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What are municipal utilities and why are they suddenly popular?
Can changing who delivers your electricity to you solve a slew of problems?

- Cities and movements across the country are considering running their own electric utilities.
- These operations, known as municipal utilities, are already widespread and have a respectable track record.
- Representatives of the campaigns to implement municipal control see this as a path to a green, democratic future.
If you're reading this, then you use electricity. This is hardly a surprise, as modern life would be all but impossible without it. Electricity keeps the lights on, makes our meals, gets us to work, runs our machines, and keeps us alive when we're seriously ill. However, despite the centrality of electricity in our society, many people have no idea as to how the electric system works.
Recently, several movements have been launched in some of the most populated areas of the country to change our electric system in a way that proponents claim would make it safer, greener, more effective, and provide more public benefits than it is now. They argue that all it would take is a change of ownership.
Who sells you your electricity?
Selling electricity isn't like selling apples in a stall; you can't easily have two electric utilities offering the same service to the same geographic area. Even if you could, it would be terribly inefficient; each company would have to have its own expensive infrastructure hooked up to every house- only one of which would be making any money. Because of this, the electricity market is often said to be a "natural monopoly," a case where various factors make it more sensible to have one provider of a product than multiple ones.
This is why most places in the United States, to make things more efficient, strike a deal with a privately owned, for-profit, electric company. That company will be assured of a monopoly in the area in exchange for certain contractual obligations and regulatory oversight.
However, despite the American penchant for capitalism, there are other commonly used models for the distribution of electricity which remove the profit element. One common in rural areas is the use of not-for-profit cooperatives, which are owned by and operated for the benefit of their customers. Another, which is currently getting a fair amount of attention, is municipal ownership.(Electric) Power to the people?

Municipal or community utilities are utilities that are owned and operated by the local government or another state body to provide a service to the public. It is common to see these in different parts of the country providing many services; among them electricity, water, gas, internet, telephone services, and garbage removal.
This isn't a new idea; Los Angeles has had a publicly owned electric utility for over one hundred years. It also isn't a fringe one, one in seven Americans are served by such a utility at the time of writing. However, as debates over our energy future take on ever-increasing importance and concerns over corporate power in American life come to the forefront, the idea is taking on a new life.
The American Public Power Association (APPA), the trade association for community-owned electric utilities, lays out the case for public power in straightforward terms. On their stats and facts page, they explain how "Not for profit, community-owned, locally controlled" utilities provide better service at lower rates than privately owned utilities while also providing revenue for their communities.
Examples of well-run municipal electric utilities that offer a clear alternative to the typical model abound. In Omaha, Nebraska, a state which is entirely powered by cooperatives and municipal utilities, voters elect the members of the utility board of directors. Meetings of the board are open to the public and televised. Each year, a portion of the profits made are given back to the city to be spent at the discretion of the city council.
In Austin, Texas, the city utility uses a progressive rate structure that charges more per kilowatt-hour to customers who use large amounts of electricity. The principle being that lower-income customers are going to save money while the better off, with larger houses and more stuff to power, pay more.
There is also the question of making the electric system green. According to the APPA, publicly owned electric providers are making the switch to carbon-free sources at a faster rate than privately owned ones.
The current municipalization movement.

At the time of writing, there are movements all over the country to municipalize the electric grid. Cities like Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago all have serious campaigns underway to put the electric system in public hands. In California, the recent wildfires caused in part by Pacific Gas and Electric have given an even broader scope to the idea of public ownership with favorable reviews of the idea appearing in the media.
The idea isn't limited to major cities either. Decorah, Iowa -population 8,000- tried to municipalize its energy system as well. A handful of votes settled the resolution to study the subject.
I spoke with the leaders of several of these campaigns to find out why they support community-owned utilities and why they are working to make some of the largest cities in America take over their electric gird.
Eric Ruud, co-chair of East Bay Democratic Socialists of America Energy Democracy & Green New Deal working group, explained that for him the issue is one of who the utility is working for:
"In a for-profit system, decisions about how to generate and transmit energy are made by wealthy executives whose highest purpose is to make sure investors get more money back than what they put in. At a basic level they do that by charging us as much as they can while investing as little as they can get away with. Not only is this fundamentally unfair and undemocratic -- the imperative to produce constant profit flow also caused PG&E's under-investment in infrastructure that sparked 1500 wildfires in the last six years alone. The transmission tower that caused the deadly Camp Fire in Paradise last year was started by a malfunction in a transmission tower that was over 100 years old!
Under public and worker ownership, our health, safety, and quality of life become the utility company's top priorities, and we can actually create democratic structures for management to ensure that decisions are being made by the people who will be most impacted by them. It also allows for new funding models that can accelerate our transition to a safe and renewable grid, while reducing the burden on people who are already paying too much."
Joel Zook, Energy Planner for the Winneshiek Energy District and board member of Decorah Power, expressed a similar sentiment:
"Publicly owned utilities are owned, and controlled by their customers. An investor-owned utility will always need to place the interests of its shareholders above all else. Some utilities do a better job than others at balancing shareholder and ratepayer needs, so the tension between the two is less. But ultimately, I don't think that a for-profit company should have a monopoly on providing an essential service to captive customers. There's benefit in having the ability to talk to real people that make decisions regarding the energy that comes to your home or business."
Matthew Cason, Campaign Co-Coordinator for Democratize ComEd in Chicago, added that the question of who owns the grid ties back into several other issues:
"Power is at the root of many of the problems facing us today. The question of who owns that power will dictate what kind of society we choose to build as we solve those problems. For example, in the case of climate change, public ownership of utilities will enable a fundamental restructuring of the utility industry that is driven by a public process. With the necessary decarbonization ahead of us, we have a unique opportunity to rewrite how we generate and distribute electricity. While not necessary at the top of mind for many Americans, this system is incredibly important. That we decarbonize is as important as how we decarbonize. Public power will enable us to provide revenue to fund decarbonization and climate change adaptation, ensure system-wide resiliency, reduce long-term systemic costs, and ensure a just transition for all communities. The issue of ownership also impacts a number of other, less dramatic, but nonetheless important issues such as urban planning, affordability, and more."
There are many ways to organize an electric system. Privately owned utilities are just one of many viable options in the United States. The current interest in municipalization brings another model to the forefront of public attention. Given the variety of issues it intersects with and offers potential solutions to, the model is worthy of our consideration.
‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>Octopus-like creatures inhabit Jupiter’s moon, claims space scientist
A leading British space scientist thinks there is life under the ice sheets of Europa.
Jupiter's moon Europa has a huge ocean beneath its sheets of ice.
- A British scientist named Professor Monica Grady recently came out in support of extraterrestrial life on Europa.
- Europa, the sixth largest moon in the solar system, may have favorable conditions for life under its miles of ice.
- The moon is one of Jupiter's 79.
Neil deGrasse Tyson wants to go ice fishing on Europa
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="GLGsRX7e" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="f4790eb8f0515e036b24c4195299df28"> <div id="botr_GLGsRX7e_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/GLGsRX7e-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div>Water Vapor Above Europa’s Surface Deteced for First Time
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9c4abc8473e1b89170cc8941beeb1f2d"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WQ-E1lnSOzc?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Lair of giant predator worms from 20 million years ago found
Scientists discover burrows of giant predator worms that lived on the seafloor 20 million years ago.
Bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- Scientists in Taiwan find the lair of giant predator worms that inhabited the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- The worm is possibly related to the modern bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- The creatures can reach several meters in length and famously ambush their pray.
A three-dimensional model of the feeding behavior of Bobbit worms and the proposed formation of Pennichnus formosae.
Credit: Scientific Reports
Beware the Bobbit Worm!
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1f9918e77851242c91382369581d3aac"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_As1pHhyDHY?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>What is the ‘self’? The 3 layers of your identity.
Answering the question of who you are is not an easy task. Let's unpack what culture, philosophy, and neuroscience have to say.
- Who am I? It's a question that humans have grappled with since the dawn of time, and most of us are no closer to an answer.
- Trying to pin down what makes you you depends on which school of thought you prescribe to. Some argue that the self is an illusion, while others believe that finding one's "true self" is about sincerity and authenticity.
- In this video, author Gish Jen, Harvard professor Michael Puett, psychotherapist Mark Epstein, and neuroscientist Sam Harris discuss three layers of the self, looking through the lens of culture, philosophy, and neuroscience.
Discovery of two giant radio galaxies hints at more to come
The newly discovered galaxies are 62x bigger than the Milky Way.
