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Whose fault is it?

In Miguel’s other post about the electricity “crises”, I and at least one other had written a similar warning: This ‘crisis’ is as much about “control” as it is electricity.

Having grown up in Miami – and subsequently watching Miami’s Cubans misplay, misunderstand and mistakingly respond to Castro for nearly 50 years – I see the Venezuelan opposition making the same mistakes.

Your initial comments were spot on and I respectfully repeat them here:

“An impoverished population totally dependent on the “State”( Castro) for their subsistence and as such unable to rebel.”

“Chavez creates chaos, and then comes in to tighten his control with the excuse that chaos needs order.”

Just to inform you that it is common knowledge that all citizens have a right to opine, not just you and those you approve of.

I find it incredible the amount of naive people in Venezuela and on these oppo blogs, and I can guarantee you that it is the main cause of where we are today.

The fact that anybody at this point can think that Chavez has good intentions, shows a lack of psychological understanding that is at unacceptable levels.

The way things have gone and the way I hear people talking : 10 more years from now people will still be wondering why.

Petkoff is an okay politician who sometimes writes good articles,but is basically another highly duped naive.He is too ideological.It takes a more practical man to see reality.

We need to work on corruption and justice before we can expect things to run well.

As obvious as the sun shines and gives light.

Who will do the seeing?

I would laugh if it were not so tragic.

By far the biggest problem in Venezuela is the naivety of the people.We need to wake up before we can solve problems.The information is all there but nobody sees because this is NOT their motivation.

Too many people in Venezuela have more interest in an unearned buck than in doing the right thing.

Those who want to do the right thing need to create the right circumstances first.

Thanks.

Bruni,
There is just one thing I am weary about: meddling in the Southern Bolivar or Amazonas region. I have been there a couple of times and I have seen already how things have deteriorated and how beautiful they are. I just hope they (in general) can find better solutions elsewhere.

Europe has no other way to go, but does that mean we have to destroy the jungle more than necessary? Europe destroyed its forests, sure. Do we need to do it given the technology and foreknowledge? OK. To what extent?
There is a lot to be done when a dam covers huge areas of territory under water.
Perhaps we could think ahead in that sense as well.

Oil is much more expensive in Europe than in North America and that is not so much because “there was no other way around it”, but because of a desire to get off oil dependency and later because of environmental grorunds. Europe pays the price for starting to polluting less than North America. I am fine with that.
I think people can find other ways to compensate, new economic possibilities will be created.

canada’s is wondrous but the biological diversity is very small. A dam here, a dam there don’t do as much harm there as in Venezuela.
What I am saying is that all possibilities need to be taken into account before we take that way.

The Spanish example I put before could be a compromise. Meanwhile a lot can be done to be more efficient.
Engineers in Venezuela have confirmed me what I have seen as a layman: people build now in the most stupid ways there with regards to heat dispersion, all places now are closed and don’t allow good air circulation, with crappy materials for heat and they end up becoming furnaces while there were other perfectly good alternatives. If people built according to certain criteria, less air conditioning would be needed.
As someone else said here, a control of where electricity gets lost in every region of Venezuela would also help to take more intelligent decisions at all levels, preferably if the information is out there for all to see on real time.

Winds are stochastic and can create special undesirable behaviors in the electric system that have to be dealt with very carefully. The turbines are ugly and noisy (people that live close to wind farms complain about the bugging noise) but yes, wind is totally green. So that is the trade-off.

Venezuela has absolutely every type of energy source there is, in abundance. It is just amazing that the country was driven to such a situation.There are no excuses.
There is cheap oil, lots of money, huge hydro-electric potential, winds, sun and even coal.

When I was a young engineer, power capacity was planned fifteen years ahead. I cannot understand how on earth the country was driven to such a lose-lose situation. Absolutely unbelievable.