So the City of Los Angeles issued a resolution for the City to boycott all things Arizona in response to Arizona’s recent immigration enforcment law.
A member of the Arizona Corporation Commission, the Arizona state energy utility, that supplies a substantial portion of Los Angeles’ electricity, as well as many other California cities that also have joined the Arizona boycott, sent a letter to the Mayor of LA saying that if you truly don’t want any of our resources or services, we’ll gladly cut-off your electricity.
The LA mayor issued a statement that he will not respond to threats.
So, is a boycott really a boycott if you only quit buying non-essentials?
I think LA should stand firm and let Arizona shut off the electricity as well. Let them explain that to their residents.
Interesting, so a Commissioner of the ACC is basically saying he will abet LA in their boycott. And what will Arizona do with that electricity then? Store it in a warehouse? Since electricity is fungible and palced onto a larger grid, it is really only a financial transaction that has the electricity going from Arizona to LA. Its not like there is a direct pipeline for electrons from Arizona into Los Angeles, energy is placed on the grid, energy is taken off the grid. It is a bit more complicated than that, but not too much. No lights would go out.
I believe the point of the Commissioner of the ACC is not that he wants to have power shut off to the city, its that the economies of the California and Arizona are very entwined and that economic boycotts are not the way to try and change policy. To say your going to boycott Arizona yet still buy your power from them seems disingenuous.
ETA: Much like saying you’re not going to respond to threats, after you just got through threatening them.
In a similar vein, I understand Seattle has decided to bar city contracts with Arizona businesses… except for the one they already have for their traffic-control system.
Well, LA may very well take their energy contracts elsewhere, its hardly going to matter. We’ll see what LA does with respect to the electricity contracts they have with Arizona companies. The Commissioner’s letter is grandstanding nonsense, as for the City of Los Angeles, we’ll see, I suppose.
Of course it is really a boycott. The point of a boycott (or similar sanctions) is to put pressure on your opponent at a minimum of inconvenience to yourself, not cut off your own nose to spite their face.
Having said that, I do think that L.A.'s threat of a boycott is a rather silly and unnecessary response to Arizona’s execrable, and widely condemned, new law (which is, surely, going to be quickly blocked, and then overturned in the courts, anyway).
The greater the proportion of LA’s power AZ provides, the more impotent the threat. In fact, since LA dwarfs AZ in population and power use, I am pretty sure that whatever the values, the proportion of LA’s total power the ACC provides is much lower than the proportion of ACC’s power that LA buys. IOW, AZ has no leverage.
Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that LA itself is just grandstanding, driven more by internal politics than any real meaningful attempt to effect change. (I’d say it’s a 10 to 1 ratio.)
Even if they did do a full on boycott of buying power, they’d still end up buying it. Power generation comes from a variety of power plants, and it’s bought and sold like shares of stock. If LA doesn’t buy it, the price will go down, and some other state/county/city will buy it, who will then sell it to LA.