Gore Vidal Sounds Off on Solar Power Caper

http://www.truthdig.com/interview/item/20070706_gore_vidal_sounds_off_on_solar_power/

Posted on Jul 6, 2007

Truthdig/Zuade Kaufman

Note to public utility companies: Do not cross Gore Vidal. A week after representatives from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power came to his Hollywood Hills home to inspect (and then shut down) his newly installed solar power system, Vidal is still “on the grid,” unable to use solar until the system is fully re-inspected. As his fans would expect, the puissant author and tough customer has let fly with some strong words about the utility company, the state of California and the state of the country at large.

Although the DWP insists that the shutdown was a safety-related standard procedure according to their protocol, and that there were some issues with the way in which his solar system was set up and activated, Vidal questions the use of said protocol and the motives behind it. Simply put, he tells Truthdig’s Associate Editor Kasia Anderson, “ have no intention for anyone to use solar power so long as there’s a drop of oil anywhere in the world.”

Kasia Anderson: Let’s just catch up here in terms of where things stand at this point in the saga. ...

Gore Vidal: Well, in the saga of light and day and the dark of the moon ... exactly a year ago, there was a total blackout. I live in the Hollywood Hills, and the area around and other streets that go up from down below from the flats to the high mountaintop to help people cross over to the Valley—this is a street that people like to take to get from Hollywood, let’s say to San Fernando Valley, Burbank, and so on. That said, to my astonishment, I was, like everybody else, on the grid; I never questioned it, never thought about it. Next thing I know, for eight days we are without any power of any kind in the house, and some genius somewhere in the municipal divisions had managed to turn my telephone off. So, I had no telephone, no light, no nothing, and was forced, at enormous expense, to move with my godson, who is an expert—he’s part of the Green Party in France, where he lives, and he is not an American—I hope there was no resentment over that, but he was very helpful in just setting this thing up.

A lot of people fled. I was one of them. For one thing, I was not about to have a stroke; there was no air conditioning or anything else. So, I went to a hotel and stayed there at a huge expense for 10 days, maybe longer. And every day they’d say, “Oh yes, we’re getting closer,” and, “Well, your buildings are too old!” Well, this house was built in the ’20s; that’s quite true. But why not tell me, the buyer of the house, when I bought it? Did anybody from Power and Water come by to say, “Well, you’d better check on such and such?” No, they didn’t. We did check on everything to make sure everything was OK. And so many people who had rented this house over many years had cheated everybody. We had one couple—he declared bankruptcy, she wisely did not, and she ended by owing us $45,000 in rent—doing nothing about light, anything else. I dare give no more examples of her bad citizenship, because the would immediately say, “She did it! She did it!” You know, they’re looking to blame somebody for the mess they made over here. The least they could do is transfer the fault elsewhere—well, they can’t. This was arbitrarily their own mess.

So in due course,
http://www.truthdig.com/interview/item/20070706_gore_vidal_sounds_off_on_solar_power/