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@ned publicly owned gas companies aren’t any better than the private ones.
@Ed_Carley @ned , correct, both of them destroy the climate, and by extension, humanity.
@ned One thing I love about our utilities here in #Nebraska is that they are all publicly held! "Nebraska is the only state served 100% by publicly-owned utilities; such as municipal utilities, electric cooperatives, or public power districts." https://www.nppd.com/powering-nebraska/public-power
@mrbruno@mstdn.social@ned Well, they asked!!!
@ned We have a public utility here in Clark County, WA and it is measurably better than anything I've ever lived with. Very responsive to the community, keeps rates low, highly reliable, does not set the state on fire and then try to deny it. That last one is a biggie for me.
When I was little we had regulated services. Not public, but at least controlled. Then Premier Ralph Klein came in and deregulated all of it, and it just spiraled downhill from there. Although the most recent iteration of alt-right ultra-conservative government in the province did the most visible harm, eliminating all caps so many of us literally saw utilities double in a week.
(Since you're American:
Premier = Governor
Province = State)
@ned Got it. Thanks. Is it bad that I get most of my Canadian history from Letterkenny?
@aethervision Nope, nothing wrong with that. :D
@aethervision @ned public power (if not gas 
) is state law in Nebraska. I've worked for the public power co and I am still a customer, and it's truly amazing how much better it is when the profit motive is gone and they can focus on stability and long-term infrastructure. We've had 2 outages in 10 years: for one we got a message 45 minutes before hand about a planned rolling outage during the 2021 freeze, and for the other, the town had to fix the line to our block, which was a 6h venture.
@dianea@lgbtqia.space@ned this is why I'm off grid and full solar. The utilities had horrific service, prices, and fees, just like a monopoly would.
@FirefighterGeek@masto.ai@ned So one could say that you want to "seize the means of combustion"... I'll see myself out.
@ned Reminds me of how our power company here was public: things were bad, so they sold it to an Italian company. Things are still bad, probably worse, and I have bought an UPS.
@McKenna@chaos.socialSolid answers there, friend...