At a national meeting of governors, California’s power shortage has been a topic of major concern. About half the states in the nation have approved deregulation plans and are in various stages of carrying them out. Several, including Nevada, have stopped or slowed deregulation after watching California struggle, the Associated Press has reported.

"At a time of dwindling supply, the governor refused to proceed with deregulation," said Jack Finn, a spokesman for Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn. "California has brought us to the brink of crisis ... and is draining our supply."

"If California’s situation is severe enough, it could suck electricity from the rest of the grid and set up a ripple effect in other states’ utility systems," the AP story said.

That’s a rather colorful way of stating the problem, because power won’t automatically drain toward the lowlands, but it’s not a possibility that should be ignored. The power grid connects the states of the West, including both California and Colorado, and when overall demand exceeds overall supply, none of us should assume that we will remain unaffected by the shortfall, even if it doesn’t shut off our own lights. Throughout much of the West, the demand for electricity is higher in the summer.

In addition, we depend on California, not for electricity but for commodities, including information technology, that cannot be produced and exported without power. Even if our own electricity never flickers, shortages elsewhere will begin to have an effect on us.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge pointed out that other states have deregulated much more successfully than California. In his state, deregulation of the energy market has lowered prices. That system was phased in gradually to make sure it worked the way it was intended.

California’s version of partial deregulation obviously has not worked quite that well, and now other Western states are facing a dilemma similar to the one they’ve confronted over water usage. Should we conserve at the headwaters, knowing that everything we don’t use will be consumed by California?

Conservation is the right thing to do, and the hoarding of resources certainly is not, but there’s something to be said for not letting California assume that the Interior West will always have resources to spare. Establishing a historic precedent for the use of resources one doesn’t actually own — nor, it could be argued, deserves to acquire — is a good move for California. It’s very difficult for the rest of us to snatch back resources that Californians depend upon for their daily lives.

Water is different from power, of course, but the parallels cannot be ignored. California currently imports 20 percent of its power, which means that some other state is exporting it. That’s fine as long as there’s a surplus somewhere, which holds true only as long as generating capacity is adequate.

California Gov. Gray Davis had some very good advice for other states: "The most important lesson is don’t deregulate unless you have much more power than you need. If you’re going to deregulate, make the first claim on that power to your state before electrons are exported."