I heard on NPR this morning that hundreds of millions of Indians lost electrical power today, but it's hard to grasp the total: 370 million.
While the midsummer outage was unique in its reach - it hit 370 million people, more than the population of the United States and Canada combined - its impact was softened by Indians' familiarity with almost daily blackouts of varying duration. Hospitals and major businesses have backup generators that seamlessly kick in during power cuts, and upscale homes are hooked to backup systems powered by truck batteries.
Related thought: we can't reduce carbon emissions without India and China, but who really thinks those 2.5 billion people are going to want to continue to live without reliable electricity?
(HT: Instapundit.)
