Being a customer of your customers
From Maggie Koerth Baker at boingboing.net, a fascinating glimpse of how fresh and wondrous electricity seemed to Americans in 1916. Pity she spoils it by an attempt at finding the cloud in the silver lining at the end.
Centralized electricity changed energy production from a difficult, in-home process that kept the messy by-products of progress literally in your face, into something magical that happened when you threw a switch. The choking smoke was still there, but not at your house. There was still heavy labor involved, but it wasn't done by you or your children. For the first time, people were able to pretend that their standard of living was provided, free of downsides, by little elves that lived in the wall. All benefit, no detriment. Action without consequences. In other words, this is the point where everybody went a little bit bonkers.
The beauty is that this is still happening in parts of Africa and Asia. A report on the Philippines estimated that each family derives $108 a month in benefits from connecting to the electricity grid – cheaper lighting ($37), cheaper radio and television ($19), more years in education ($20), time saving ($24) and business productivity ($8). As the miracle of electricity reaches a village, people inhale less smoke, read more school books, cut down fewer trees and find time to do other things that earn them more money.
The people who run the power stations aint elves but have comparatively well paid jobs that enable them to be customers to their customers.
Comments (5)
Don't let Greenpeace or WWF find out you are advocating connecting people in the Third World to the grid. It is powered by fossil fuels and is therefore per se evil.
I found your blog today from Bishop Hill. Good luck with your new site. Electricity is such a good thing. I don't think I could get used to being without it.
We should not put hindrances in the way of developing nations to get electricity from fossil fuels. If we keep energy cheap and available to all people then we have a better opportunity to find alternate sources of energy that will not be detrimental to our economies.
I cringe at the thought of Obama using the EPA to institute taxes and regulations on CO2. CO2 is plant food, and the climate scientists have put forth a faulty case claiming it is causing AGW.
Everyday I read about more and more flaws in their science. It is a scary thing to see the world heading into world government Instigated because of climate change scare tactics.
It's not just an abstract possibility - the UK government is actively trying to prevent coal-fired power stations being built in Africa:
From the Times April 6 - "Britain may block World Bank loan for coal plant in South Africa"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7088297.ece
I have always thought that the great advantage developing nations could have over us would be that they have the opportunity to start their development smarter. Start with renewable, sustainable, non-polluting, non-extractive energy.
If there is a better way to produce electricity, why not start there, instead of have to dig yourself out of a cesspool of pollution?
Some of these comments strike me as using optimism to pull the wool over your own eyes. Innovation comes from the desire or need to do things better. Is that not optimistic?
I have always thought that developing nations could have a huge advantage over the developed world by circumventing our traditional, polluting energy producing methods.
It makes far more sense, especially at this point in the timeline, to make electricity from non-polluting, non-extractive sources. Why start out with a toxic cesspool that has to be tied to a bigger grid with a cumbersome infrastructure, when you can make small village sized power stations that can stand alone?
Some of these comments seem to use the term 'optimism' to pull the wool over your own eyes. Innovation comes from the desire or need to do things better. I consider that very optimistic.