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Catching Up 1: Power
Aug. 26th, 2003 01:57 pmSince the power came back on, I've been on the go including a week in Gatineau Park in Quebec. So, it's time to play catch-up!
The power failure was fun and instructive. My sympathies to all those who were endangered or distressed. My comments come from the point of view of one who was not stuck in elevators or subways and was not at the top of an apartment building without water. We have a gas stove and a gas water heater, so we were showering and cooking with impunity. Also, we've never had air conditioning, so we weren't feeling deprived, even as the temperatures rose into humid mid-30s.
Of course, this last begins to define a problem: our society is set-up such that "normal" is wasteful. Our next-door neighbours, for example, are AC addicts. The infernal central air pumper runs noisily beside our back patio any time the temperature rises above, say, 19ûC. During the heat of the blackout, this young yuppie family hid behind closed windows never to be seen, presumably prostrate and praying for the grid gods to grant them current once again.
I began to wonder, as I spent a day in the backyard making illustrations with pencil and ink, why we'd built a world where all design problems were solved with the crude tool of electricity. Why don't we design buildings for efficient flow of air, thus minimizing need for AC? Why instead to we seal windows in office towers (thus creating better conditions for sick building syndrome) and crank up the power to solve everything from there?
Why do we save ourselves gentle wrist movements by buying electric toothbrushes? Why do we create trouble for ourselves by installing gadgets like garage-door openers that will breakdown and need maintenance and end up in landfill, especially since we know how to balance aluminum garage doors in a way that requires minimal effort to raise and lower?
Why is the standard garden of all those houses a lawn? Lawns used to be a symbol of wealth and power: you could pay for all those guys with the little scissors to trim them. Now what's our message? That we can suck up all the power we need to maintain such a pointless (and not even attractive) extravagance? Well, we can't.
It was announced like good news today that the two nuclear plants near Toronto went back online today. It's not good news -- it's a defeat. They were mothballed 10 years ago by the previous Ontario government because it's a dangerous way make power. They were brought back by the current gov't who had no other way of feeding the hunger. We also generate with coal. And gas-powered generators on emergency days when the sky is already brown with sludge.
In our neighbourhood, where people live a little closer to the real, there were communal meals among neighbours during the blackout with candleabras on the outside tables. People shared rumours and laughed together. People with barbecues offered to cook up meat for others before it rotted in their dead freezers (every dead box of an appliance mocked us during the blackout).
On Friday, as we walked through the celebratory, dark streets, I suddenly realized that if I waited for another two hours, I would see real stars over the city of Toronto for the first time in my life. I lay on my back in our garden that night and marvelled. Light returned patchily over the next day and, on Saturday evening, one street near us had streetlights. They looked obscenely bright - like they had been set wrong. They blinded the gentle darkness and blared like robot sentinels of an alien invasion: "We are your masters! We are your hope! Worship us and you will be saved!"
I averted my eyes, but not out of respect.
The power failure was fun and instructive. My sympathies to all those who were endangered or distressed. My comments come from the point of view of one who was not stuck in elevators or subways and was not at the top of an apartment building without water. We have a gas stove and a gas water heater, so we were showering and cooking with impunity. Also, we've never had air conditioning, so we weren't feeling deprived, even as the temperatures rose into humid mid-30s.
Of course, this last begins to define a problem: our society is set-up such that "normal" is wasteful. Our next-door neighbours, for example, are AC addicts. The infernal central air pumper runs noisily beside our back patio any time the temperature rises above, say, 19ûC. During the heat of the blackout, this young yuppie family hid behind closed windows never to be seen, presumably prostrate and praying for the grid gods to grant them current once again.
I began to wonder, as I spent a day in the backyard making illustrations with pencil and ink, why we'd built a world where all design problems were solved with the crude tool of electricity. Why don't we design buildings for efficient flow of air, thus minimizing need for AC? Why instead to we seal windows in office towers (thus creating better conditions for sick building syndrome) and crank up the power to solve everything from there?
Why do we save ourselves gentle wrist movements by buying electric toothbrushes? Why do we create trouble for ourselves by installing gadgets like garage-door openers that will breakdown and need maintenance and end up in landfill, especially since we know how to balance aluminum garage doors in a way that requires minimal effort to raise and lower?
Why is the standard garden of all those houses a lawn? Lawns used to be a symbol of wealth and power: you could pay for all those guys with the little scissors to trim them. Now what's our message? That we can suck up all the power we need to maintain such a pointless (and not even attractive) extravagance? Well, we can't.
It was announced like good news today that the two nuclear plants near Toronto went back online today. It's not good news -- it's a defeat. They were mothballed 10 years ago by the previous Ontario government because it's a dangerous way make power. They were brought back by the current gov't who had no other way of feeding the hunger. We also generate with coal. And gas-powered generators on emergency days when the sky is already brown with sludge.
In our neighbourhood, where people live a little closer to the real, there were communal meals among neighbours during the blackout with candleabras on the outside tables. People shared rumours and laughed together. People with barbecues offered to cook up meat for others before it rotted in their dead freezers (every dead box of an appliance mocked us during the blackout).
On Friday, as we walked through the celebratory, dark streets, I suddenly realized that if I waited for another two hours, I would see real stars over the city of Toronto for the first time in my life. I lay on my back in our garden that night and marvelled. Light returned patchily over the next day and, on Saturday evening, one street near us had streetlights. They looked obscenely bright - like they had been set wrong. They blinded the gentle darkness and blared like robot sentinels of an alien invasion: "We are your masters! We are your hope! Worship us and you will be saved!"
I averted my eyes, but not out of respect.
