In all parts of the developed world there are questions being asked about the need for electricity. How are governments going to cope with the constant increase in electricity usage, and the need to build either nuclear power plants, or hydro dams, or wind farms? How are they going to cope with opposition from environmentalists?
But there are two other questions we need to consider: how might we stop using as much power in the world? And, if we are to go on using electricity for most of our appliances, for heating and lighting, then what alternative methods on a micro-level might we be considering?
When I was a child, coal and wood fires were commonplace. We heated both our water and our homes with a coal range which was kept stoked throughout the day and banked up at night. A good deal of cooking was done on this coal range too. To a great extent – apart from the need to buy coal – we were self-sufficient.
From the sixties onwards, however, people began to regard electricity as the great saviour in terms of power and heating, with the result that coal fires are now almost unheard of. And that’s quite apart from their pollution factor.
Do we have to have electricity?
But is electricity the be-all-and-end-all of power? Or is it that we’ve just got used to having it on hand for almost every device in the average home?
There are, in fact, electrically-run devices in the home that we could do without – but are we willing to do without them?
My daughter and her husband, who have one child, were convinced that they needed a dishwasher. Yet, when my daughter was growing up in our household, where there three adults and five children, we never used a dishwasher, and never missed it.
This is one minor example of an electrical appliance that people now feel is essential, but in reality isn’t.
What are the alternatives?
If we have to face the fact that we “can’t” live without electrically-run appliances, then we have to ask another, perhaps more important, question: what are the alternative ways of running electrical appliances, especially on a micro-level?
If we can use hydro power on a macro-level, then surely we can do the same on a smaller scale? A water wheel that runs continually by using the same water endlessly circulating is one option.
If we think large wind farms are of value, then surely small ‘wind farms’ or a single windmill could also run one or more appliances in our home. Even if it only ran the television, the computer and the CD player, there would be a saving.
Every household produces waste. Waste is already being re-used on a large scale, but again, we need to find ways to use it within the confines of the ordinary home. Everyone who has had a compost heap knows how grass left to rot will provide a great deal of heat. How can this sort of waste be turned to a form of power?
Do we really need large companies to provide all our electrical power, or can we be much more self-sufficient in this regard?
In the next few years, there will be an increasing amount of discussion on the issue of who provides power, and on how we can make our own. I suspect that there are a host of as yet undiscovered ideas that will come to the fore as human beings find that the provision of electricity on a large scale isn’t necessarily the best way for humankind as a whole.
