Without electricity you wouldn’t be able to read this blog. Hence it is fair to suggest that electricity is a common occurrence in your everyday life. Electricity might even be a pseudo human-right of some sorts to you, since you take it for granted and given. Subsequently we have become complacent with our electricity.
Blood for light.
Be honest and ask yourself if you really limit your use of light to absolute necessities or if you rather indulge in the luxuries that light and electricity provides.
Mike Thompson, an English designer believes the latter. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has noted that electricity consumption totaled nearly 3,856 billion Kilowatthours (kWh) in 2011. That’s equivalent to leaving the light on in 4 rooms for a whole year.
As a result Thompson started a debate in, which he asked how much we would sacrifice for something that is so dear to us. Would we bleed for light?
Thompson did not invoke a metaphor in this case but rather asked whether we would limit our use of light if we had to bleed for it every time.
In order to exemplify his thoughts Thompson designed a lamp that is “powered” by blood. To use the lamp, you first need to mix in an activating powder. Then, you break the glass, cut yourself, and drip blood into the opening.
Although Thompson designed and produced the lamp in 2007, he only made a video (See below) of his project this year.
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Good video – and good point!
As a frequent blood donor myself, I can think myself of giving blood for important things in my life. I believe this discussion is a very important discussion, though it might be a bit misleading in bringing blood into it – we must see the blood as a metaphor and still asking ourselves the real question: “how important is electricity to us and what are we willing to do for it?”
This, in the context of also what are we willing to do for sustainable energy which does not harm the society and the environment in the long run.
Electricity, in our interconnected world, is very much a basic human right – since it is in direct or indirect form key to get information or education. And everybody should have the right to get true unbiased information in order to make his very own critical and informed decisions.
The Arab Spring would have been impossible without Al Jazeera, without Facebook or text messages – and all is powered by electricity. The power of the Internet was demonstrated in the days Egypt shut down its internet for days to kill the spread of information within the protesting community.
Keeping the issue of this blog, your values (candour sincerity and belief) as well as the fact that the world as it is today offer or creates multiple times the energy it need by itself (geothermal, wind, solar, tides etc.) in mind, then it should be a no-brainer to push electricity in a MUCH more sustainable way.
Electrical power therefore equals “power” in many other aspects, economical, social and political. And since we agree that electricity is a human right, it then becomes a basic public service which in my point of view should be provided within certain limits since the main aim for a society must be to provide electricity in the most social sustainable way and not pull down well established instruments like the clean water act and destroying it with loop holes in order to give economical benefits to private companies and restricting rights of the society at the same time. The market rules also must be limited since it includes the risk that utility companies could exclude parts of the society once they become unprofitable to supply them (population in rural areas).
I am an active supporter of market driven solutions in all matters of private needs and issues, but where it touches basic human rights – a public controlled setting in the long run outperforms unregulated systems where individual interests are put higher then the common interests.
The future of energy will include much more decentralized and more sustainable alternatives and it baffles me that we still allow mountain top removal coal mining, shale gas fracking or Uranium mining when we clearly know that these methods are already way more expensive not only financially (once we internalize all external costs and cut subsidies to profit making companies).
And so the question remains: “what are YOU willing to do, to not only get any electricity, but to get socially responsible and sustainable electricity to all, so we can not only supply energy but know how and education as well as push stand alone off-grid solutions to places where for example the access to water is a three hour walk away?”