{"id":67845,"date":"2024-05-03T13:49:26","date_gmt":"2024-05-03T18:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67845"},"modified":"2024-05-03T13:49:26","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T18:49:26","slug":"discovering-powers-traps-a-primer-for-electricity-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67845","title":{"rendered":"Discovering Power\u2019s Traps: a primer for electricity users"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Discovering Power\u2019s Traps: a primer for electricity users<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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In magazines like\u00a0Mother Jones<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sierra Club<\/a>, environmentalists who aim to reduce harmful impacts to public health, wildlife habitats and climate systems propose \u201celectrifying everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n

Already, most of our food, shelter, communications and transportation systems depend on electricity. Replacing vehicles, stoves, heaters, water heaters and money (mining bitcoin) with electric ones would require massive expansion of the power grid. We\u2019d have to manufacture\u00a0lots<\/em>\u00a0of new appliances and vehicles (and discard old ones). We\u2019d have to manufacture and operate more substations, generators, transformers, power lines, appliances, circuit boards and batteries. Their manufacturing would require more fossil fuels, more rare earth elements, more water, more smelting and refining, more hazardous chemicals and more international shipping. It would generate more toxic waste and more electromagnetic radiation.<\/p>\n

So would adding artificial intelligence (AI), solar PV, wind and battery systems to our technosphere. Electrifying everything would also require expanding\u00a0<\/em>telecommunications: more satellites, cell sites, data storage centers and computers.<\/p>\n

Given power outages\u2019 increasing frequency, increasing our dependence on electricity now\u2026makes no sense.<\/p>\n

What are our goals again?<\/em><\/p>\n

To reduce harms to nature: to reduce harms to public health, wildlife habitats and climate systems. To keep power reliable and safe.<\/p>\n

Electrifying everything cannot accomplish these goals.<\/p>\n

To reduce harms to nature, we need to manufacture less, consume less and significantly limit new infrastructure. We need liability-carrying subject-matter experts to evaluate every product\u2019s ecological impacts from cradle-to-grave.<\/p>\n

To keep power reliable and safe, we need engineers in charge of the grid.<\/p>\n

To reduce demands<\/strong><\/p>\n

I understand that using fossil fuels increases global temperatures and severe weather conditions. Electricity, usually powered by natural gas or coal, accounts for roughly 20% of global energy consumption. Transportation (of people and goods), run largely on petroleum, accounts roughly for 25%.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Discovering Power\u2019s Traps: a primer for electricity users In magazines like\u00a0Mother Jones\u00a0and\u00a0Sierra Club, environmentalists who aim to reduce harmful impacts to public health, wildlife habitats and climate systems propose \u201celectrifying everything.\u201d I don\u2019t get it. Already, most of our food, shelter, communications and transportation systems depend on electricity. Replacing vehicles, stoves, heaters, water heaters and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1103,33970,34473,1535,34472,30990],"class_list":["post-67845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-electricity","tag-electrify-everything","tag-harm-reduction","tag-hydrocarbons","tag-katie-singer","tag-substack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67846,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67845\/revisions\/67846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}