We're running out of electricity - among other things

 by Margaret Swedish

What will it be like as things we rely on, that we don't even think about as we use them, begin to break down? Like flipping a light switch and the lights go on. Like writing an email and pressing "send."  Or that GPS voice telling you where to go, when to turn, how to get there, suddenly goes silent. Think about the 12 hours that AT&T customers suddenly lost all access to their accounts a couple of weeks ago. No way to make a phone call, no way to connect with others - workplace, family, the internet. Couldn't call AT&T to find out what was going on or how long it would last. Couldn't let family members know why they couldn't reach you or where you are.

Yes, some people were quite unnerved. It could happen just like that someday soon, the entire internet going down. A solar storm making a dead-on hit, Putin playing with his new nuclear space weapon (in development right now), the Chinese government deciding to shut down our electric grid or interfere with weather satellites as the hurricane is headed straight for Florida.

Dystopian, I know. But believe me, a lot of folks out there are very worried about how completely reliant we are on virtual technology, on computer chips and the internet, on satellite connections and smart phones, for our daily existence.

What really brought this to the forefront of my "musings in the Age of Collapse" was this article from just the other day in the Washington Post. Just to say, the headline really caught my attention.

Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power

Yikes! Seriously?

The tagline: AI and the boom in clean-tech manufacturing are pushing America’s power grid to the brink. Utilities can’t keep up.

Here's something we're having a little problem understanding. You can't just keep adding on more and more demand on an increasingly limited resource. And I am going to guess that millions of people had no idea that our wireless world in which we don't SEE or FEEL what these demands are doing to the planet is often as bad as, end even worse, than our use of paper, plastics, personal vehicles, and other materials we visibly use each day when considering our withering, destructive, ways of life on this abused, wounded, precious planet of ours.

From this article:

Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.

In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades.

Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction. Texas, where electricity shortages are already routine on hot summer days, faces the same dilemma.

Yeah, it's bad. It's seriously bad. Despite infrastructure bills and money pouring into states for all sorts of projects, demand is overwhelming supply. Once again, we are growing new technologies without slowing down to consider impacts, limits, reality. Oh, so many millions of us just hate that word, and that, my friends, is one of the reasons we are in so much trouble.

I have copied this pic into my post because I want to offer to us all some reality, a good look at what is necessary, what is REAL, about what is being done to the planet directly connected to our industrial/technological ways of life. Take a close look. And to get a sense of the magnitude of this environmental disaster zone, see the tiny trucks to get a sense of scale. They are not tiny. Their tires alone are taller than we are.

© Jiri Rezac / Greenpeace

I made a visit to the Alberta Tar sands site just over a decade ago with a few Canadian colleagues. It was bad then, but this... Sweet God, how is it possible humans keep doing this.

Just to note: this was all boreal forest not that long ago, and the Athabasca River that runs through this geography once a source of fresh water for the indigenous communities that live in the region. Today, those same communities suffer extreme rates of cancer, renal disease, and more, their way of life utterly ruined. The forest is also our northern hemisphere's version of the Amazon Rainforest, lungs for this breathing planet, and a major regulator of climate.

It's bad enough that humans created this industrial monster. It's something else altogether that we have done so much lethal harm and cannot stop ourselves. The drive for technology and profit, for ease of life and convenience, fancier consumer items and global travel, is an addiction we are unable to overcome, even if it does mean the death, the end, of so much. What our children will see in this century...

I no longer expect us to learn. I don't even expect that those who have learned or are learning are willing to live an extreme of radical simplicity that would be required to move quickly into a new version of ourselves. Mystics and monks, maybe. Hard core followers of the actual texts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or the actual real principles and ethics of Buddhism, perhaps. There will be some few who will try to shine a light on how we could do this, learn to live differently, not as separate individuals following our own self-interests (which is a violation of the Earth's natural laws), but in communities that rely on one another and the beings in our natural eco-communities for life and meaning. At the core of these communities would be an unshakable commitment to honor that Web of Life, to refuse to violate it anymore, and to become part of its regeneration and healing so that they may be preserved for the next generations.

"Inflection point" is an overused, abused term these days. That said, we really are at one. Right now, the choices humans are making are not encouraging.