Electricity Failures in the First World
It happens and more often than I would have expected. That something as basic as electricity becomes unavailable is sometimes hard to imagine. There are many reasons. Sometimes it’s due to maintenance work on the central in the neighborhood. Some other times it is due to extreme warmth where the cooling installations fail.
During such moments its better not to dig into a probable cause. The electricity company can’t often tell you and you are left to guess what the real problem may be.
My first reaction on an electricity failure is emotional; I get angry. “How in the world, in 2008, in the 21st century where energy companies pressure to promote nuclear energy again, how in the world is it possible that there is a failure in de supply? If they can’t do that right, how should we trust them in supplying nuclear energy?”
But it is only a first reaction…
Than my next thoughts are more moderate. I look at it from the bright side. How dependent we have got from these basic supplies and that we do no longer accept a small intervention. This local (?) crisis took only a few hours. The freezer remained cool enough not to spoil the food and before you know it, it is over again.
A third thought is about how lucky we should be in this (first) world. Having “everything” we need, engaged in some luxury problems when three hours out of an annual of about 8600 there is no electricity.
During those hours we go back and think how it was in those days, we light a candle and we think how lucky we are, compared to the rest of the world. Thinking about a story of one of my ex-colleges who told me about his experiences in Gabon. “There is only about three hours a day electricity.” And let’s also not forget about the water problems they have in those countries…
H.J.B.
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