The earthquake and tsunami damage which led to calamitous events at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant in Japan lay plain the futility of attempting to end catastrophic failure through engineering.
There were several backup plans in place to prevent a meltdown of the six reactors at this facility, some of which were dependent on the idea of either having access to the electrical grid – which failed because of the earthquake and tsunami – or else, barring that, to being able to generate sufficient energy for the cooling systems with on-site generators – which failed because of the earthquake and tsunami.
The control rooms for some of these backup systems were submerged in floodwaters; years of careful planning and consideration were rendered completely useless in just a few short minutes of Mother Nature getting up and taking a brief stretch. Between infrastructure (toppled because the land on which it lay suddenly got fundamentally fed up with being where it was), and water (appearing in massive quantities where no water had been before), the engineers in charge of safely operating this nuclear power plant were simply overwhelmed.
Why would a nation like Japan, whose proud civilization has withstood century after century of natural disasters, including earthquakes, typhoons, blizzards, mudslides, red tides, plagues, and volcanoes, put itself in danger by relying on nuclear energy, when one small misstep – let alone the series of missteps which were taken at Fukushima – could cause a bigger disaster than had ever been seen before?
The answer is simple. Japan does not have much in the way of natural resources. They import all of their oil, virtually all of their coal, and most of their raw materials for manufacturing. To be self-reliant, the Japanese have developed an extensive energy grid, of which nuclear power is a major component.
We at Myrtle’s place have been thinking about energy production and consumption a lot lately, and the events in Japan have put a morbidly human face on the question. The catastrophe would have been bad enough had it involved only natural sources of destruction. Entire towns were washed out to sea – the satellite photos show before-and-after scenes that simply defy the imagination.
But because the nuclear genie was let out of the bottle, the story of the Sendai earthquake has become a tragic cautionary tale about the dangers of dependence on centralized energy grids. We say “centralized energy grids” and not “nuclear power” for a very important reason – while nuclear radiation is an easily sensationalized danger, the very palpable fact is that any other sort of power generation plant would have proven equally incapable of dealing with the overwhelming force of shifting tectonic plates and surging tidal waves.
Some other forms of energy production would present their own dangers – petrochemical explosions, for example, in the case of oil or gas powered electrical plants; chemical exposure for coal plants; etc. – and all would have equally been incapable of producing, for the foreseeable future, electrical power on the scale the civilization built up around them requires in order to continue.
We would like to suggest the radical idea that the alternative to imported oil, or nuclear power, or coal, or whatever source is currently being used in whichever part of the industrialized world we are looking at, is not new electrical plants relying upon a renewable resource, or any other sort of energy alternative.
Wind farms, large-scale solar power plants, wave power plants, hydroelectric dams, these are all impressive engineering marvels, and they are all superior to the use of fossil fuels, in that none of these alternatives require spewing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, but they all also feed the structure which places civilization in danger in the first place.
The alternative to the current energy structure is a different process altogether.
Currently, energy is dispensed from the top down in a centralized model. The “grid” is not really a grid at all; it is a giant plinko game, in which energy is dropped in from the top, usually in the form of a particular kind of fuel (say, oil) which is processed in one central location (say, petroleum refineries along the Gulf of Mexico), and then scattered along various paths, with increasing costs passed along at each of these steps, until it finally falls into a slot (say, the tank of your car).
Renewable energy sources like solar or wind make sense not just because they don’t involve much pollution (which, of course, is a strong argument in their favor), but more because they enable a paradigm shift in terms of how energy is distributed.
Rather than relying on a central electric generation station, energy comes from discrete points such as your own home solar and wind generators, or distribution points much like vending machines. Japan, in fact, had recently announced the creation of many of these sorts of outlets for electric vehicle recharging.
This is hinted at with one of the favorite phrases of the DIY (“Do it yourself”) movement: off the grid. Getting off the grid typically evokes images of a solitary shack in the woods, or even out in the desert of West Texas, where solitary hermits ranging from benevolent Grizzly Adams types to raving lunatics like Ted Kaczynski types, have turned their backs on civilization.
We think these hints are drawn with fear and trepidation, both on the part of DIY devotees and also on the part of a civilization which has grown afraid of its own shadow. Mainstream consumers do not even dream, much less plan, of off grid living, because the image has been sealed off from them. The propaganda war has been won by the fringes; there is no room for this new way of thinking for the vast majority of us, who live comfortably in the middle.
But “off the grid” should not apply only to individuals; it should apply to us all, collectively, not just “also the middle”, but especially the middle.
As it stands now, most large businesses have already made contingency plans to at least temporarily operate in the absence of city utilities – backup generators for their various computer server farms, water storage, cooling facilities, the works – and some have even made the logical leap to installing wind and solar generators to produce at least some of their energy needs on a permanent basis.
Homes, though, are probably an easier place to start. Some homeowners have already begun making the switch to wind and solar power; most specialists in the conversion of domestic buildings to wind and solar suggest that maybe a quarter of home energy needs can be met by sun or wind sources. This, however, is a gross understatement, based on a couple of fundamental misconceptions.
First, and foremost, the engineering of homes is not typically all that energy efficient. We have dark-colored roofing materials, thin walls, windows in the wrong places, and a host of other problems, all of which can either be avoided in construction phases, or corrected when retrofitting one’s home for energy efficiency. Painting our roofs white, or better still, covering them with solar panels or solar tiles, adding insulation and planting sun-absorbing trees and vines in the appropriate spaces in our landscapes, correcting our windows and window treatments, these are all fairly simple steps to take.
Further, our lifestyles can easily be changed to consume less energy. Some changes – like riding a bike instead of driving a car – would be considered radical and difficult. Others, however, like replacing light switches with rheostats, are basic and simple.
Look around your home for any appliance with an LED light that stays lit when the device is off – put it on a power strip, and turn off the power strip when not using the device. Presto! If you are a typical American, you have just cut on average 20% off your utility bill. Really? Yes, really. Televisions, computers, modems and routers, printers and faxes, coffee makers, bread machines, microwave ovens, stereos, DVD players, game consoles, these are all gadgets which expend a lot of energy even when they are technically “off”.
Second, sources of energy like solar, wind, and geothermal do not have to be used exclusively – they can be “layered”. Why would we not fit homes with solar panels on the roof, on the garage or carport, on the fence line, etc., and also set up wind turbines on the roof and in the corners of the yard, and set up a geothermal system to (at the very least) power the HVAC system? Each of these sources of energy are currently available, and in spite of the fact that each is still a speciality niche for highly specialized contractors, each can be had for roughly $10,000 for the typical 1,500 sq foot American home on a .25 acre lot. Given the price of housing, adding $30,000 – which seems like a lot if taken by itself – is not really that much. It seems especially paltry when you add up 30 years of utility bills you won’t be paying, during the life of your mortgage.
There are plenty of examples of fully functional off-the-grid homes the size and scale of a typical suburban house, suggesting that it is possible (given the political and economic will) for houses currently consuming electricity generated at centralized power plants to not use one watt of “grid” electricity.
What would that do to our civilization?
Seriously, stop to consider the implications of not only having an individual here or there off the grid, but having entire communities off the grid. Rather than being pot-smoking, birkenstock and tie-dye wearing, hummus and pita-chip munching hippies, or else crazy pipe-bomb building math geeks with delusions of grandeur, those “off the grid” folk who generate their own power would be your next door neighbors, with whom you have conversations about the weather, or your favorite local sports team, or your childrens' schools.
Picture the next natural disaster – say, a hurricane or a blizzard – and think about all those stories you have heard in the past about so-and-so many thousands of people having to do without electricity for days and weeks and months at a time. Now imagine that at least half, or even just a third, of those people still had power and could help out their immediate neighbors who were not so lucky.
The next natural disaster wouldn’t seem nearly so bleak, would it?
Added to this communitarian idealism lay some tactical and strategic benefit for countries fighting terrorism; Mother Nature is not the only one to target power plants. But suppose, just suppose, al-Qaida or other miscreants wanted to disable our energy infrastructure... and they couldn't, because there was no target? We would be able to survive an attack as a group because we would be meeting our needs as individuals.
The dilemma posed by off-the-grid thinking is just this: far too many people have co-opted this idea, and made it essentially an anti-social objective. Getting off the grid, however, is not something for individuals. It is something for everyone. We must replace the grid with 6 billion individual cells; we must stop trying to give “power to the people” and instead let the people make their own power. We must, in essence, become collectively individual. We must be independent together.
Something of the spirit of this idea is discussed in Laura Ingalls Wilder's “Little House on the Prairie” books. Pa Ingalls makes a frequent point of emphasis in stating that everyone in the American West is “free and independent”; at the same time, neighbors do not think twice about helping each other out with various chores or situations that none of them could survive alone – things like raising a barn, digging a well, surviving malaria, or any of the other menaces pioneers faced.
In the 21st century, in urban and suburban areas all around the world, we are facing a new kind of pioneer difficulty. We live in an interdependent culture, economy, and ecology. What happens anywhere affects everyone everywhere. The benefits of that kind of interconnectedness are obvious, but so too are the dangers. The Kaczynski method of insulating oneself against those dangers is obviously wrong, however. Instead of cutting ourselves off from each other, we must find ways of helping each other regain our status as “free and independent” citizens.
If all of Japan were electrified via solar, wind, wave, geothermal, etc. sources of energy, no one would be talking about whether or not the Fukushima meltdown may prove to be as bad as Chernobyl. Instead, they would be helping each other bury their dead, rebuilding their towns, and moving on.
Pray we all learn the appropriate lessons from this tragedy. We at Myrtle's place have a ten year plan in place to get “off the grid” while still living right smack dab in the middle of the city. Ten years sounded like a long time when we put the plan together, but it gets shorter by the day; hopefully, your family can get started on your own plans soon too.
Happy farming!
The control rooms for some of these backup systems were submerged in floodwaters; years of careful planning and consideration were rendered completely useless in just a few short minutes of Mother Nature getting up and taking a brief stretch. Between infrastructure (toppled because the land on which it lay suddenly got fundamentally fed up with being where it was), and water (appearing in massive quantities where no water had been before), the engineers in charge of safely operating this nuclear power plant were simply overwhelmed.
Why would a nation like Japan, whose proud civilization has withstood century after century of natural disasters, including earthquakes, typhoons, blizzards, mudslides, red tides, plagues, and volcanoes, put itself in danger by relying on nuclear energy, when one small misstep – let alone the series of missteps which were taken at Fukushima – could cause a bigger disaster than had ever been seen before?
The answer is simple. Japan does not have much in the way of natural resources. They import all of their oil, virtually all of their coal, and most of their raw materials for manufacturing. To be self-reliant, the Japanese have developed an extensive energy grid, of which nuclear power is a major component.
But because the nuclear genie was let out of the bottle, the story of the Sendai earthquake has become a tragic cautionary tale about the dangers of dependence on centralized energy grids. We say “centralized energy grids” and not “nuclear power” for a very important reason – while nuclear radiation is an easily sensationalized danger, the very palpable fact is that any other sort of power generation plant would have proven equally incapable of dealing with the overwhelming force of shifting tectonic plates and surging tidal waves.
Some other forms of energy production would present their own dangers – petrochemical explosions, for example, in the case of oil or gas powered electrical plants; chemical exposure for coal plants; etc. – and all would have equally been incapable of producing, for the foreseeable future, electrical power on the scale the civilization built up around them requires in order to continue.
We would like to suggest the radical idea that the alternative to imported oil, or nuclear power, or coal, or whatever source is currently being used in whichever part of the industrialized world we are looking at, is not new electrical plants relying upon a renewable resource, or any other sort of energy alternative.
Wind farms, large-scale solar power plants, wave power plants, hydroelectric dams, these are all impressive engineering marvels, and they are all superior to the use of fossil fuels, in that none of these alternatives require spewing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, but they all also feed the structure which places civilization in danger in the first place.
The alternative to the current energy structure is a different process altogether.
Currently, energy is dispensed from the top down in a centralized model. The “grid” is not really a grid at all; it is a giant plinko game, in which energy is dropped in from the top, usually in the form of a particular kind of fuel (say, oil) which is processed in one central location (say, petroleum refineries along the Gulf of Mexico), and then scattered along various paths, with increasing costs passed along at each of these steps, until it finally falls into a slot (say, the tank of your car).
Rather than relying on a central electric generation station, energy comes from discrete points such as your own home solar and wind generators, or distribution points much like vending machines. Japan, in fact, had recently announced the creation of many of these sorts of outlets for electric vehicle recharging.
This is hinted at with one of the favorite phrases of the DIY (“Do it yourself”) movement: off the grid. Getting off the grid typically evokes images of a solitary shack in the woods, or even out in the desert of West Texas, where solitary hermits ranging from benevolent Grizzly Adams types to raving lunatics like Ted Kaczynski types, have turned their backs on civilization.
We think these hints are drawn with fear and trepidation, both on the part of DIY devotees and also on the part of a civilization which has grown afraid of its own shadow. Mainstream consumers do not even dream, much less plan, of off grid living, because the image has been sealed off from them. The propaganda war has been won by the fringes; there is no room for this new way of thinking for the vast majority of us, who live comfortably in the middle.
But “off the grid” should not apply only to individuals; it should apply to us all, collectively, not just “also the middle”, but especially the middle.
As it stands now, most large businesses have already made contingency plans to at least temporarily operate in the absence of city utilities – backup generators for their various computer server farms, water storage, cooling facilities, the works – and some have even made the logical leap to installing wind and solar generators to produce at least some of their energy needs on a permanent basis.
Homes, though, are probably an easier place to start. Some homeowners have already begun making the switch to wind and solar power; most specialists in the conversion of domestic buildings to wind and solar suggest that maybe a quarter of home energy needs can be met by sun or wind sources. This, however, is a gross understatement, based on a couple of fundamental misconceptions.
First, and foremost, the engineering of homes is not typically all that energy efficient. We have dark-colored roofing materials, thin walls, windows in the wrong places, and a host of other problems, all of which can either be avoided in construction phases, or corrected when retrofitting one’s home for energy efficiency. Painting our roofs white, or better still, covering them with solar panels or solar tiles, adding insulation and planting sun-absorbing trees and vines in the appropriate spaces in our landscapes, correcting our windows and window treatments, these are all fairly simple steps to take.
Further, our lifestyles can easily be changed to consume less energy. Some changes – like riding a bike instead of driving a car – would be considered radical and difficult. Others, however, like replacing light switches with rheostats, are basic and simple.
Look around your home for any appliance with an LED light that stays lit when the device is off – put it on a power strip, and turn off the power strip when not using the device. Presto! If you are a typical American, you have just cut on average 20% off your utility bill. Really? Yes, really. Televisions, computers, modems and routers, printers and faxes, coffee makers, bread machines, microwave ovens, stereos, DVD players, game consoles, these are all gadgets which expend a lot of energy even when they are technically “off”.
There are plenty of examples of fully functional off-the-grid homes the size and scale of a typical suburban house, suggesting that it is possible (given the political and economic will) for houses currently consuming electricity generated at centralized power plants to not use one watt of “grid” electricity.
What would that do to our civilization?
Seriously, stop to consider the implications of not only having an individual here or there off the grid, but having entire communities off the grid. Rather than being pot-smoking, birkenstock and tie-dye wearing, hummus and pita-chip munching hippies, or else crazy pipe-bomb building math geeks with delusions of grandeur, those “off the grid” folk who generate their own power would be your next door neighbors, with whom you have conversations about the weather, or your favorite local sports team, or your childrens' schools.
Picture the next natural disaster – say, a hurricane or a blizzard – and think about all those stories you have heard in the past about so-and-so many thousands of people having to do without electricity for days and weeks and months at a time. Now imagine that at least half, or even just a third, of those people still had power and could help out their immediate neighbors who were not so lucky.
The next natural disaster wouldn’t seem nearly so bleak, would it?
The dilemma posed by off-the-grid thinking is just this: far too many people have co-opted this idea, and made it essentially an anti-social objective. Getting off the grid, however, is not something for individuals. It is something for everyone. We must replace the grid with 6 billion individual cells; we must stop trying to give “power to the people” and instead let the people make their own power. We must, in essence, become collectively individual. We must be independent together.
Something of the spirit of this idea is discussed in Laura Ingalls Wilder's “Little House on the Prairie” books. Pa Ingalls makes a frequent point of emphasis in stating that everyone in the American West is “free and independent”; at the same time, neighbors do not think twice about helping each other out with various chores or situations that none of them could survive alone – things like raising a barn, digging a well, surviving malaria, or any of the other menaces pioneers faced.
In the 21st century, in urban and suburban areas all around the world, we are facing a new kind of pioneer difficulty. We live in an interdependent culture, economy, and ecology. What happens anywhere affects everyone everywhere. The benefits of that kind of interconnectedness are obvious, but so too are the dangers. The Kaczynski method of insulating oneself against those dangers is obviously wrong, however. Instead of cutting ourselves off from each other, we must find ways of helping each other regain our status as “free and independent” citizens.
If all of Japan were electrified via solar, wind, wave, geothermal, etc. sources of energy, no one would be talking about whether or not the Fukushima meltdown may prove to be as bad as Chernobyl. Instead, they would be helping each other bury their dead, rebuilding their towns, and moving on.
Pray we all learn the appropriate lessons from this tragedy. We at Myrtle's place have a ten year plan in place to get “off the grid” while still living right smack dab in the middle of the city. Ten years sounded like a long time when we put the plan together, but it gets shorter by the day; hopefully, your family can get started on your own plans soon too.
Happy farming!
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Thanks for the inspiration!
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