“The next time we want to go to war, maybe we wouldn’t even need to bomb a country. We could just, you know, turn off its power.’ Liam O’Murchu, Symantec Security Response

War, civil disobedience, and politics have all been significantly affected by technology. It seems that the more dependent we are on technology, and/or our grid of energy, the more vulnerable we are. It also follows that as we get ‘more efficient’ we tend to centralize the power source, build large power plants, etc. If ‘one’ could stop all communications by taking out cell towers, if ‘one’ could starve a country by stopping transportation, if one could win a war by cutting off all energy….

Our latest snow/ice storm reminded us how dependent we are on electricity for light, heating, and cooking. Electricity is a big part of our daily existence. When the grid goes down, we all go down. (Gas stations closed due to the power outage)

‘Alternative’ energy sources in individual homes or buildings such as solar, rain water harvesting , geo thermal, etc are one way to de-centralize our energy use. When the grid goes down, we are still functioning, we still have water, electricity, heat and cooling. After reading the quotation by O’Murchu, I began to wonder if our government had thought about our centralized energy vulnerability. Probably. Then I wondered if that vulnerability had been behind our country’s recent Green Energy push. Probably. And here I thought that program was to help ‘save the world.’ Oh well!

Keeping Green!

Christine