When we work out how to manage power we can work out how we manage power.
It’s something I’ve contemplated a lot. In a world dependent on us being plugged in, what we plug into matters. Not just literally but philosophically. To me it makes sense of why government is so long lingering at the coal and gas bar. They know it’s last drinks, but they’re not moving on. They’re not moving on because the big players haven’t worked out how to use renewables to capture us. There’s too much potential for self-reliance. And no one at the top of the trickle-down wants that.
Renewables have the potential to show us that life exists off the grid. That small and sustainable is possible. We can generate our own energy and share it. We can do trickle-across! That’s contrary to the core ethos of trickle-down economics that insists we just wait at the bottom and eventually someone will get to us.
We’ve accepted, and been dependent on, a system that makes us quite literally powerless. When we ask why it’s taken so long for a country full of wind and solar and all the natural resources to make batteries, I sometimes think it’s this: capitalists need to capture the cash. Sure there’s expenditure on solar panels and installation, and batteries certainly aren’t cheap, but they continue to improve and decrease in cost, making it possible to generate our own supply. What happens when we are no longer power junkies waiting on our dealer? What happens when we localise our power supply?
In theory, small communities should be able to power share. I think it’s why. in essence. lots of powerful people seem to hate renewables. Power sharing isn’t their thing. They like to own power and dole it out. They like us dependent on them. Power goes in, money goes out. We are plugged into their machine. Micro-grids, and in particular community micro-grids, are the way forward. But the systems are expensive and they have to be licensed. Fees are between $430k and $600k. There is some movement on micro-grids for regional and remote communities, but it’s difficult to do and I can’t just share power with my neighbour because apparently that’s not legal.
Nuclear power is loved by those who love controlling the power. There’s no inter-dependence in nuclear. You can’t put one in your backyard and hook in. It’s trickle-down until you die. And you probably will. It’s a 5-7 year build with a massive infrastructure spend, and then it’s operational for at best 40 years (if it doesn’t leak, malfunction, blow up or be impacted by outside forces). Because thanks to climate change we can look forward to bigger floods, fires, hurricanes and all things biblical. And then when the nuclear plant is finished it has to be de-commissioned. Hmm, lovely, maybe it could be remodelled as apartments? Put the CEO’s in there.
The thought of a landscape filled with reactors fills me with fear. It’s the stuff of dystopian nightmares. I can’t unsee the footage from Fukishima and the subsequent devastating radiation and poisoning. The land there is uninhabitable for 100 years. Apparently. Some say 30. I just don’t trust anything I read around radiation and its long-term effects because of who controls the data. And it’s still leaking into the sea. I don’t know if anyone remembers that the sea is made of liquid which travels around the world? Small detail. Oh, and remember Chernobyl, the nuclear plant where a reactor went out of control and exploded? It was back in 1986 and it’s gone. That area is uninhabitable for 20,000 years. That doesn’t feel like ‘safe green’ power to me. When a malfunction can wipe out safe habitation for that long it’s insane it continues. The risk profile is too big. I can’t think 20,000 years into the future but I can go backwards. 20,000 years would be the time from the end of the Stone Age, or Upper Paleolithic until now. We weren’t even wearing pants for another 18 000 years.
The solution to our power struggles? Stop using infrastructure-dense systems that have ‘power over’ and use renewable systems that ‘power share’.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
