[Mu]

Does anyone here really need electricity?

Lighting. You can schedule yourself around maximizing sunlight hours. Buildings can be passively lighted, reflecting daylight into the interior. Candles can be made from local materials.

Transport. Why not walk? Or use a bike, or horse? What would you be transporting with electric rail anyway? Where are the people moving to? To jobs that won't exist anymore? Are we freighting material for manufacturing disposable consumerist gadgets?

Electrical components for even the most mundane items require a lengthy energy intensive process from mining through to manufacture, through heavily centralized systems.

In a powerdown / localized situation, what's the point of electricity?

I see many discussions rage across the internet over our "need" for electricity. Coal, nuclear, fusion, etc. All I seem to see is a desire to maintain what we currently have by any other means. There doesn't seem to be a systematic questioning of what is necessary, leading to abandonment or retention based on that.

People lived healthy, mentally stimulating lives prior to electricity. Some at least. Couple this with modern knowledge that wasn't available at the time, and you could end up with something very nice indeed.

Or perhaps people just don't like the idea of stepping backwards? Has the progress myth created generations of insufferably spoilt people? I saw a post on another forum once, where a poster admitted he'd sell out the future if it meant keeping his xbox running. A life without modern trinkets like the xbox seemed to him a life not worth living. Madness.

Anyhoo, sorry for rambling. Is this the right forum to post this in?

[Zentric]

Your question...has no answer...as ultimately life...has no consequence.

[Kristen]

It depends on who you mean by who. The human population as a whole needs electricity to substain the population. I imagine if electricity disappeared their would be a massive deforestation in winter to keep houses warm. As an individual smaller scale you wouldn't need anything but food, water, and oxygen, the basis for biological life.

[Mu]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zentric', 'Y')our question...has no answer...as ultimately life...has no consequence.

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mu', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zentric', 'Y')our question...has no answer...as ultimately life...has no consequence.

[jato]

Don't forget water:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]To transport water over the state's terrain, power is required in great quantities. Because the Department (California Department of Water Resources) is California’s largest power consumer, it must daily balance its power loads with its power resources, energy produced by its power plants...


6.5% of the energy used in the state of California is for pumping and treating water--in fact, pumping water south (and uphill) in the State Water Project accounts for 2-3% of all the electricity used in the state.

[Frank]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mu', 'G')ood point. But wouldn't most fail to cut enough wood to last the entire winter, freezing to death? I think that'd solve the problem pretty quickly. In the colder areas anyway. Couple that with other issues during a collapse, and I think the population might head back to something more sustainable.

[Aaron]

Most of your fellow humans have never had regular access to electricity.

In fact, more live without electricity now, than ever before in human history.

Modern technologies, like electricity, improve the quality of life for the wealthy.

Everybody else gets Nada.

Ahhh what a wonderful modern age we live in... advances across the board in medicine, agriculture, human rights... you name it.

And yet... more starve today than ever before in man's history.

More die of treatable disease & suffer from oppression of various strips than ever.

All these advances have provided the wealthy with the most comfortable, safe life ever known on Earth... & has ushered in an era of human suffering never before seen, for everybody else.

All in the service of ego.

Praise HawkMan.

[gg3]

Yo Mu, welcome aboard. Interesting way of reframing a question that is often discussed around here.

--

First of all, humans can certainly have satisfying lives without electricity, so long as they have designed their ways of living & working accordingly. Hunter-Gatherers (HGs) can subsist quite nicely on 4 hours of work per day and have no need of most of our "modern" stuff.

Second, what Jato said. Without electricity for pumping water, and also for pumping sewage, we would be in for a faster and steeper dieoff than we are already. And as it stands, Earth has to shed about 50 - 60% of its human population to remain sustainable. That's 3 to 4 gigadeaths, net, over the course of this century.

Third, there is a difference between the high consumption lifestyle and a sustainable lifestyle with appropriate technology. I would reframe the question from the binary yes/no of whether we do or do not need electricity at all, to the question of how little electricity we really need to produce a substantial improvement in the quality of life compared to no electricity at all.

The most essential task for electricity is communication, as there is no realistically effective substitute. After that comes refrigeration. After that come power tools for tasks that would otherwise require inordinate time, strength, or endurance (ever tried cutting plywood lengthwise with a hand saw or mixing concrete with a shovel?). After that comes indoor lighting, and domestic appliances for the more onerous tasks such as laundry and indoor cleaning, and most of these use surprisingly little electricity.

Heat is a most expensive commodity, and this includes heat for cooking of food. Cooking can double your electricity and fuel consumption. Even household heating is easier to solve than cooking, as room heat can be provided by any number of alternative means (passive and active solar, smaller rooms, warmer clothes, proper household insulation to keep heat in, etc.). Air conditioning is the same problem as heating, though without as many substitutes available.

The problem we face for tomorrow is not how to make enough electricity to wash the clothes or clean the floor: those are easy. The problem is how to make enough electricity for the stove and the oven.

---

And above & beyond all else, remember that total ecological impact is equal to consumption level times population. A lower population can sustainably have a higher standard of living. A higher population must necessarily have a lower standard of living.

You can breed less and eat more, or breed more and eat less. Those who multiply like mice will die like mice.

[frankthetank]

YES (i feel there is nothing evil about electricity...i love lightning)

In the old days, around here, you would have gotten big chunks of ice and then used that for your refrigeration. Would have required a lot of manpower, however.

If there was no electricity, i'm guessing the forests would disappear quickly.

I would say pumping water is the most important role electricity plays. Looking @ it from a personal perspective (i have a well/well pump).

I think we could cut the usage in half or more and still survive (think of all those neon lights going all night @ the car dealerships, the computers left on, etc etc).

[SolarDave]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gideon', ' ')Until we find that fussion power source that lets the world run for a year on the fusion energy found in 100 pounds of any ol' stuff, we're just playing keepaway.

[dbruning]

There was a guy that claimed to have solved that problem and needed a mere $200,000,000 to build a test production facility to try out full scale production. I heard he pitched the idea to google...and then he fell off the planet. Haven't heard a word about him since.

Also haven't heard a progress report on ITER recently. I'll go check it out and post if they've got any progress to report.

And I agree, fusion was/is one of the few things that could pull our bacon out of the fire, at least for energy.

[kochevnik]

Great plan.

Get back to me when you figure out how to make a bicycle without electricity, OK ?

Or feed almost 7 Billion people, for that matter.

[Mu]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jato', '
')Don't forget water:
...6.5% of the energy used in the state of California is for pumping and treating water...
link

[IslandCrow]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Mu', 'D')oes anyone here really need electricity?

[Mu]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', '
')Humans can certainly have satisfying lives without electricity, so long as they have designed their ways of living & working accordingly. Hunter-Gatherers (HGs) can subsist quite nicely on 4 hours of work per day and have no need of most of our "modern" stuff.

[gg3]

So, Mu, are you advocating HG methods combined with substantial depopulation?

Some of the stuff I edited out of my posting for the sake of not writing another even-lengthier GG3 essay:

Electricity for lighting is easy. LEDs. Yes, it means that indoor lighting basically consists of nightlight-level lighting for general room light, plus task lights for reading and cooking. But it can't cause a house fire.

Many appliances that use motors could be human powered if properly designed. Of course we already have manual eggbeaters/mixers, ice crushers, and so on.

I did a lengthy project on laundry and figured out how to use manual power input at maximum efficiency, but building the machine will require a metal shop. However, my twintub washer does 5 lbs. for 60 watt-hours which is the equivalent of an incandescent bulb left on for an hour.

Floor cleaning as such can be done with a combination of a broom and long-handled dustpan, and a damp mop. As for beating rugs, I dare you to try it, and report back what you discover. In point of fact, most rug cleaning can be accomplished with a manual sweeper, and these are still made (some will also sweep floors). The vaccum can be used only occasionally (as in, once a month or less). For above-the-floor dusting there's the oldschool dust mop.

Smoking of meats etc. doesn't address the issue of dairy and eggs or the issue of keeping vegetables from going rotten. In fact my design plan for refrigeration involves a clustered housing or cohousing layout, where there is a large (therefore intrinsically more efficient) hyperinsulated refrigerator and freezer in the main building, and the individual/family units clustered around it would have micro fridge/freezers sufficient to keep a minimal supply of food i.e. the gallon of milk, half dozen eggs, quarter pound of butter, a head of lettuce, and a few pieces of fruit, that kind of thing. Plus ice cream. Can't do without the ice cream:-).

Cooking is still the big open question. Wood fires in and of themselves may or may not be sufficient. Solar concentrators are a no-brainer in appropriate weather.

Now onward to tools. A power saw consists of only one moving part, an electric cement mixer consists of only three. A power drill has an intermediate gear train so you can count that as one assembly or as a cluster of individual parts.

The elemental machines are the lever, the wheel, and the inclined plane.

A wheelbarrow, properly designed, puts 80% of the load on the front wheel. Thus an individual can move 300 lbs. with a total weight on each arm of 30 lbs. A two-wheeled barrow enables putting 100% of the load on the wheels, enabling one person to move a half ton or more easily depending on the surface it's being moved across. Note that plain steel wheels can & should be used for these applications, thus reducing rubber consumption further.

The wedge is nothing more than a derivation of an inclined plane, and from that we also get the plow. A plow mounted on a wheeled frame with a seat and a sun shade, all of this pulled by a couple of horses, takes the "backbreaking" out of tilling the soil. A similar unit, minus the plow, and with a cutting bar and a platform behind it, makes the harvest manageable.

As for bicycles, rubber is a problem but not insurmountable. As for the roads to ride them on, something like a wide sidewalk will do.

I predict a renaissance of toolmaking, concentrating on the most efficient uses of whatever energy sources are availble including humans and animals. Simple machines will make a comeback. Pick any area of technology that interests you, research the history of it as far back as the middle of the 19th century, and you can see where we're going.

As for reuse and recycling of raw materials, look no further back in history than the end of the Bell Telephone System in the US and its equivalents overseas. Every piece of equipment, every component, and every foot of cable was designed to be repaired and reused indefinitely (typically on a 40-year lifespan between major reconditioning), and then when it could be repaired no longer, melted down for raw materials to make the next batch. Landline telephony, by the way, is far more efficient than wireless telephony on all counts. And for entertainment, a simple radio will do: there the tradeoff is between a) analog AM & FM, with a greater amount of energy input at the transmitter but far simpler equipment all'round, and b) digital broadcasting, with a far lower power requirement at each end (a decimal place or two at the transmitter) but more complex (integrated circuit based) transmitters & receivers.

Welcome to eco-industrial design: doing more with less, for fewer, for longer.

And if we don't get the population levels down to about 2 billion, no matter whether we go into full HG mode, we're still screwed.

[emailking]

Wlel, I need electricity to power my 55'' plasma and my PS3. I wouldn't really want to live without them right now. Although I guess I could still survive. I hope the Iran invasion is at least a few more months away in case things get really bad.

[dbruning]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')xplain to me how more electricity solves anything? Does using more energy magically bring us back within the solar wage? Does it repair our soils and water sources? Does it stop economic growth? Etc.