Coin in the fuse box

It used to be that frustrated homeowners who were sick of frequently blown fuses would sometimes play tricks on their electrical system by shoving a coin into the socket where a fuse goes. Of course, pennies were actually made of copper back then; they conducted electricity just fine while not melting the way that pesky and fragile fuses were designed to.

By doing this coin trick these homeowners were, of course, obliterating a very important feedback mechanism that protected their houses. Feedback systems are found virtually everywhere in modern society and are designed to warn about dangers, help us steer a safer course, and to tell us when to call for help. The weather forecasting system is an obvious example. We can adjust our day or travel plans for safety reasons. The addition of a strong, foul-smelling substance to natural gas which would otherwise be colorless and odorless is another example. The odor allows us to detect a gas leak with nothing more than our noses. The feedback system of every personal computer tells us whether what we are doing is working or whether we have done something in error.


On a larger social scale the media provides a mechanism for people in open societies to judge the policies and practices of governments, corporations, nonprofits and other groups. But it is in the media especially that some special interest groups have succeeded at subverting this important feedback mechanism by putting a coin in the fuse box so to speak.

Perhaps the most famous of all subverters are the tobacco companies which withheld reports on the dangers of smoking and which planted false information in the media to confuse people about the link between smoking and illness. So effective was this campaign that it took decades before the tobacco companies were made to stop lying. In the end, they were even made to pay for some of the damage they caused to smokers as well as some of the expenses they foisted on government which had to pay for the medical treatment of many with smoking-related illnesses.

On the issue of global warming large sums have passed from fossil fuel giants such as Peabody Energy and ExxonMobil into the coffers of groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute which runs the so-called Cooler Heads Project, The National Center for Public Policy Research, the Greening Earth Society and the American Enterprise Institute. The purpose has been to finance a public relations campaign designed to make the public think that there is genuine scientific controversy about global warming.

Energy Bulletin