One of my best friends who now lives in Helsinki was in town for the night for work, and we were able to catch up for a couple hours, after not seeing each other since some time around Christmas. We have tried, but each time there has been someone ill, the last one was his wife who was down with Covid. It was nice, we went and grabbed a pizza then went for a short (and cool) walk for a half hour round the city.
I took this shot around ten at night.
The orange building in the middle is a hydro electricity plant, with another a little further up the "river", which is only a few hundred meters long, as it connects one large lake to another, with a drop differential of about 9 meters. Together, they produce about 8.7 megawatts. It is one of the first hydro plants in the world and was built in 1888, but has gone through a few changes since then. The city was very industrial, with electricity the an important part of its competitive advantage, but now the city is more of a tech hub, if anything.
Electricity is still important.
Even more so.
I remember there was an EU directive that brought in the law that filtered coffee machines couldn't keep the hotplate on for more than 45 minutes or thereabouts, and across Europe, that would save the equivalent energy production of a large nuclear powerplant in a year. That is not a bad directive, through really, I wonder how much draw all the smartphones are making each day - all the electric toothbrushes.
Is using electricity for that purpose better for the environment, or is it that it has a compounding effect on what that electricity is worth?
A smartphone for example is used for multiple things, which also means it cuts down on multiple components. In the past, people would need a Walkman for music, a voice recorder in the office and a calculator - now, the phone will suffice. Plus, it also is used to make money for corporations, where Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok would be nothing without them. Using the electricity to charge a phone enables that phone to generate additional income on top of the cost of electricity. That coffee pot hotplate only makes more money for the electricity provider.
The challenge I find is however, that the various attempts to reduce energy or resource wastage are very inconsistent and seem more like virtue signaling. For example, getting rid of plastic straws (paper ones suck), whilst simultaneously encouraging people to use tens of billions of facemasks a day over the period of two years, many of which are going to end up in the same place as those straws would have.
It is environmental protection based on convenience.
Will any of it make a difference? Unlikely, because as soon as it becomes inconvenient or too difficult to make money from a particular environmental practice, it will swing back the other way. We have seen this in regards to oil and gas, where as soon as the supply chain was severed from Russia, production using "unclean" sources fired straight back up. Sure, no one wants to go without power (including me), but there is a hypocrisy in there somewhere, by saving current lives at the expense of future lives, something that each generation seems more than keen to do.
Children are our future!
Have you ever thought about this saying? Most take it to mean that the future is going to be owned by the children, so we have to protect and nurture them and build conditions for them to be successful. But, it can mean something else too, where "our future" (those of us who are older and alive now, is dependent on us being able to kick economic and environmental cans down the road for them to deal with later. We need to defer the cost of our existence, by burdening our children with the debt.
We have seen this in the last two and a half years also, where the future of our children was put at heavy risk and will wear a lot of debt, all to save people who aren't overly longed for this world anyway. Saddle kids with 80 years of economic hardship and the consequences they bear, to get a couple more years out of grandma and grandpa.
Pretty selfish, eh?
But, we all are. We all will favor our own convenience at the cost of others or the environment, because it is easier to do so. It is like the amount of people complaining about the cost of avocado on their salad at a restaurant compared to the price of it in a store, but they aren't willing to go to the store to buy and make their own salad.
Talk about entitled.
We are all hypocrites in some regard, aren't we? Yet, we compartmentalize our behaviors instead of looking at them holistically, because we can deem one activity good so we can use it to justify another that is not so good. It is like the person who wants to lose weight so they go to the gym, but because they went to the gym, they reward themselves with a Snickers bar.
Then complain that they don't lose weight, no matter how much they exercise.
We are a strange species and the more I spend time with people, the more interesting I find them, because so many are not that interested in anything at all. These days, I feel that having a "real" conversation is becoming more difficult, because there is a homogeneity in thought, as everyone consumes from the same sources and, no one wants to invest into the discussions, perhaps out of fear of judgement or discomfort.
So, we spend more and more time alone, because it is easier to do so, yet we still wonder why even with all those friends on the social platforms and all those social movements supported, we are still lonely, still unable to connect well with the people around us. Over the last decade, I have watched as social circles have diminished to near nothing in so many people's lives, and it isn't just those who are getting a little longer in the tooth - the younger generations seem to be struggling too, preferring to spend more time isolated and insulated from each other.
Yet looking for experiences to connect with others.
Humans are strange animals, full of contradictions to the point that even our own animalistic drive to survive, is in battle with our processes that destroy the conditions we need to do so. Like a rat leaving a sinking ship, by running into a burning house.
Right...
On that happy note, It is 3am and I should sleep :)
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
