Large Fierce Mammal

Man is a social animal, and a fundamental departure from the Way of the Wild as it is meant to express itself in Man occurs when the value of individual contribution becomes subjugated to serving the role of cog in the machine. Treated as a mere tool, quick and cheap to create and all too easily thrown away when broken or worn out, the Spirit of Man languishes in miserable solitude even in the midst of a throng of his kind, ever immersed in the message that the value of each human is measured by his or her ability to consume.

In his splendid article, Gandhi’s Swadeshi – The Economics of Permanence, Mr. Kumar reveals lessons of incalculable and timeless value from the philosophy of a man who once grappled with restoring economic potency and independence to a population that had long languished in servitude to greater powers – Mahatma Gandhi. In his words you’ll hear echos of the battle cry that right now stirs the building realization of the threat to the Earth that is represented by big government in the service of big money, and moves a growing percentage of the population toward a smaller focus –  support of local Craftsmen as a first choice, buying meat and produce directly from Farms or Farmer’s markets, and seafood directly from Fishermen. Toward self-sufficiency on a community level by taking steps toward eliminating the intrinsic vulnerability that comes of absolute dependence on a centralized source of essential supplies, with its own agendas and priorities …. ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – The Word of the Day is “Swadeshi”

I heard echoes, most particularly of the last sentence of the excerpt quoted above, in a CBC News article posted yesterday bearing the headline Power executives pulled bigger paycheques in 2012, and the subtitle Four executives broke the $1M-mark, with one exec receiving a 25 per cent increase. This was in reference to executives of the Nova Scotia Power Corporation (NSPC), the outfit that, unless you live off the grid, sells you the electricity that drives every Nova Scotian coffee maker. The same outfit that comes back to the Public Utilities Commission every year for permission to put rate increases into effect because they just can’t get by on what they’re making.

Living in Canada it’s easy to become acutely aware of just what a high value commodity energy is. Governments espouse programmes to foster development of “renewable” and “sustainable” energy sources while at the same time taking credit for a steady march of “economic growth” driven by unbridled consumption. These are fish that cannot coexist forever in the same pond.

Today we have some interesting terms entering the lexicon. One is “energy poverty”, and it means exactly what it says – the heat and light version of the age old truth that, if you can’t afford something, you can’t have it. But this is obvious, and entirely old school. The NSPC is a corporation with responsibility to its share holders, and they naturally expect return on their investment. Their firm produces and sells a commodity that is absolutely essential to mainstream Nova Scotian life because like the rest of Canada, the growing concentration of urban dwellers and technology dependent industries can’t function without it. Until alternative technologies can play a meaningful role in their lives, moves, “Toward self-sufficiency on a community level by taking steps toward eliminating the intrinsic vulnerability that comes of absolute dependence on a centralized source of essential supplies, with its own agendas and priorities,” will be slow at best. So we have a situation as old as life itself – that of the “haves” and the “have nots”. But what of the “needs” and the “need nots“? Consider the impact of this for a moment.

Methods of generating and conserving  energy on a local, or even individual level, are enjoying more development and marketing than ever before. Techniques and technologies that once were cutting edge, and deployable only by those with advanced engineering expertise are rapidly becoming affordable, “off the shelf”, “plug and play” options. As prices drop, comfort and interest spreads in the marketplace, driving more research and further product development. What happens if this phenomenon begins to spread faster than the old school, heavy duty centralized infrastructure can adjust to it? If suddenly, due to a combination of user level energy generation, efficient heat capture from “free” and Natural sources, introduction of new devices that do the same job on a fraction of the energy required before, and hyper efficient storage and insulation methods engenders, in the space of a very few years, an energy marketplace populated by precipitously fewer “needs” – those dependent on the old way of doing things – and a growing one of those who no longer require its involvement in their lives – the “need nots”.

When governments consider national or provincial “energy strategy”, it would be my advice to them that they keep this unavoidable scenario in mind, and not stand in its way.