Original_To:  BITNET%"biosph-L@ubvm"
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.biosph-l
Date:         Thu, 27 Aug 1992 10:34:00 CDT
Reply-To:     JM01@SWTEXAS.BITNET
From:         JM01@SWTEXAS.BITNET
Subject:      electricity

Jeremy Whitlock writes:

> From: BITNET%"WHITLOCK@MCMASTER.BITNET"      "Jeremy Whitlock" 27-AUG-1992 10:
05:04.80
> To:   "Joseph M. Meyer" <JM01@SWTNYSSA.BITNET>
> CC:
> Subj: Re: Industrial Society, Objectives of Society
>
> Much of the talk appearing here recently has echoed a common feeling that,
> although electricity is linked to increased efficiency and productivity, a
> large amount of end products are superfluous and therefore just add to the
> environmental burden.  Cheaper electricity will just increase this flow of
> garbage, the argument goes.
>
> I think this ignores the fact that much of the benefits of cheap
> electricity will go to the less developed countries in the future, who
> according to an EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) estimate will
> increase their electricity usage by 10-15 times over the next 70 years,
> compared to the developed countries who will increase their usage by only
> 4-5 times.  Our increasing "garbage" production must be weighed against
> their increasing industrialization, which will be much cleaner if it
> follows the electrification trend of the rest of the world.
>

Agreed, there is plentiful evidence that modern technology could be used to
reduce the amount of pollution produced by industrial plants in the developing
world.  Whether there is any great likelihood of this happening is another
question.  I don't know about Canada, but international businesses have
proved in the Maquiladora plants along the Texas/Mexico border that they
aren't interested in exporting high technology or cleaning up the environment
--rather, they're interested in exploiting cheap labor.  Whether the crumbs
falling from the banquet table are enough to offset the environmental damage
of such exploitation is debateable, but I doubt it.

> The argument is also naive, since it overlooks the relationship between
> increasing electricity use and increasing standard of living -- measured,
> for good or bad, by the GNP.  Electricity has always tracked along with GNP,
> even when overall energy use became "decoupled" from the GNP index in the
> 70's.  An increasing GNP means more excess wealth, more excess wealth
> means more investment, and more investment means better roads, hospitals,
> water systems, sewage systems, etc.   A constant GNP means that, as the
> population grows, we are living with the same level of service -- no long
> term planning, no long term improvement.
>

I haven't seen the data purporting a relationship between GNP and electricity
rate.  However, if it's simply a correlation, it offers absolutely no proof of
a causative relationship.  It seem more likely that GNP drives electricity
production, than electricity production driving the GNP--I can't think of any
economic benefit for producing more eletricity if economic growth is not already
demanding it.  A highly significant and strong correlation has been shown to
exist between pig-iron production and human birth rates in the United States,
but nobody would hypothesize that reducing pig-iron production would be an
effective means of population control.

Joe Meyer
Southwest Texas State University
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