In The Dark

A few years back, I remember hearing stories about “rolling power outages” in California. I don’t think I stopped to think about it too much at the time, but I’m beginning to wonder if such episodes might not become normal parts of life even in our little haven of endless resources in the US. Power shortages have suddenly become very real here in Botswana…it’s a reality that it seems nobody anticipated until too late and one that people are going to have to learn to live with. The real shortages are in South Africa, because Botswana gets nearly all of its power from its big neighbor to the south. Apparently even some of the big mines in South Africa were shut down for lack of power for a few days, which must have cost the companies and the country millions in lost revenue. Flying Mission has purchased a few small generators to have around and one big one to be installed at the hangar, since power goes off randomly fairly often and work basically comes to a standstill without it. It’s not the households that are hit the hardest by power cuts…after all, the worst that can happen is candlelight dinners and maybe a few rotten fridge items…but businesses must lose a lot of money when they lose power. Matt and I were walking around a big fancy western-style mall in Johannesburg when the power went off, and most of the stores had to close their doors (I would assume for security reasons). The lucky ones have some standby power with a few lights and cash registers working, but even there it seems like they lose quite a few customers. No coffee was to be had at the coffee shop. The worst of it, though, is the traffic lights. Traffic in Joburg is horrific already, but when large areas of the city are without power and the lights don’t work, it can be an absolute nightmare. Once in a while, at a major intersection, some traffic cops might arrive before the power comes back on, but usually it’s up to the drivers to negotiate, which is painfully slow. Anyway…it’s amazing how much we rely on electricity. It will be interesting to see how the demands for power and other natural resources (especially fossil fuels) play out in the next decades. Unless we come up with some better solutions soon, we are either going to have to learn to do with less or we will force a lot of people in the world to go without (that’s probably happening already I suppose). I guess I’m worried about the violence that could erupt (and already has?) around the competition for our limited resources, but we’ll see. So do your part! That’s me standing on my poorly constructed, rambly conservation soapbox.