EmPOWERment at the Solstice

Dear friends,

With delight at the popularity of the "Roll your own blackout" message, I'd like to add some thoughts.

Why is it so difficult for the American people to consider using less electricity? I wonder if it has anything to do with our language. We call electricity "power." Who would come out in favor of "having less power"? We have been conditioned to associate "power" with many things we value: strength, freedom, wealth, influence, popularity, ability to affect and shape outcomes of all kinds. God is the all-powerful one. Yet, power also has its dark side. We have all seen power used for selfish purposes, to take from the weaker, and indeed the United States, as a "superpower," does all sorts of harm in the world. Power is used to wrest resources from less developed countries, to put down governments which are not friendly to U.S. corporations, to pollute the world's ecosystems with impunity.

Instead of power-over (dominating others for selfish ends), let's try power-with (sharing individual power to create collective power for collective good). Instead of having more and using more power, why not conserve our power?

When our electricity goes out ("our power is cut off," as we say) for an hour or two, we consider that a crisis. Compare our "energy crisis" with that in many parts of Africa, where deforestation is so severe that women walk up to 4 hours a day just to find firewood for cooking. Of the world's 6 billion inhabitants, 2 billion have no electricity at all. Another billion have electricity less than 10 hours a day. Only 3 billion have electricity 24 hours a day. . That 3 billion is, of course, also using fossil fuels in huge quantities for the other luxuries of the consumer lifestyle: automobiles, jet travel, plastics, and all the petrochemical-derived products which collectively cause global warming. Climate changes such as droughts, floods, hurricanes and other violent weather will affect most severely the poorest citizens of the world--those for whom a crop failure may mean starvation. So, in a sense, the half of humanity who have the least power (in all senses of the word) will pay the price for the actions of those who have the most power. Not only that, but every drop of oil is tinged with blood: the blood of the Nigerians and other indigenous people from whose land it is taken at gunpoint, the blood of countless species who have met their death due to oil spills and toxic releases into the environment. Do we care at all about equity and fairness?

As Julia Butterfly Hill eloquently reminds us, each individual's actions DO make a difference. She looks around an audience of environmentalists who are applauding her, and sees the sacrifice of forests in the paper coffee-cups and paper napkins in those avowed tree-lovers' hands. In the absence of leaders who will take us towards a sane energy policy, we as citizens must take matters into our own hands.

When you prepare to "roll your own blackout," take an inventory of your electricity use. Don't just leave the lights off from 7 - 10 PM on June 21. Unplug your clocks, electric toothbrushes, answering machines, refrigerators, computers, fax machines, toasters, TV sets, stereos, radios, coffee makers, washers and dryers, microwave ovens--and notice how much we rely on electricity. Where could you use less, today and tomorrow, in order that others might live? Light a candle (preferably beeswax) and honor the Sun, its boundless energy and generosity. We're not powerless to make changes. Each person doing a little conserving adds up to a lot of emPOWERment!