Saul Griffith gave governments not just a renewable energy strategy, when he said target households. He gave…
Saul Griffith gave governments not just a renewable energy strategy, when he said target households. He gave them a winning political strategy.
They’re too stupid to listen, too entrenched with the status quo interests in big generation and distribution. And there’s more. /1 https://t.co/dRZrQfcYa7
Because this is just another example of how we misunderstand how societies actually work. They’re *networked*. Power systems even use the word, explicitly.
And a network is nothing like our usual model of society, of some amorphous mass called ‘the people’. /2 https://t.co/VmNE2NUWea
When I had solar installed, I didn’t free myself some tiny % from dependence on centralised generation and distribution. For much of the year now, that dependence is near ZERO.
Not because I went ‘off-grid’. But because the system meets most of our energy needs. /3
I don’t want to go off-grid, none of those stupid binaries. The grid is a vital collective tool. But it took 2 days for the installers to dramatically shift the relationship wth the grid, hugely in our favour.
Now it works for us. And it pays us. /4
And at the same time, we’ve taken load off it. The load ridiculous political debates about big dinosaur centralised generators never shuts up about.
Targeting households fixes local AND global problems. It makes that distinction mostly meaningless. /5
Networks make all local actions global, and vice versa. Or more accurately, they render that distinction meaningless.
Just as one person wearing a mask ‘locally’ can prevent thousands of other infections ‘globally’. /6
Or ventilating schools ‘locally’ can prevent Covid spreading everywhere, ‘globally’. Networks pay no attention to our usual distinctions.
Society is not amorphous millions of people, who all have to be ‘mobilised’ before global outcomes can be achieved. /7
It’s networked, it’s lumpy. Every node on that network, you and me, has global impacts with what we do, the more so the more networked it gets.
The tiniest actions have vast impacts. Mask-wearers are keeping society afloat right now, even though they’re the tiniest minority. /8
One person can infect thousands of others. Preventing spread from just one person can prevent an entire epidemic wave.
And this makes the ‘household’ the centre of society. Not business, as economy politics likes to think. /9
The whole concept of the economy came from the household, in ancient Greece. Society is not made of millions of individual households and businesses, added together in millions of tiny blocks. Like Lego.
Every household is networked to all of society, with global impact. /10
A ‘healthy economy’ is healthy households. Financially, and in the public health sense. What we call ‘business’ arose from and remains a ‘service industry’, TO HOUSEHOLDS.
‘The economy’ has this all backwards. Making the service industry the centre. /11
Not coincidentally the household is also ‘home’, that concept I say travel culture doesn’t understand. Western economic cultures have no idea about place, about home.
Because they came from empires, that accumulated places as resources. Travel is just the latest variant. /12
We need to target households, because that IS our society. Locally *and* globally. Networking topology makes those equivalent, not micro and macro.
For energy. For infectious disease. For financial stability, as we discovered in the GFC.
For everything. /13
Take aways business, and households remain. Take away households, and what remains?
Nothing. ‘Business’ is a fake category. It’s nothing but services for households. They need to be placed at the centre of societies again. /14
It will address their ‘cost of living’, win populist dimwits lots of votes, and fix most of our energy, infectious disease and other problems.
Most people catch Covid at home (a hub). From schools (more hubs). From networks. /end