A few days ago, Steve Aplin wrote an inspiring post on Canadian Energy Issues titled The electric grid: the greatest invention of all time expanded after women won the vote. That post described how important electricity was to the effort to free women from household chores so that they could choose to pursue more interesting ways to spend their time.
He also mentioned that March 3, 2013 was the 100th anniversary of a march on Washington in which at least 5,000 women organized a parade to demand the right to vote and to participate fully in American democracy. That inspired me to gather some terrific ladies together to talk about the importance of reliable energy in the form of household electricity. I tried getting Steve to participate; after all, it was his idea, but it turned out that there was another reason why March 3, 2013 was an important day for his family.
My guests on this show included:
Meredith Angwin, who blogs at Yes Vermont Yankee and has just published an eBook titled Voices for Vermont Yankee which is available for both Kindle and Nook
Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy and one of the stars of Pandora’s Promise
Margaret Harding, the principle at 4 Factor Consulting who has recently started assisting the NGNP Alliance, with, among other things, their social media strategy.
Suzy Hobbs-Baker, the director of the Nuclear Literacy Project, the founder and director of Pop Atomic Studios and the current world traveler who is blogging about her journey at Diary of a Nuclear Tourist.
I hope that you enjoy the show and think about the important benefits provided by reliable, affordable, convenient electricity. Ensuring the continued availability of a product so important that loss to access for just a few hours makes headlines is one of the reasons that I keep doing what I do.
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Have you read this article on how easy it is to view technological progress with a male bias?
Perhaps this issue is why we find it hard to sell nuclear energy to women? (IIRC, support for nuclear energy is 20% lower among women than among men…)
Good topic!
I liked Steve Alphin’s piece, only I would prefer that agriculture was the greatest “invention” of all time, not just a labor saving device that altered sex statuses mostly within a few nations. It’s kind of disturbing to me that female freedom (bad choice in words) might be wholly dependent on technology; if a malicious future supertech or natural event totally nullified electricity over vast regions over long spans, what would that do to society on the sex equality level? Would women willingly “go back” to stone knives and bearskins to manage home instead of companies? Fodder for Steve’s speculative fiction book! (please make it an eBook!). My only beef with the podcast was that these awesome Dames of the Roundtable seemed to overlook that most of the woes that nuclear energy has in public perception and acceptance can be attributed to the antis setting the perception and image in the first place. Again, New York is a “green-headed” state chock full of health nuts yet the majority of citizens and media (and local N.O.W. and other fem orgs here) want to boot out pollution-free and CO2 clean and quiet Indian Point for the known CO2 and particulate generators of gas and oill which are no slackards for massive fatal accidents? What would make health nuts and caring moms with families willingly chose a polluting source of power over a zero source? Can you spell well-groomed fear triumphs unchallenging reason and fact every time? Unless the health/safety anti-nuke hypocrisy of the green religion is directly called out and exposed as largely a philosophical bias, nuclear’s virtues are going to be awfully restricted as gas becomes an irreversible mainstay — and off-the-top-of-my-head, I’ll even say that as it runs out, people will be crying for coal, not nukes to replace it! You get the positive public perception that you sow…
James Greenidge
Queens NY
In today’s third world countries, electricity would help women for sure. But look at the TED video on the magic washing machine and how it freed Hans Rosling’s grand mother and mother and provided time for education.
The magic washing machine and electricity by Hans Rosling.
Very entertaining like all of Hans Rosling’s contributions on TED.com.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html
Was at a mining conference in Toronto and met up with Andrea Jeanetta who is also a fan of Steve Aplin’s http://CanadianEnergyIssues.com and she was thinking it would be great if the same graphical readings Steve’s places on every page can be done in any blogs for American states. Steve’s makes it clear who is emitting the CO2 and how much. If I can I may try that on Deregulatetheatom.com but was thinking the NEI or ANS or even Atomicinsights could do it.
http://www.genscape.com/eu-power-power-data-feed will provide data for a fee but somebody must be doing this
Good show. Good post. Absolutely electricity has changed the way women live and the opportunities we have. Shame on me for leaving it out of my post – I’m just very water-centric these days …
Keep up the good work, Rod!
http://ixpower.com/category/entrepreneurial/somebody-ought-to-do-something-about-that/
Deb
Thanks Rod for a very interesting show.
For me as pro-nuclear German (yes, something like this really exists) the discussion of the German Nuclear Exit was great. It’s rare to hear something from abroad regarding our nuclear energy policy (o.k. usual abroad experts in TV are Greenpeace people from Japan …).
I have one explanation for the irrational stance of German people regarding nuclear to add:
The foundation of the very strong green movement in Germany has developed from anti-nuclear protests durings the seventies. In 1979 same people opposed to the NATO “Double Track” Decision regarding the deployment of mid-range nuclear weapons in central Europe. So civil nuclear and weapons are heavily entangled in their minds.
And caused by this disposition our german enviromentalist cannot see the benefits of nuclear energy for the environment and propagate their irrational belieft regarding nuclear energy. Unfortunately these people have more power and influence on policy as they should.
Women empowered by energy ? Damn right.
Electricity makes women as strong as men and this has proven beneficial. It came as an equalizer.
But let us not forget that electricity can also free children of lesser fortunes and put an end to child slavery in India for one.
Let’s broden this discussion.