Is Electricity a Human Right?
Africa 2004
When I awoke, my eyes were open but I could not see.
Inside the one room mud hut, my gaze stared into a vacuum of darkness.
Outside, above the grass thatched roof, was a cloudy, moonless night sky as black as where I slept.
No longer could I take for granted my inheritance as a U.S. citizen, born in a country that generates over 4 million gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, for 325 million Americans and 28 million businesses, running day and night, sun or shine.
my empathy has only grown
But in this rural community where I once slept among subsistence farmers struggling for sustenance, we were without electricity.
No running water, no heaters or home lighting, no street lights, no internet or television, no plumbing…after 120 years of global electrification, I witnessed the struggle without electricity.
Although I was merely a visitor in this rural Zambian village, my empathy has only grown since returning to the U.S. over a decade ago.
The community members who supported me remain without electricity, without irrigation, without basic modernity we so often take for granted.
Are we in the United States more deserving than others? Or should we empathize with those who go without what we have been given and assist those in need?
Is electricity a human right?
Or is electricity another market commodity falling in the hands of the privileged luck of birth?
How we answer this question is relevant to us all.
Greek Mythology and Human Development
One of my favorite stories with endless layers of relevant metaphors involves Prometheus, a Titan of Greek Mythology, as written by the Athenian Aeschylus over 2400 years ago.
Zeus, as king of the Olympian Gods, controlled lightning and vigorously guarded fire from falling into the hands of humanity. As seen from the heavenly perch of Mount Olympus, the lowly humans were wretched beasts, shivering and hungry, backward and undeserving of the improvement fire would bring to their desperate lot. “Why should humans be gifted such means?”
Beyond a guarded sense of elite entitlement, Zeus also understood that the power of fire in the hands of the mortals would provoke rebellion and lead to independence from the Gods.
Prometheus represents the behavior of an enlightened and empathetic rebel
Prometheus lived amongst the Gods but empathized with humans and wanted to alleviate their suffering and improve their standard of living.
Despite Zeus’ animosity, Prometheus stole a spark from Zeus’ lightning bolt and lit a fire that he gave to humans to warm their hearth and illuminate the night.
For this transgression Zeus condemned Prometheus to be tortured for the rest of eternity. Prometheus was eventually freed, but that is another story.
Zeus represents the behavior of a ruling class oligarch, an economic supremacist, and a selfish monopolist hoarding scientific principles and technology. Prometheus represents the behavior of an enlightened and empathetic rebel, a revolutionary fighter seeking justice, who sacrifices himself in the name of human progress.
And fire represents knowledge, understanding, and a literal energy technology that is intertwined with the fate of our species, differentiating humans from all other beings.
Humans are unique in our ability to control light and heat created by fire. Monkeys and other mammals can’t do it. No other animal on earth has mastered fire.
We are the only species that intentionally organizes material elements to produce energy, manipulate power, and make work easier, for the improvement of ourselves, our clan, our nation, and our civilization.
Our evolution as humans is dependent on our relationship with energy.
Energy, Power, Work, and Electrification
Humanity’s progress and population growth is directly related to adopting energy sources with ever greater densities of power that increase our ability to do more work over less time, moving from wood to coal to oil and gas, and to atomic fuel.
Collectively, as a species, we discovered the principles of carbon and methane combustion, we harnessed the energy of falling water and moving wind, we fabricated engines based on pressure and steam, we captured the sun’s photons and harnessed lightning from the sky, we split atoms and generated fission, and we are now close to creating working nuclear fusion reactions in magnetically suspended animation on earth far from the center of our fusion propelled solar system.
…Mastering of power systems has improved labor conditions and reduced the propensity for men to enslave others
This historical process of harnessing new forms of energy corresponds with population growth that increased from a billion at the beginning of the 1800s to more than to 7.5 billion in less than two hundred years, propelled by an ever greater mastery of energy and power to make work easier.
And the mastering of power systems has improved labor conditions and reduced the propensity for men to enslave others.
Everyone alive has benefitted from our species increasing mastery over energy.
And the evolution of fuel sources and improved power has helped electrify much of the earth while improving countless lives through new technologies of water management, food production, construction, communication, healthcare, education, research and development, and an increase of leisure with 40 hour work weeks that is still unfathomable in many parts of the world.
Economically, electricity and development are inseparable.
Yet we are still far from widespread electrification of transportation, manufacturing, and home heating.
Electricity austerity, scarcity, and low energy living is the forebear of poverty and despair, civil unrest, and war…austerity is the historic enemy of civilization and development.
Human destiny is intimately linked to how we manage and expand economic opportunity through electricity generation.
Moral and Political-Economic Foundations of Natural Law and Eudamaimonic Legitimacy
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
So to return to the question, is electricity a human right?
Your rights, my rights, human rights are all founded on the concept of natural law that asserts certain rights are inherent and can be understood universally through human reason.
One of the most common forms of natural law seen in various expressions throughout numerous cultures, religions, and political systems, is the concept of the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
If you think you, individually, should have electricity, then you should think everyone should have electricity. If you think otherwise, move off the grid and smash the screen you are reading this on.
As described above, history clearly tracks the parallel development of humanity and population growth with our collective mastery of energy, power and electricity.
Another important political and policy concept is eudaimonic legitimacy.
Going back to ancient Greek culture, eudaimonia was understood as “human flourishing and prosperity.”
And the legitimacy of the political system and political leadership is determined by how policies promote human flourishing and prosperity.
For example, if there is mass unemployment or low labor participation, hunger, homelessness, sickness, unrest, then the political leadership lacks eudaimonic legitimacy.
The legitimacy of a political system can be measured by how it promotes well being or eudemonia within the population.
Quantifiable questions include:
How many square meters of housing per person? How old is the structure?
What does the plumbing look like?
How about the air conditioning?
Do you have central heating?
In terms of your nutrition, how many calories per day?
What is your vitamin quality?
How many years of school can you manage?
Does the majority of your population have a bachelor’s degree? How many people have advanced degrees?
How many people are employed?
What kind of employment is it?
Secondary eudaimonic measurements may include changes in life expectancy and the psychological profile of the population in terms of cultural despair expressed in drug addiction and overdose, suicide, and economic insecurity in weathering a financial emergency.
And this concept of eudaimonia can also be applied to electricity.
As outlined in the previous section, the progress of civilization requires ever greater mastery of energy. When humans lack electricity, we find our human potential reduced.
So this brings me back to my experience living in rural Zambia.
If electricity access and use will improve society and humanity, then isn’t electricity as a human right aligned with eudaimonia and natural law?
Thus, the very legitimacy of the global political system requires finding and promoting solutions that ensure everyone has electricity.
If leadership fails in this task, then the leaders are not fit to lead.
Energy Austerity is the Enemy of Human Potential
To bring us back to the question, Is Electricity a Right?
If you are reading this, you are a benefactor of the collective efforts that went into expanding the electrical grid.
The internet draws from an infrastructure of electricity that was developed from countless people who came before us.
We have been given this gift.
It is a Promethean imperative to expand the gift of electricity to present and future generations. There is no greater transgression of natural law than breaking with the responsibility of doing unto others as we would be treated ourselves.
And if the fate of human progress requires each generation to improve upon the last, this would include the expansion and reduction of cost of electricity, to raise the potential of all humans everywhere.
At this point, I hope we agree electricity is a right.
But if you still think electricity is not a right it may be time to ask yourself why do you think this?
Are you falling into the Zeus trap, believing that you and your family alone should be granted this right? Or maybe you believe you earned the right by ignoring history and the collective efforts that have electrified the corner of the world where you were born?
Energy austerity for certain groups of people while professing a right to electricity for oneself is inherently misanthropic and ahistorical.
We must use reason to understand how reducing the potential of large segments of the global population negatively affect you, your family and future generations for all of us.
The much more challenging questions are:
1) How are we going to pay for it all, and;
2) What is the political economy we need to organize to achieve universal electricity access and move from scarcity to abundance?
In the proceeding series, #EnergyIsEverything and #TheTheoryValue, I will explore the concepts laid out in this article and engage with folks of good will who empathize with human struggle and are open to historical discoveries to chart a path forward with policies that will benefit all of us and our posterity.
The 2019 multimedia series will be hosted on EmpathyMediaLab.com. If you are interested in partnering on content or engaging in roundtable interviews, please email me at evan@empathymedialab.com or direct message me on Twitter at @EvanMatthewPapp.
