Thread by @sineadmercier

1/11 I wrote this article as I'd come across viral pictures of an 'anti-electricity' cartoon being used to show how the public often block new technologies that benefit them. View is that windfarms/nuclear/tech are today undermined by a hysterical public.

https://twitter.com/RTEBrainstorm/status/1704526808337494112

But if we examine the context & legal history of this cartoon, we learn that public fears of new technologies may have more to do with lived experience of what happens when enormous power is placed in private, unregulated or self-interested hands...

Titled "An Unrestrained Demon", the cartoon was published in 1889 in the satirical US magazine Judge, weeks after an energy company employee, John Feeks, was electrocuted while working on private electricity wires in New York City, USA. library.osu.edu/dc/concern/gen…

NYC at this time was a mass of private wires, owned by warring business factions. Tragically, Feeks fell "into the tangle of wire, sparking, burning, and smoldering for the better part of an hour while a horrified crowd of thousands gathered below." (thanks @c3141tw for photo)

This was but one incident in the daily life of those who lived in European and colonial cities. Inhabitants found themselves increasingly at the mercy of unregulated, unscrupulous private utility companies. Discussions began about where the control of such great power should lie.

Who owns energy & tech what it's for became a question about how humans live together. How do we function & operate as a society? The inability of private companies to safely produce & distribute energy led to local authorities taking utilities into public ownership across Europe

In Ireland, this process was opposed by British interests. Vast swathes of Ireland remained without light. With independence, the Irish state set itself a modernist project of bringing power to the people. The purpose of electricity was no longer private profit, but public gain.

From 1927, the ESB took into public ownership the colonial mess of unreliable wires & private companies that once characterised the Irish energy system. The ESB & Ardnascrusha has its flaws, but there's much that is positive & inspirational for the future. newlaborforum.cuny.edu/2021/05/17/ire…

Instead of unravelling our energy system to the colonial era, the ESB can deliver an all-island clean energy system. As climate justice reparations we can assist Global South to build resilient public energy infrastructure to end poverty & cope with climate chaos.

Privatisation & liberalisation of energy has globally exacerbated both energy poverty & climate change. Private gouging of public energy utilities from Australia to Sierra Leone have left communities in the lurch, to clean up mines & figure out just transitions for workers

Just like Victorian cities in a crisis of dangerous private wires & gas, the climate crisis is a time to re-figure how to live with one another. The answer lies not in siphoning off private companies to run rampant with energy use, but in drawing together in solidarity. 11/11