Modern Heat and Light Have Transformed Human Life
Without electricity, winter is a humanitarian emergency.
Those of us fortunate enough to enjoy steady access to electricity and heat seldom contemplate just how vital to our existence these basic services are.
Being forced to survive a winter without electricity in the modern age is a humanitarian emergency, a horrific step back toward a past best left behind. Because, lest we forget just how gruesome the premodern age was, all humans once faced wintertime without electricity—even royalty. Accounts from the French court of Versailles in the 17th century tell of a palace “so bitterly cold that the wine as well as water freezes in the glasses at the King’s table.”
When Homo erectus first learned to control fire a million years ago, humanity may have gained the ability to create warmth during winter and light after sunset, but the heat didn’t extend far, and the light was dim and absurdly costly.
From fire to electricity and LEDs, heat and lighting technology have come a long way—further than our ancestors could have imagined. And as free enterprise and exchange have lifted billions of people out of poverty over the last few decades, the long-run trend is that an ever-greater share of humanity can take the modern wonders of abundant heat and light for granted.
In India, for example, only half of the population had access to electricity in 1993, the earliest year for which the World Bank has data. That rose to 99 percent of the population by 2021. Here you can watch a video of the powerful moment that a remote Indian village called Rakuru in the Himalayas turned on its first electric lights eight years ago. “The people were hugging each other and dancing,” was how Shivani Saklani, an Indian GE employee who helped bring about the village’s electrification, described the scene. “The experience was so powerful it made me cry.”
Progress is ongoing: in Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region, electricity access is rising, but is still only enjoyed by around half of the population. Numerous energy entrepreneurs are hard at work trying to fulfill the need for electricity and spread it to more of the world’s people—people like Dozie Igweilo, whose startup uses solar lamps to help Nigerians through power outages.
Sometimes, policy restrictions get in the way. For example, in the four years following the Fukushima disaster, there were 1,280 cold-related deaths due to the Japanese government’s ill-considered decision to end nuclear power production. The invasion of Ukraine revealed the folly of many European governments’ meddling with energy markets to ban hydraulic fracturing. Rather than helping the earth, these bans have enabled Russian energy blackmail.
Despite all the progress that humanity has made, around 677 million people still lived without electricity as of 2023, the most recent year of data. Think of the famous satellite images of North Korea at night: a field of eerie darkness contrasted with the light of prosperous towns and cities to the south. The disparity between the authoritarian hermit kingdom and its free southern neighbor speaks to a harsh but important truth: progress is not automatic or irreversible. The conveniences of modern life are fragile, dependent on peace for their continued existence, and dependent on freedom to come into being in the first place.
So if you live in a community with abundant electricity, take a moment to appreciate your situation. Remember just how life-changing electricity is, as you witness it warming homes and powering the numerous holiday lights (another modern marvel worth contemplating) warding off the winter gloom.
A version of this article was published by Human Progress on 12/09/2022.