{"id":3046,"date":"2023-11-10T02:00:26","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T10:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=3046"},"modified":"2023-11-09T21:49:04","modified_gmt":"2023-11-10T05:49:04","slug":"the-joys-of-infrastructure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2023\/11\/10\/the-joys-of-infrastructure\/","title":{"rendered":"The Joys of Infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cover<\/a>I just finished a wonderful book that explained what it would take for everyone on Earth to live the good life. It was all about infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t stop reading! Infrastructure is far from boring, I promise you, especially when the person explaining it to you is Deb Chachra<\/a>, an engineering professor who both understands how things work and how to explain them. (I\u2019ll just note right here that she has read some science fiction and philosophy along the way.)<\/p>\n

The book is called How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems that Shape Our World<\/i><\/a>. And no, it\u2019s not a treatise on pipes or wiring or highway construction. It\u2019s an overview of how all those things come together to make modern life possible.<\/p>\n

Even if you\u2019ve thought a lot about infrastructure \u2014 most of us only think about it when ours fails \u2014 this book will give you some deep insights into just how important it is and, even more importantly, how infrastructure design sets in place all our lives.<\/p>\n

One of the first things I got from the book is that modern infrastructure is what makes our lives comfortable and possible in the United States and other highly developed countries. We have power at the flick of a switch, water when we turn on a tap, phone service (land lines even still exist, though most of us are using mobile phones these days). The wastewater gets taken away and treated.<\/p>\n

Further, we have roads that go everywhere. In some places, we also have other transit options besides cars.<\/p>\n

Most of us have access to good food even if we don\u2019t live near where food is grown. That\u2019s due to shipping systems, which also bring us other things we need.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the point: all these things make modern life possible. We don\u2019t have to dig our own wells or fetch water from the nearest creek (if there is one). We don\u2019t have to cut up logs and feed them into a wood burning stove to cook and keep our homes warm. We can be in touch with people all around the world without leaving home or even waiting for the mail (and of course, mail is an infrastructure).<\/p>\n

A couple of hundred years ago, people didn\u2019t have most of these things. There were roads and there were shops and some supply systems, but they were not nearly as convenient as they are today.<\/p>\n

Despite the fantasy of the \u201cfreedom\u201d of living off the grid, the truth is that living in a system with modern infrastructure gives people a great deal more freedom to do something beyond just survival. <\/p>\n

Of course, earlier civilizations created infrastructure. The Romans were noted for their roads and their aqueducts. The Hohokam in what is now Arizona created an incredible system of canals and aqueducts in an arid climate more than 800 years ago.<\/p>\n

But as we discovered more sources of energy and figured out how to use those to create such things as electricity, we made possible the vast networks of systems we have today. (And yes, we also created some other problems using all those fossil fuels. Don\u2019t worry; Chachra is aware of that as well.)<\/p>\n

\n

Here\u2019s another thought about infrastructure, one that we rarely think about: how we decide to put systems together dictates what our lives will be like. So, for example, deciding to build roads designed for cars, including freeways for high speed travel, set up not just our traffic patterns, but also where we decided to build housing and what work systems might look like.<\/p>\n

What if we\u2019d built train tracks instead?<\/p>\n

This fits in well with the ideas put forth in Jessie Singer\u2019s book There Are No Accidents<\/i><\/a>, which argues that such things as traffic deaths are the result of policy decisions, not actual accidents. You can make roads safe for pedestrians and bicyclists; you can make cars and roads safer in general. But we don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

So if you want, say, the 15-minute city where a person can take care of their needs within a 15-minute walk of their home, you build infrastructure to support that. If you want less car traffic, you build transit systems.<\/p>\n

But if you build more roads, you\u2019ll just get more traffic. These are decisions.<\/p>\n

Infrastructure isn\u2019t a natural system; it\u2019s one we decide on. And if we don\u2019t keep it up, it won\u2019t do its job. Or, as Chachra says, \u201cAny sufficiently advanced negligence is indistinguishable from malice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just ask the people of Jackson, Mississippi, or Flint, Michigan.<\/p>\n

We all have plenty of examples of bad infrastructure. And we all know what use of fossil fuels \u2014 which is the underpinning of much of our infrastructure \u2014 is doing to our planet.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s the part of Chachra\u2019s book that made me very hopeful: renewable energy is a game changer.<\/p>\n

As she points out, one of the biggest problems in addressing climate change is that \u201cour infrastructural systems consume energy, and as long as they are primarily powered by fossil fuels, they will continue to be one of the main drivers<\/i> of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

She goes on to say:<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve created these collective infrastructural systems that make our lives, as we know them, possible. Any future with limited, reduced, or even more frequently interrupted access to them is recognizably worse than our present, if not downright dystopian.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But then, she points out that we can, in fact, change this.<\/p>\n

The first step is to break the connection between combustion and energy, to make it possible to generate, distribute, store, and consume energy without producing pollutants.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This isn\u2019t individual change. After all, individual actions aren\u2019t what\u2019s driving greenhouse gas emissions. As Chachra says, \u201cour total energy usage, and therefore the bulk of our emissions, is collective.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if we get our energy from something other than fossil fuels, the situation changes:<\/p>\n

[I]f we power our infrastructural systems, particularly the electrical grid and transportation \u2026 with energy that doesn\u2019t<\/i> come from fossil fuels, we can decouple our energy footprint and our carbon footprint.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And at this point, we have the technologies to do precisely that.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not going to be easy. We\u2019ll have to replace everything that currently runs on fossil fuels with something that uses electricity \u2013 including replacing plants that generate electricity from fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

The biggest obstacles are political and the entrenched wealth that goes along with the fossil fuel companies, though there are still some technological challenges.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s her biggest point, the understanding that makes it possible not just to continue to have a decent infrastructure while addressing climate change, but also to make certain that infrastructure is available to everyone: “[R]enewable energy is intrinsically<\/i> cheaper than fossil fuels.\u201d Sure, you still need a system and maintenance, but the \u201craw energy input \u2013 sunlight, wind running water, the heat of the earth \u2013 doesn\u2019t require making a payment to an oil company.”<\/p>\n

We can make this shift. We can create infrastructure that serves our needs on this planet without destroying it.<\/p>\n

This observation from Chachra sums it up:<\/p>\n

I often joke that the only science-fictional future that I personally want to live in is the one where everyone lives a life that is long, cared for, and well provisioned, so that the worst thing that could happen to you before your peaceful death is heartbreak.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Me, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just finished a wonderful book that explained what it would take for everyone on Earth to live the good life. It was all about infrastructure. Don\u2019t stop reading! Infrastructure is far from boring, I promise you, especially when the person explaining it to you is Deb Chachra, an engineering professor who both understands how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,122,10,181,363],"tags":[799,800],"class_list":["post-3046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-future","category-reviews","category-science","category-technology","tag-deb-chachra","tag-how-infrastructure-works"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3047,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046\/revisions\/3047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}