For months, the conflict in Ukraine and the resulting sanctions have raised fears that Putin will come to cut off our gas supplies. The possibility of an energy shortage is panicking everyone. As winter dawns, candles sell almost as well as toilet paper rolls in the not-so-distant era. A lot of fuss for not much? Opinion.
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December 31, 1999. All-out panic. Everyone had been talking regarding the “year 2000 bug” for well over a year. By an unforgivable mistake of anticipation in the merry world of coding, computers weren’t designed to leap from one century to the next. After 99, we were going to stupidly go back to 0.
During the months that preceded, the experts were lost in conjectures, elaborating all kinds of disaster scenarios. The threat of our computerized world collapsing was palpable. Everything might stop at midnight. A gigantic global blackout.
And at midnight? Nothing. No more bug at midnight one. What we can qualify, with hindsight, as international hay, has only served to feed the apocalyptic theses.
22 years later, like the computers of the time, here is our trouillometer which falls back to 0. Whatever the newspaper open, the news site consulted or the connected television channel, we are only talking regarding the winter electricity shortage. Finally, the potential shortage.
It is true that in terms of energy, Switzerland depends a lot on foreign countries. It is also true that in the event of a lack of supply, measures will have to be taken. OK.
But, if I have correctly understood the Confederation’s messages and the incalculable number of articles on this subject, the greatest risk for me, a young citizen, is to find myself, from time to time, “without electricity for four hours. And “as a last resort”, when all other solutions have been explored.
As the squirrel accumulates hazelnuts in anticipation of the cold season, the good Swiss citizen therefore spends, fear in his belly, all the time he has left before winter stocking up. Generators, batteries, auxiliary heaters and of course candles are snapped up.
All this for power cuts of a few hours, which “are not excluded”. A nightmare for us, inhabitants of a country where never wanting for anything is the rule.
Our nightmare, it might make Nelson laugh softly, who lives in Buenos Aires and who learned to go without electricity for whole days, by 40°C in the shade. Perhaps Aminata, from Ouagadougou, would roll her eyes at our nightmare, her restaurant only having electricity for a few hours a day.
But back to our navels. Rather than spending all our energy fearing running out, let’s try to learn how to save it. Let’s stop putting all our joules into the big basket of alarmism and let’s put things into perspective.
On the one hand, maybe nothing will happen at all. On the other hand, looking at the stars rather than TV, you’ll see, it recharges your batteries…
