I was reading The Grid: The Fraying Wires between Americans and Our Energy Future, by Gretchen Bakke, “One of Bill Gates’s Favorite Books of 2016,” where I learned that refrigerators didn’t follow the grid. I had it backward. Fridges didn’t come about for health or to improve food quality. Fridges became popular to drive more energy consumption, and therefore pollution and depletion.

It turns out Bakke gave a talk on the subject, Refrigerator as Linchpin: A Brief History of the Fossil Fueled Electricity System. Quoting that page:

The relationship between the refrigerator and the electric grid is much the opposite of what we assume. Rather than the grid being there for the fridge, the fridge is there for the grid. In this talk Gretchen Bakke explains how the electric refrigerator was made and marketed as means of supporting the physical properties of fossil fueled power plants, which need to be on all the time to work well. By providing a constant draw on the grid (baseload consumption) the refrigerator is both an essential element of an electrical system built upon these fuels and also a thorn in the side of the project of actualizing a renewably powered grid.

I would not have stumbled on this history or its repercussions below had I not lived without a fridge for years. Nothing substitutes for Hands-On Practical Experience. People think fridges help poor people. They don’t. They contribute to poverty and financial dependence.

One fridge may keep a meal fresh. Dependence on a refrigerated supply chain results in less fresh food and more waste.

Here is another case where a system creates the opposite effect of a piece of the system: One fridge may keep a meal fresh. Dependence on a refrigerated supply chain results in less fresh food and more waste.

It’s like flying: one flight brings you to a distant family member or place. Flying in general leads to living away from families and not appreciating where you are.

One use of heroin in medicine helps you handle pain or recreationally brings you euphoria. Continued use of either leads to more pain and misery.

We are dependent on refrigeration. Trucks, ships, every store, and every home containing refrigeration leads to what could be fresh being shipped from far away until it’s not fresh and not fresh things replacing fresh.

How many things have you eaten lately that came directly from the ground or a tree?

How many things have you eaten lately that came in a package?

Like our culture of flying tears apart families and communities, our culture of refrigeration reduces food quality, increases waste, reduces health, increases energy dependence, increases insecurity, costs more, and undermines community.

• ← Have you noticed that sanitation departments have become socialist, imperialist, and flagrant violators of the US Constitution’s original intent?
• Freedom or pollution. I would be nice to have both, but you can’t. →