“Without Power, People Will Die!”

Last updated on April 2, 2023

The theme of this post is the supreme, life-enhancing and lifesaving need for reliable power.

An episode in a TV series brought it home for me…

We recently began to binge-watch the five-season NBC medical series, New Amsterdam. We’re almost finished with season one.

In episode 17, titled “Sanctuary,” there’s a massive power failure in New York city.

At New Amsterdam Hospital, the lights, medical equipment, baby incubators, operating rooms (during life-threatening operations), and everything requiring ready access to electric power, suddenly shut down.

As doctors, nurses, patients, staff, and visitors wait frantically for the emergency generator to kick in, nothing happens.

The generator fails to come on.

Dr. Max Goodwin, the Medical Director suddenly shouts with absolute certainty,

“Without power, people will die!”

I remembered a similar warning from Alex Epstein, author of Fossil Future and The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.

Epstein mentions the stark, life-threatening reality faced in third world countries, and areas with sporadic and limited power, especially in hospitals and nurseries.

“Consider just some of the fossil-fueled machines that amplify and expand the abilities of medical practitioners:

• magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines that give doctors a 3D image of what’s going inside our bodies so they can diagnose previously undiagnosable ailments.
• fetal monitors that enable doctors to monitor the health of babies before they are born.
• refrigeration machines that keep temperature-sensitive medicines like vaccines at the right temperatures.
• heating and cooling machines that keep hospitals at the right temperature; anesthesia machines that give doctors the power to safely sedate us.
• infant incubators that save the lives of premature babies by giving them a safe environment as they develop.
• and computing machines that access and keep track of massive amounts of medical information.

“The whole world of modern medicine is a world of fossil-fueled machines. These machines are only as widely available as they are because we have low-cost, on-demand, versatile, global-scale energy to produce and power them.”

 [Epstein, Alex. Fossil Future (p. 152). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.]

In Fossil Future Epstein offers 480 pages of information and insights that can dramatically open our eyes to the disastrous policies of the anti-fossil fuel advocates, especially today under the Biden Administration.

The campaign against fossil fuels makes as much sense as a campaign against life itself.

In a previous Matrix Gazette exposé, “Energy Wars,” we dug deeper into the disastrous “climate change” policies that are driving us to a future where we “ignore the benefits of cost-effective energy to human flourishing and catastrophize its side-effects.” —Alex Epstein

Remember, “Without power, people will die!”

[Editor’s note regarding the TV series New Amsterdam: Seasons 1 and 2 were excellent. However, in season 3, the TV series suddenly went full “woke.” NBC must have had intense viewer push-back because they eventually peeled off much of their woke nonsense and got the show back on track in later season episodes.]