The Diary Game 15.07.21 || Day without the electricity

Today I woke up and the electricity was out. I assumed it will be fixed quickly but in fact, it took over 12 hours until it was back. You might laugh at me, but it was a very unusual experience for me.

Sure, when I was a kid, in the early 90's we had plenty of blackouts in my town, but most of them didn't last more than few hours. I think it was the very first time when I had to spend a whole day without electricity at home. It helped me to realize how important it is.

As I didn't have Internet on my phone, I couldn't work. I wrote offline one article on steemit, but after I finished my battery in my phone and laptop were off. I thought that I could do something useful and prepare the homemade birthday gift I'm making for my husband, but to do it, I needed an electronic device. I was thinking to entertain myself, but playing games was not an option, all my books I am keeping in e-version, music couldn't be played... luckily I do have the gas oven in the kitchen so I could make the lunch. In Krakow, I did have an induction kitchen so in case of similar power down I would have to skip cooking and eat sandwiches or go to the restaurant.

My home was dark (windows are located in the way which causes partial darkness even in the middle of the day), depressive, and very cold. Heaters didn't work, so not only I was freezing, but also the kefir, which I started to make yesterday, was endangered to become broken. I am warming it up now, but if it will work, I will see you tomorrow.

Finally, it wasn't so bad though. I have spent some time with my boyfriends - we went for a walk to the park with Panda, our dog, talked even more than usual, and tried to cheer up somehow. At 18.00, when my other boyfriend came back home from work, I took Krzys and Will and we went there to warm up a bit, charge all the devices and wait until the end of that unpleasant situation. I ordered some burgers, so we could eat dinner all together, we watched few episodes of "The Big Bang Theory" and came back at 21.00 when finally the lights were on again.

That situation made me think - what if I would have to live without the electricity like millions of people around the world? What if I would have to get used to similar blackouts? That might be our future - heat waves and low levels of water in the rivers, so important to cool the power plants and keep them working, all of that may cause the blackouts more and more often in the future. Global warming is already here. When I finally turned on my phone, I got the proof of that: My father, who lives in a small town in the Silesia region, Poland, send me the message that there was a tornado which destroyed the roof of the local school. Those things were very rare 20 years ago, now it happens every 2-3 years.
At the very same time, my mother, who lives thousands of kilometers away, in Brussels, Belgium, was sending me the message about some big floods in her country . Opening any page with the news made me realize that floods happened recently also in the UK, not to mention the Elsa hurricane which came via Haiti, Cuba, and the USA.

The scientists are talking about keeping global warming up to 1,5 Celcius degrees over the preindustrial temperatures until 2050 as crucial for the long-term survival of human beings. I remember, not so long time ago that they were talking to keep it up to 1,5C until 2100 - it is already impossible. Currently, European Union is the world leader in green solutions, they created a whole plan how to become "zero emission", which means the whole Union won't emit more pollution that can be consumed by the forests and green areas in general and yet, it still may cause the warming of over 1,8C, in effect, melting the ice from both poles and releasing methane from the Syberian underground which will speed up heating that planet.

Being powerless makes me very sad. We may change our diet habits, try not to use plastic, use bicycles or public transport over planes and cars but our personal choices are never enough. We might slow down a bit the big catastrophes, maybe with a bit of luck and a lot of work we can help our kids to live in a relatively safe world, but our grandsons surely won't have the priveledges we all had. They might live in a world where it's more difficult to get water, where food is much more expensive because of the constant floods or fires, where there are power shortages and local conflicts for limited resources.