It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when you did not have electricity and instead had to opt for beeswax candles or light a lamp to read anything at night. Electricity has become ingrained and is part of modern life that it is hard to even imagine going without it for days on end. In the end, it is all about adaptation and one thing’s for sure – mankind sure adapted to electricity and its varied usages, quite fast. Some of the positive and negative effects of electricity are posted below for reference.
Positive effects of electricity:
While it could be argued that Edison discovered electricity that would take a wide stretch of the imagination for it was Benjamin Franklin to whom this honor goes for he did spend a lot of time researching electricity and ionic charges. We have indeed come a long way since the days of flying kites to gauge any electrical impact, and today, our entire economy depends on electricity to a large extent.
Industry: Nearly all industries require electricity to function at full efficiency and it is because of electricity that most of them are able to meet the current demands placed on them by an ever-growing population. While all industries from heavy industries to even traditional one’s relay on electricity to a large extent, the fact remains that the industries remain the same as they did, pre-electricity but they have indeed grown both in scope and size.
Essential services: Whichever essential service you pick from water supplies to plasma production centers, you will find that they all run based on electricity. In fact, even your solar power heater would still require some electricity to get powered up to function seamlessly. Given this, you may want to thank your stars that you are born in an age where electricity is not a one-off phenomenon but an essential part of daily life on this planet.
Energy: Thanks to electricity, you can now warm your homes to a cozy temperature even as a winter storm rages on the outside. Electricity provides you with the required energy you need to utilize various services, operate your machines and even to make coffee. It is an integral part of your daily life which is why imagining one without electricity in it is hard to even imagine.
Negative effects of electricity:
Like everything else, there’s the flip side to electricity – check out below.
Environment: One of the downsides to electricity is the way it is generated. Usually, electricity was generated through Coal which as a fossil fuel was pivotal in releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If this was not bad enough, a few power plants started burning biomass as a way to generate electricity and this resulted in a buildup of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere. Both of these heavily contribute to global warming. While you can obtain electricity from renewable sources like wind and water, the process is expensive and at times, even cost prohibitive.
The electric chair: While this cannot, on the whole, be construed as one of the negative of electricity, it is but thanks to Edison and his invention that man finally had the means to officially execute a large number of human beings. While it was often touted as the humane way to kill someone, which is moronic, to say the least, the process is anything but humane and certainly excruciating for the victim.
Accidents: While the principles of electricity have been widely understood and it has a wide range of applications in today’s society, it should still be pointed out that electricity kills more people than most natural disasters. Even touching an exposed wire for just a second is enough to fry you on the inside, which is why you should always wear protective gear when doing some electrical work in your residence. More to the point if you need some electrical work to be done, it would be a good idea to call in the professionals and get them to look it over rather than attempt it yourself.
These are some of the positives and negatives associated with electricity and on the whole, it may seem that the positives outweigh the negatives. It should be pointed out that if power plants continue burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, the earth as a whole is living on borrowed time. It is going to be only a matter of few decades before global warming becomes worse, and if current trends continue, that scenario may not be that far removed from reality either.
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