social contract – Lucy Bellwood

When things get overwhelming—as they have been for the last, oh, six months or so—I default to logging phone numbers and quotes and book recommendations and ideas in my to-do list app rather than filing them in their appropriate places. This never goes well for me, since my to-do list then becomes an un-completeable heap of Weird Stuff that elicits instant anxiety every time I look at it until one day (today) I rush through it and delete or file everything that isn’t an actual Task.

One of those items, a mere two months old, was to mention that this graph made me emotional the same way seeing a b u n c h o f d r i v e r s pull over for an ambulance in early 2021 made me emotional.

Taking a closer look at the demand history graph; check out the change from 5:50 PM to 5:55 PM (right after the EAS alert was sent out): a drop of, and I kid you not: 1.21 gigawatts (rounded to 2 decimal places). #FlexAlert #heatwave pic.twitter.com/QH1GS6EZ4b
— Matt Fern (@MattF_NorCal) September 7, 2022

These days when I see exhortations to conserve power or water or any other communal resource, I’m alarmed by how cynical I’ve become. Maybe it’s living in a drought-blighted valley where the local country club maintains an emerald green golf course, knowing that however many penalties the water district imposes, the wealthy will just pay for more water. Or maybe it’s general pandemic-era weariness. I don’t know.

But we had a massive heatwave in early September, prompting the powers that be to send out a state-wide text encouraging people to reduce their power usage and avoid blackouts—and it worked! People were asked to make a sacrifice for the common good and they did! You can see it!

1.21 gigawatts. How about that.

I got unexpectedly emotional driving home from my COVID test tonight when a line of cars (myself among them) pulled over to let two blaring firetrucks barrel past on their way to make someone’s Very Bad Day less worse.

There it was! An immediate, unspoken acknowledgement that there are more important things going on right now, followed by straightforward collective action to protect and support the people most involved in addressing the crisis at hand.

It doesn’t take a lot, on a day where I’ve passed a boisterous group of twelve unmasked diners on a restaurant patio, to feel overwhelmed seeing people do something that comes from an ethic of mutual care.

I know pulling off the road for 30 seconds isn’t the same as asking the entire populace to avoid human contact for twelve straight months, but I still wish it could be this easy. We’ve clearly figured out how to do this as a society sometimes, y’know? It’s just a question of extending that behavior in a wider circle.