The founders of the UK electricity industry – Crompton, Swan, Ferranti, Siemens – would be astonished to discover that electricity generation is now implicated as a major cause of the over-heating of the planet.
They believed they were ridding the world of the pungent pollution in which they were brought up, the air thick with coal smoke, their homes lit with candles, naked gas flames & oil, their roads covered with the dung of horses that hauled the wagons, buses & trams of the cities. Electricity did bring the leaner, brighter, more efficient world the pioneers envisaged, but at a cost that has yet to be assessed.
Gavin Weightman: Children of Light pxxi
