INFRASTRUCTURE

The term infrastructure is so central to the understanding, and the functioning of our species in its current state, that it is hard to imagine the days before this term came to common use. How can one conceive of a functioning Earth without infrastructure? Even wildlife make use of natural infrastructure – ecological, water, food resources, etc. All of these fit under the definition of infrastructure as a system of organization. But our conception of the word is more closely knit with artificially created systems, man-made structures that extend or disrupt natural systems to bring service to man. For example Bill McKibben, in his article, articulates the energy infrastructure by taking the reader from Northern Canada’s ‘La Grande’ to Brazilian oil refineries, and the all the way back to Arizona’s uranium veins. His aim to talk about how energy is delivered to New York City extends to include both North and South America. This only reinforces how depended our species is on the various infrastructures that enable our livelihood. But what is more interesting is how dependent these infrastructures are on other infrastructures to function properly. The energy infrastructure is dependent on a mix of hydro, oil, coal, and atomic power infrastructures, in addition the actual high voltage powerline network. And all of that shifts and changes depends largely on the faring of the economic infrastructure. What a Brazilian worker is doing might be completely dependent on the energy requirements of a city 2000 miles away, and he might not know it. But its these invisible lines of connection that gives infrastructure such an important role in our lives, so it is no wonder that they become critical resources for a country to protect, such as dictated in Executive Order EO13010. What is marvelous about infrastructure is how it builds on top of other infrastructures until what exists can no longer be untangled – as it is so complex and cross relying. That is what gives us unprecedented interconnectivity in the world as we know it. And the funny thing is most of us don't realize this - until there is a catastrophic failure in one infrastructure, and a cascading, domino effect happens that reaches to each of our homes, such as a blackout.