Why Cooling Towers?

I got asked. The single most important issue of our times is how we get power. The wind turbine could be a symbol, often used as an image of escape from our global dilemna. The wind turbine is the angel, the cooling tower the demon. Each article in the broadsheets regarding power or coal powered power stations or environmental action groups or global warming, slap a picture of a cooling tower next to it. Ignore the fact that only 1 in 100 people know what a cooling tower is for. Ignore the fact that they are tools. Like a chisel, say. You can carve a beautiful wood sculpture or bury it in someones chest. The chisel isn't guilty.
Also the issue of a type of architecture. How people believe that we can take non aesthetic decisions. That aesthetics is what powers maths. That every decision a human takes is an aesthetic one. Why do wind turbines look different to cooling towers? you could argue that concrete technology was prevalent when most cooling towers were built and now is the age of carbon fibre, kevlar, new materials nuetred white. Why white? White was the colour of 2000. Look at the furniture of a decade ago, the clothes, we couldn't see it at the time, these things are hard to see at the time, things always seem normal and only time gives us the retrospective view to see the common thread.. One of the reasons I am interested in the 1970's design so much, glam rock, platform soled shoes warn by Dave Hill of Slade, copied by the Bay City Rollers were purely functional for painting low ceilings and watching football and rugby league games over low walls if you couldn't afford to pay to get in. Or is it just decoration? go on. Admit it. No design decision can, by its nature, not involve a degree of aesthetics. We don't need furniture. We don't 'need' most products.