Poynting's theorem can be usd to show that a time-dependent magnetic field, and hence an induced electric field, is necessarily involved in the conversion of magnetic energy to particle kinetic energy. Consequently, reconnection theories in which curl E is assumed to vanish may have little relevance to magnetospheric substorms. An induced field is solenoidal with a finite electromotive force E=∮Ei⋅dl, whereas an irrotational field due to the polarization of charge has a vanishing line integral around any closed contour ∮Ep⋅dl=0. Because of this topological difference there is no possibility of the induced electric field in a magnetized plasma being cancelled by the redistribution of charge; the most that the plasma can do is to redistribute the field, but in the process it must enhance the transverse part. The implications of these elementary considerations for substorms can best be understood by considering a localized fluctuation in the neutral sheet current. With the justifiable assumption that the displacement current can be neglected the fluctuations are divergence free. The special case of localized current fluctuations in the plane of the neutral sheet consists of clockwise or anticlockwise meanders, and it involves induced electric fields with earthward as well as dawn-dusk components. The consequences, which can be understood only in three dimensions, include parallel electric fields and currents and antisunward convection on closed magnetic field lines. Although an X-type neutral line may be formed (joined to an O type), the situation bears little resemblance to that treated by steady state reconnection theory, in part because of different boundary conditions.