I think we’re already past the point where we can stop this and it’s time to work on adapting:
London, UK – British science fiction dramas of the 1970s and ’80s often took bleak pleasure in depicting a future world exhausted of fossil fuels in which feral survivors roamed the shattered landscapes of an industrial society in its death throes.
Now Britons, already shivering in the sub-zero temperatures of the coldest March in 50 years, are facing the prospect of an energy blackout for real amid reports the country has just two days of gas supplies left in reserve.
Thousands of homes across northern England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have already endured power cuts and massive disruption in recent days, as heavy snow brought down electricity cables and blocked roads.
But there could be worse to come. The cold weather has prompted a surge in demand for gas as households have turned up the heat, depleting reserves and prompting fears that storage facilities could be empty within days.
“Britain on brink of running out of gas,” said the front page of last Friday’s Times newspaper. “Welcome to blackout Britain,” offered the Daily Telegraph on Monday, as the head of a Scottish power company warned the UK faced a “capacity crunch” over the next three years.
If only our leaders had acted like leaders, and actually done something. So it goes.
I’m sure the austerity hawks are already winging their way to their yachts in the Med, so what do they care. A few hundered elderly and sick die freezing in their homes, a small price to pay to make sure those yachts are well stocked. Because Makers v. Takers.
Nationalizing our energy industry might work in our favor. Taking our energy needs out of the hands of free market Capitalists can’t make things any worse. At least if the energy industry was in public hands we could demand a standardized policy. And a nationalized industry would dry up all of that campaign money going into the politicians pockets.
-5Interesting — I recently spent hours* watching the entire MI-5 series (about 80-90 programs, iirc), and one of the plot lines involved terrorists causing a natural gas shortage which the spooks at MI-5 had to avert.
Now, of course, it’s just our own national and global corporatists masters who bring these terrors about.
I still cannot believe Cameron and Conservatives, with help from the Lib Dems, are still in power. I’d figured the Lib Dems would have left that sinking ship long ago, but, for some reason, a taste for power maybe, they stay on.
*Given my back and scitica-type pain, it was a great to find the whole MI-5 series. I’d started it a few years ago, but then my cable company dropped the Long Island public TV station which carried it.