This just came to me while I was ironing, as is my wont of a Sunday - but what is the feasibility / possibility of the energy companies being sued by 'The People' in the same manner as the Big Tobacco companies? I mean in the capacity for their continuing complicity in behaviour detrimental to (and I'm not being hyperbolic here) the entire human race, when information has long been on the table that their entire businesses were based around short-sighted, profit-mongering ways that were only going to end in tears in the long run.I speak, of course, of the end of the fossil fuel era. Something that, for most people, is going to happen in the far, far future, when they and their children's children are long dead... but for the rest of us, is going to happen, whether we like it or not, in the next decade or so.
But the end of fossil fuels is not new. Even Global Warming is not new. And the threats posed by the two to our society and way of life (however messed up it might be) are very real, and very large. But these are NOT NEW IDEAS.
I remember clearly picture books I had as a kid - Usborne ones, probably, and another one about where LEGO bricks come from and how they're made. They stated, quite matter-of-factly, that oil and coal were going to run out within my lifetime. Most of the estimates were pegged at another twenty years, tops, which means for my four year old self, we are now running on fumes.
Which means twenty years of profits devoted to continuing and supporting an infrastructure whose only aim and purpose was to squeeze all of the rich resources and wealth it could out of diminishing fossil fuels - and then abdicate all responsibility and retire to its collective wind-powered farm with its gold-plated gains. In fact, we could go further back - to the first oil crisis of the 70s, when fuel stations ran dry and people began seriously talking about using alternative fuels.
Then the Middle East opened up its wells again, and all talk of alternatives was forgotten. Imagine the world we could be living in if, say, America had decided to reject oil in the late 70s. Granted, its possible we could be living in an irradiated hellhole by now from all the sub-Chernobyls that would have been built to support the energy infrastructure, but the point does still stand: aren't the big energy companies now complicit in the End Times of fossil fuels, and the chaotic upheaval that is now likely to consume Western society for the next five to ten years?
There is no problem or technology that can't be cracked with a judicious application of money and time. I just fear that, as always, things have been left until a distant problem becomes a crisis - and, while that usually results in more money being thrown at the problem, that we're three decades behind already (at least!) just means that the solving will be a hell of a lot more painful than many people were expecting.
That is, unless Shell and British Gas and E-ON and all the others turn around in two years time and unveil the plans they had for a calm switchover all along... They were just waiting to wring the last enormous price hikes they could before turning out the lights on the fossil era.
This is definitely a vent and a rant, of course, but it's not so much about the prospect of paying 35% more on my next gas bill, but more about paying that money for no reason more than that's how much gas costs now. I could just about stomach paying higher prices for everything until my early thirties IF the money is going towards replacing what is never going to be replaced. I don't want that 35% to go towards extra rigs in the North Sea, or new pipelines in Alaska and the Russian wastelands. Gas and oil aren't coming back, folks. They really aren't. Not unless you're willing to wait a few million years. Solar, wind, wave - these are all technologies that, with the application of your 'profits', could easily be turned into viable alternatives for the whole of Europe - and beyond - within the next five to ten years.
I read in the paper last week that by carpeting a large area of the Sahara in solar panels, all of Europe's energy needs could be met, via next-generation DC-current pipelines (more efficient than AC cables over long distances). And it's desert! Nobody's using it! It's not displacing populations or putting a nuclear reactor in somebody's backyard! And yes, enormous terrorist target, and all that, but that's why you have the UN and NATO - to patrol hotspot areas of great civilian value. Furthermore, if you've got a giant area of shiny stuff where previously you had flat and absorbent sand, you end up with a net gain on the global warming front, as more of the sun's rays are reflected back into space. Hooray.
See, this is the kind of stuff that people should be getting behind and getting excited about. If I were in charge of Labour (or ANY of the parties in government), this is the hot-ticket stuff I would be RAMMING through the House of Commons right now. Stuff about making sure that every home is generating a little bit of its own electricity (and most of its heating) by 2012. Stuff about switching cars over to electric alternatives, powered off the mains by these new sub-Saharan sources.
Remember the Millennium Bug? Remember what a huge problem that was going to be until the government decided to spend billions in the years between 1996-2000 reprogramming loads of crap?
Well, how about some of that pre-millennial spirit? SHOW some balls, policymakers, SHOW some forethought, SHOW some optimism, get out there and spread the message. I don't give a shit about the Olympics that are going to happen round the corner from my in four years, I want to see some of that 'National Spirit' being channelled into something that will potentially benefit the lives of everybody on the planet. Oh, and, you know, create BILLIONS of skilled jobs in the creation and maintenance of its new infrastructure.
But that's just me. So can we sue them? I don't know. They're massively complicit, greedy and short-sighted, but that's what corporations are SUPPOSED to do. Charity work is only there for tax dodges and PR stunts. At this point, I'm more interested in who will be the first to step up and do the right thing. In our age, it's not going to be a wartime stiff upper lip, it'll be whoever can snatch the best publicity and post-fossil fuel consumer base from the jaws of economic defeat. When British Gas and Thames Water and Scottish Electric start taking out full-page ads in the freepapers announcing their changing their names to something green and non-specific, and launching amazing new cut-price deals using alternative energy sources... it'll be because every single penny will have been squeezed from a bunch of dead, compressed organic matter - and it's time to look into something new.
Let's bloody hope it's next year sometime, because I'm sick of holding my breath and hoping that somebody with the actual POWER to do something about it will step up to the plate.
