Hello again to The Week. I am sorry I’m a day late but you know Bank holidays and Easter kind of took precedence. Anyway I’m back and I’ve been pondering on the environment or more specifically, good clean energy. With energy needs at their highest ever in human history, is enough time, money and expertise being set on trying to create a sustainable energy supply or are big oil companies and the old guard that do bank roll a lot of our governments putting their own greed before the wellbeing of our descendents and our planet? So to delve into this question, we best start at the beginning.
Most of us should, by now, know what global warming is and how our own energy needs impact on the world around us, if you don’t then, briefly, global warming is that due to green house gases our planet has a steady rise in temperature, meaning for us, possibly the end of life as we know it! That is it, plain and simple. If you don’t believe it is a problem then there is nothing I can say to you on this but, accepting the premise that is is a problem, let’s move on from what it is and look at the facts. We know global warming ha been around for around 60 years and we have done minimal to combat it, why? I think this question needs to be broken down in to three stages; first we have the obvious, the largest producers of green house gases don’t believe they exist, or that they are to blame for the rising temperature of the planet. The United States, India and especially China have all dragged their feet on this. Saying that the UK is way below its target, as is most of Europe, there is the attitude, we cart see it or hear it so it can’t be real! Then after 30 years and with reams of date at least two of these countries agreed that it is an issue. So this is where we move onto our second problem; money and politics. We are not going to get any action on this whilst oil, gas and coal companies pull the purse strings of our political class. As long as oil is a huge money maker nobody is willing to rock the boat on it. And finally, the brainwashing these companies have done in to thinking oil combustion and the like is manly and our right. I was speaking of the Jeremy Clarkson issue last week,  the man is a fool, who has spawned more fools who believe combustion and oil is there for us to use and damn the consequences. This makes no sense; you’re endorsing fish guts and dinosaur juice because you’re scared the GREENS are going to take our cars and fun!! Come on; snap out of it as this last point is, I think, the most damaging. The public image of global warming and our energy needs has been intrinsically linked to hippies or California liberals, as some of my American friends would say. But that is stupid and comes back to my main point; if we had invested the money, time and expertise that we are putting in deep sea drilling and fracking and put it into finding ways to power cars and houses more efficiently we would, by now, have cars, bikes maybe even planes that used no or almost no combustion fuel and global warming would been a thing of the past but we haven’t and it isn’t.
So these are the issue we face; image, money and the power that go in hand with energy and why oil and the rest haven’t lost their grip. So why haven’t one of the many billionaires or band of millionaires banded together to create some sort of energy device that can save the human race, why isn’t this happening? Is it because there are no real leaders among the people we put on pedestals or is there truly no way of creating such devices? I think the first is more likely but take individual people aside your Bill Gates or Richard Branson, who together could have probably paid for some sort of tech jump but instead they spend all their money on a high flying plane to ferry their rich mates about but enough of them, why haven’t governments done anything drastic anything to jump start a solution? Why hasn’t there been a combined system set up to find and bring the greatest minds together to solve this issue and have it banked rolled by our mightiest nations – to solve the problem once and for all!!
Because we don’t live in a film or book, and there is no fairy tale ending. Our leaders think more about re-elections or what suits their electoral demographics, such as tax breaks and the like than solving World problems and making a real difference. I am no genius or anything but give me a few Dr. Peppers and some nachos and I could tell you that top range solar panels on your roof will save you half or more of your electricity bill. People earn money from their panels so could cut the bill to nothing and its all good clean energy. Now think ten thousand pounds for the best solar panels, 28 million households in the UK, I suspect you can see where I am going. Even if it costs 280billion to put solar panels on every roof top, which is a hell of a lot of money, but let’s think again, it wouldn’t be that much, it would be more like half because the more solar panels selling, the lower the price comes, so let’s say it’s actually 140 billion, still a huge amount of money but there would be no need for power stations, no need for all that money from the government and, more importantly, no need for money from the people going into the deep pockets of the energy behemoths, as people supply their own energy. Every house in the UK run by its own power source, a combination of solar panels and mini wind turbines, supplemented by the wind farms and hydro dams that are already in use around the country, meaning electricity is free or a least dirt cheap – so more money in people’s pockets which can help to kick start the economy!. Sorted, so why don’t they do it, after all, it makes sense and has taken me just a few minutes to thrash out the overall plan. Wouldn’t it be a better use of public money than the 689 billion the UK government spends every year on energy at the moment? I leave that one to you. This is just the UK, this tiny island, just think if America did it with its vast deserts and large houses it would be wonderful, it would remove our dependence on oil from the Middle East, straight away. Happily depriving those awful Princes of their 38 gold plated Lamborghinis and five tigers, what a silver lining! Doesn’t that all make sense and if that happened we could then start targeting fuel efficient cars and vehicles and as that happens; global warming would be avoided or at least stopped. I have said this before, if we Westerners are going to pretend that we are the global leaders then isn’t it time we actually led on an important issue and this is one that we can actively make the change in the space of a few years – if only the right people, with the right thinking, were just in the right place and willing to try.
Anyway that is my piece on energy for this week. What can I say; maybe i should go in to politics I mean I do talk enough nonsense to fit right in! Anyway the message stays the same as always, maybe we should start vetting our leaders and famous people a little better because at the moment they are not worth their weight and it is about time we had some who are. Have a good week.