[roenxi]

Democracy is remarkably robust and people fighting is not an indication that it is faltering. The UK has a long and proud history of tenuous balance between different groups that are all on the verge of doing violence to one another, the current era is remarkably peaceful and cooperative.

People are undercalling the effects of a multi-decade campaign against energy security in favour of environmentalist goals. The driver of the environment of cooperation post-WWII has been abundant cheap energy. That meant there was always a path forward where everyone was better off - which is no longer so obviously the case.

To be fair, it isn't just a policy problem. The UK is running out of fuel. But this article isn't going to the root cause of why people can't find an easy grow-the-pie solution to keep everyone working together.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Absolutely none of that is true.

The UK has the highest energy prices of any country in Europe and - not coincidentally - its energy companies make the highest profits.

The UK could have promoted renewables, and did for a while. But the current government - like you - is actively hostile to decentralised solutions that work, and prefers to promote corporate choke points over energy supply that have put the entire population at risk of fuel poverty.

It's been the same story across most of the privatised industries. The concept of the common good has been replaced with an oligarchic dystopia in which a few corrupt winners shake down everyone else.

The root cause is neoliberal dogma, which has been aggressively promoted to the population since the 1970s. It was sold as "freedom". But it's only ever been used to justify increasingly extreme economic apartheid and incredibly poor strategic planning.

The UK is not a poor country. It's not even an energy poor country. But it's on course to having the poorest working population in Europe.

That's not the fault of windmills and solar panels, and it's disingenuous to suggest it is.

[roenxi]

> It's not even an energy poor country.

Looking at the tabulated data [0], in 1965 the UK was roughly 200% the European average for per capita energy consumption. Now it is ~75% of the same. It has dropped in absolute terms too (dropped to ~75% of the 1965 figure). In fact, on a per-capita basis the UK is neck-and-neck with China. Nearly, actually it is slightly behind.

It looks a lot like an energy poor country.

> That's not the fault of windmills and solar panels, and it's disingenuous to suggest it is.

I'm not suggesting that. I assume it was decades of policy where people were asking "how do we kill off our cheapest source of energy", consistent with other western states. The UK - like everyone else - should have been focusing on how to secure cheap fossil fuels, how to bring down the cost of nuclear energy and loosening the regulatory state to accept that energy is needed despite NIMBYism. If the market says wind and solar are cheap then build those too, but only if they are cheap enough to make stand-alone economic sense.

Instead I suspect policy attempted to achieve an unachievable level of environmental non-interventionism and look like they are paying the price.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab...

POSTSCRIPT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_electricity_production... - mission success! Fossil fuels being phased out without a ready replacement. A country becoming energy poor in one graph. Of course there'll be some political tension with these sort of fundamentals.

[fader]

> in 1965 the UK was roughly 200% the European average for per capita energy consumption. Now it is ~75% of the same. It has dropped in absolute terms too (dropped to ~75% of the 1965 figure)...

> It looks a lot like an energy poor country.

I'm not sure that follows. Couldn't you also say "it looks a lot like an energy efficient country"?

The Core i7 in my laptop uses a fraction of the energy of the Pentium III in a desktop a couple of decades ago, but I certainly don't want to go back to the P3 today.

[roenxi]

Do you reckon you have reduced your energy substantially since the 2000s? With no lifestyle compromises? A 25% drop is a lot more than a Pentium.

They're poor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#History covers most of the actual argument (and evidence) on why energy efficiency doesn't work that way. In an energy-rich environment the efficiency gains would go in to charging phones and tablets, or running extra cores and graphics cards. Or using electric vehicles. Something. Consumption wouldn't be dropping.

[stubish]

Double or triple glazing, insulation, mandatory energy efficient building codes, fuel efficiency standards, energy efficient light bulbs.... 25% reduction is certainly plausible. I'm surprised it isn't more, but I guess some industries remain high consumers. The lifestyle compromise is more expensive buildings, which hurts at least in the short term.

[fader]

Personally, yes -- I have significantly smaller gas and electric bills despite being in a larger house in a colder climate as a result of better construction and insulation and more energy-efficient appliances. I also moved to a city where I can walk or bike for daily tasks so I fill up my (more fuel-efficient) car's gas tank about a quarter as often.

I'm not claiming this is the case generally across the UK -- I'm in the US and don't know the situation there. Just that it doesn't automatically follow that "I'm using less energy" necessarily equates to "less energy is available for me to use".

[roenxi]

Heh, ouch. Hopefully that is a lesson to me in phrase my questions more carefully.

However, I don't think that is quite enough to show that Jevons' paradox has been avoided - you'll find that with the savings from paying less for heating and your car you have a bit more money left over - what happened to it? Because it represents the energy that was freed up. It isn't enough to say "Well I spent less energy on heating and petrol so total energy consumption went down". Maybe you consumed the energy as a capital good, or maybe it just got shunted to someone else to use.

It is really difficult to convince an economy to use less energy without some sort of legal or physical barrier. We'll find that you haven't actually caused a reduction in energy overall once the dust settles - because you haven't done anything to reduce the amount of energy production so it isn't obvious why it would have dropped.

[nonethewiser]

> . I also moved to a city where I can walk or bike for daily tasks so I fill up my (more fuel-efficient) car's gas tank about a quarter as often.

That's not an efficiency gain though, which is to his point.

[lgkghfjhgjhfg]

The "neoliberal dogma" has made America the most prosperous country in the world. Your thesis doesn't compute.

[adgjlsfhk1]

except it really hasn't. America was dominant after WW2 and has mostly been costing downhill since. in the past 2 decades inequality has increased, life expectancy is stagnant, obesity is up, cost of healthcare and education is up. public transit is worse than it was in the 1950s. it's pretty hard too find a metric on which the US is doing better on than Europe at this point

[defrost]

Specifically it has made a small group of US citizens extremely rich.

As a country, looking at all citizens, the US isn't exactly a stellar example of wealth distribution, median outcomes, education, or health delivery.

[TapWaterBandit]

https://www.britainremade.co.uk/

There are some grass roots efforts emerging to convince people of the importance of purely technocratic improvements that society needs. In this case, cheaper energy and faster transportation.