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We dare not talk about this... Politicians dare not discuss it for fear of causing mass panic... North Sea oil and gas production peaked in 1999. The oil bonanza is over - the oil income spent. Britain is once again an energy importer. Worse still, we are increasingly dependent upon imports from the world's trouble spots and hostile regimes - Libya, Nigeria, several Gulf States and Russia. Even worse, successive governments have failed to invest in new electricity generation; let alone a switch from petroleum-powered vehicles. What they have done is closed most of the coal-fired power stations and destroyed the UK coal industry. Just at the point where we - and our EU partners - need to import growing quantities of oil, we face growing competition from fast developing countries such as China and India. Add to these problems the fact that the oil exporting countries are using a growing proportion of their dwindling oil and gas production to grow their own economies, and you have the end of cheap, fossil fuel-based energy. Nobody can predict with any certainty what the world beyond cheap oil will be like. One of the problems with many of the peak-oilers is that they tend to talk about the consequences in apocalyptic terms, as if the entire world will come crashing down around our ears within months of oil production peaking. This is, perhaps, understandable when we consider that the early peak-oilers were oil industry insiders concerned that the world was sleep-walking to a potential catastrophe. One response to this - one I personally hold to - is that if you want to see what a world without cheap oil looks like, go and look out of your window (or look at a newspaper): * A million families using food banks is what a world without cheap oil looks like * The replacement of high-paid/high-skilled employment with low-paid/low-skilled jobs is what a world without cheap oil looks like * The inability of the developed economies to stimulate economic growth is what a world without cheap oil looks like * Governments' (including those pursuing austerity policies) failure to avoid running up massive government debts is what a world without cheap oil looks like * The dramatic slowdown in the Chinese economy (which was meant to be the engine for global growth) is what a world without cheap oil looks like * The multi-trillion pound misallocation of funds to inflate asset bubbles and property speculation (because the real economy has gone into reverse) is what a world without cheap oil looks like. This is, of course, just the beginning. As supplies of cheap fossil fuels dwindle even as humanity's insatiable demand increases exponentially, our life-support systems will begin to fall apart, causing the biggest disaster to hit the UK since the Black Death!
In Art & Energy, Barry Lord argues that human creativity is deeply linked to the resources available on earth for our survival. By analyzing art, artists, and museums across eras and continents, Lord demonstrates how our cultural values and artistic expression are formed by our efforts to access and control the energy sources that make these cultures possible.
First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
We are facing a global energy crisis caused by world population growth, an escalating increase in demand, and continued dependence on fossil-based fuels for generation. It is widely accepted that increases in greenhouse gas concentration levels, if not reversed, will result in major changes to world climate with consequential effects on our society and economy. This is just the kind of intractable problem that Purdue University's Global Policy Research Institute seeks to address in the Purdue Studies in Public Policy series by promoting the engagement between policy makers and experts in fields such as engineering and technology. Major steps forward in the development and use of technology are required. In order to achieve solutions of the required scale and magnitude within a limited timeline, it is essential that engineers be not only technologically-adept but also aware of the wider social and political issues that policy-makers face. Likewise, it is also imperative that policy makers liaise closely with the academic community in order to realize advances. This book is designed to bridge the gap between these two groups, with a particular emphasis on educating the socially-conscious engineers and technologists of the future. In this accessibly-written volume, central issues in global energy are discussed through interdisciplinary dialogue between experts from both North America and Europe. The first section provides an overview of the nature of the global energy crisis approached from historical, political, and sociocultural perspectives. In the second section, expert contributors outline the technology and policy issues facing the development of major conventional and renewable energy sources. The third and final section explores policy and technology challenges and opportunities in the distribution and consumption of energy, in sectors such as transportation and the built environment. The book's epilogue suggests some future scenarios in energy distribution and use.
For decades, BP and Shell extracted the minerals, finance and skills of the UK. Always behind the scenes, Big Oil drove Britain's economy and profoundly influenced its culture. Then, at the start of the 21st Century, the tide seemed to go out - Britain's refineries and chemical plants were quietly closed; the North Sea oilfields declined. Now, while the country goes through the seismic upheavals of Brexit and the climate emergency, many believe the age of oil to be almost passed. However, as Crude Britannia reveals, reports of the industry's death are greatly exaggerated. Taking the reader on a journey across Britain - from North East Scotland, Merseyside and South Wales to the Thames Estuary and London - James Marriott and Terry Macalister tell the story of Britain's oil-stained past, present and future; of empire, economic deprivation and continuing political influence. The authors speak to oil company executives and oil traders, as well as former shipyard and refinery workers, film makers and musicians, activists and politicians, putting real people and places at the heart of a compelling political analysis. Offering a rare insight on how to read the history of modern Britain, Crude Britannia shows what needs to be done to create a new energy system, that tackles climate change and underpins a fairer democratic society.
If every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, what is wrong with the design of the systems that govern Britain? And how have they resulted in failures in housing, privatisation, outsourcing, education and healthcare? In How Did Britain Come to This? Gwyn Bevan examines a century of varieties of systemic failures in the British state. The book begins and ends by showing how systems of governance explain scandals in NHS hospitals, and the failures and successes of the UK and Germany in responding to Covid-19 before and after vaccines became available. The book compares geographical fault lines and inequalities in Britain with those that have developed in other European countries and argues that the causes of Britain’s entrenched inequalities are consequences of shifts in systems of governance over the past century. Clement Attlee’s postwar government aimed to remedy the failings of the prewar minimal state, while Margaret Thatcher’s governments in the 1980s in turn sought to remedy the failings of Attlee’s planned state by developing the marketised state, which morphed into the financialised state we see today. This analysis highlights the urgent need for a new political settlement of an enabling state that tackles current systemic weaknesses from market failures and over-centralisation. This book offers an accessible, analytic account of government failures of the past century, and is essential reading for anyone who wants to make an informed contribution to what an innovative, capable state might look like in a post-pandemic world.