Who are you wowing? Me or @Klopptimist
You do realise that was a joke don’t you?
I think it was a low-flying plane, brother.
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Aside from that, pricing domestic energy use on a tiered system, which is the basis of your argument doesnt require us to have to decide in the specific what is “desired” and what is not. It simply requires us to set the tier thresholds based on known usage patterns and then allow people to make their own decisions on how they want to spend their budget. No one is telling you that you dont get to have a heated pool, but you have 22,000kw/hours of power you can use before the cost per unit doubles. If you can fit the pool heater in your energy budget then great, if not then be prepared to pay a luxury price for a luxury item.
I think the biggest impracticality to this, outside of paradigm shifting change being difficult to introduce, is it would cause massive readjustment in the housing market (a 3000 sq ft two story house may no longer be worth 150k more than the 1600 sq ft bungalow on the same block) and if there is one thing that makes people revolt its fucking with their house prices.
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and when you and I and everyone else is loooong gone from this world, the earth will still not give two fucks about us. it’ll repair the damage as it always does.
Pretty soon they’ll find ways to blame mankind for tectonic plate movement acceleration and how Tokyo will eventually collide with Vancouver in 500,000,000 years.
as for hot tubs… don’t you take my hot tub! (just kidding, my wife doesn’t like the idea of soaking in dead skin cells).
That’s debatable.
I didn’t, no. It doesn’t read like a joke.
in a word…Pryp’yat’.
even I figured out he was being sarcastic, and I’m just a dumb Canadian!
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Imagine the world you live in where those are your cost of living choices.
Try the people chosing between eating and heating their homes.
There isn’t a cost of living crisis, its greed before need.
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Is that really what you think the concern is about? The sustainability of an inert piece of rock?
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The follow up about the butler wasn’t a give away? Bud, lighten up……
I thought you got it was a joke…
Then I thought maybe you didn’t…
Then you 180’d on your initial response…
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con·text
/ˈkäntekst/
noun
- the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.
“the decision was taken within the context of planned cuts in spending”
- the parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning.
“word processing is affected by the context in which words appear”
Out of curiosity, going / been away this summer? If so, is one foreign holiday OK? 2? At which point do holidays to far flung places become unacceptable?
that’s dependent on your budget. airline prices are double what they were 6 months ago.
the real elephant in the room…who is using the energy.
I agree context is critical. The context of the comment you responded to was that how important we think things are, how much we think we deserve them or want to do them, none of it will actually change the trajectory we’re on in terms of the impending devastating impacts to human society. Responding about the sustainability of the rock we live on is ignoring that context and a really unhelpful non-sequitur
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in response to his mention of climate change and the earth not giving a fuck, it’s completely in context with how I read it. if that wasn’t his intended message, then it didn’t convey that to me.
There already is a cap on what the consumer pays. The fundamental problem is that is nowhere near enough to match the underlying cost of energy. The delay in raising it has produced ~45 corporate bankruptcies. Raising it to where it has to be is going to have devastating effects on vulnerable households, but what seems to fall out of the solipsistic UK conversation is that the UK is an energy importer, and more or less has to be indefinitely. Shell may be London-domiciled, but its record profits are global, not an available margin for the unique benefit of UK energy consumers.
It is a dire situation, but there is no avoiding the reality that the UK is facing a necessary decline in living standards. Where there is some choice is mitigating the extreme consequences for those most vulnerable, or not.
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For me, the ongoing crisis will have as a result that people will consume less. Not by their choice, but by force. Of course, the rich part of society will consume as always, but the poorer masses will be forced to refrain their consumption of energy and luxury goods in order to be able to pay the bills.
The poorest will be hit hardest, that’s a certainty, especially in countries which promote hard capitalism as their standard model and haven’t much social means to outbalance the effects. As a result, they most probably will experience civil unrest, maybe worse. What happened in Sri Lanka is just the beginning imo.
In time, the forced lesser demand on energy will drive down the prices again, but it’s difficult to say what the rhythm of this will be. Six months? A year? A decade? No idea. Of course, this will also depend on the pace at which governments drive forward alternative energy projects. In that sense, the ongoing war in Ukraine is tragic, but nonetheless an opportunity.
It’s most certainly a global problem. Having energy companies tripling their benefits while the world descends into chaos isn’t right, and should be immediately addressed by charging them with exceptional taxes, which can then be used to alleviate the most urgent social problems.
Is there a genuine political willingness to do that though? 