Friday, March 22, 2013

It's the Energy, Stupid


Goodbye Denmark. Eight years is a long time to live somewhere.

 
And so begins my second attempt at becoming a free-range organic human being. We arrived in Cornwall last week after two grueling days of driving and one night spent on a ferry in the North Sea. On it we had a cabin with a porthole and I found myself waking in the middle of the night in one of those ‘where am I?’ panicky moments. I looked out at the dark sea beneath a mantle of stars and could see that we were sailing past some oil installations which were lit up like Christmas trees. It was strange to see them out there in the dark as they looked so peaceful and benign, but in my bleary-eyed state my mind began to play tricks and they morphed into aliens straight out of H.G.Wells, come down from the inky reaches of space to suck out the lifeblood of our planet.

‘What was I doing?’ I asked myself. ‘Was I crazy?’. Regular readers will remember that I quit my comfortable and well-paid job as a copywriter in Copenhagen and decided to buy a piece of woodland in the extreme southwest of Britain in a bid to distance myself and my family from the vagaries of the industrial system before it grinds to a halt and causes widespread mayhem and misery. I fell into a restless sleep and awoke in the grey dawn and lay there for some time thinking about what lay ahead.

It had been a pleasant drive the previous day across Denmark from Copenhagen to Esbjerg, on the west coast. The sun had been shining and everything was crisp with ice. The car struggled a bit with the huge trailer it was pulling, so I kept the speed low to try and conserve fuel. The port was like everything in Denmark; clean, efficient and quiet. We drove onto the ferry and parked up on the cargo deck next to a truck full of pigs bound for slaughter in England. My youngest daughter looked through the metal bars at the worried-looking creatures and has since refused to eat even the tiniest morsel of meat.

When we hit Essex the next day the contrast was stark. The weather was foul; wet and windy, and for almost the entire day we battled across England’s tired and overloaded road network, dodging potholes and managing to frustrate drivers who wanted to overtake us. On one section of motorway a number of signs had been erected asking ‘See anything suspicious? Ring this number …’. Motorcycle police were buzzing around and stop and searches were taking place. Was this kind of thing now routine in the UK? After 13 years of living abroad it would be interesting to find out what else had changed.

We drove around a section of the notorious M25 London orbital motorway, eager to get through the crushing over-developed southeast. The kids needed to use the toilet so I had to pull in at South Mimms service station – an unpleasant experience and a reminder of how commercialized and crass things had become. It used to be that when driving on a motorway – a public highway – that a sign would alert you to the presence of the next service stop. It would be a simple icon of a petrol pump, and if you could grab a bite to eat there it would also display a knife and fork icon. This has now been changed so that the name of the chain restaurant and oil company is displayed. So, if you really want a Burger King, you know you’ll have to drive an extra 30 miles to get to the next one. It avoids disappointments. If there is a hell, it will look a bit like South Mimms service station, with all its smiling ‘eager to help’ shop assistants, its constant announcement of ‘buy one get one free’ deals and its tables of porky human beings absent-mindedly pushing burgers into their mouths as they play computer games on their iPads. 

Driving on through the driving rain we eventually escaped the gravitational pull of London and began our trundle down to the southwest. By evening we had just made it past Bristol and then, a couple of hours later, Exeter. Regarded by many as the beginning of the back of beyond, it certainly felt like we were heading into another realm as we passed over the windy sleet-lashed high moors and drove ever onwards towards where the sky was dark and the signs of human life became increasingly scant. Powerful cars with private number plates – Audis, new model Range Rovers, sports cars – roared past us as we traversed those bleak moors in the night. Who were these people? No doubt they were second home owners, heading down from London for the weekend to stay in their idyllic cottages with sea views that locals can no longer afford.

It felt strange to return to this, the land of my birth. For all the deadweight of crass consumerist culture that had infested the land, all the ugly cheap housing estates, the soulless motorways, the bottomless banality of the national discourse, the wasteland of popular culture - I knew that beneath all of that the layers of history and the sacred hills and towers and places of great wildness and peace existed still. This is what I was looking for on my return. I also know that there are people here – many people – who have simply had enough of all this plastic culture and have said ‘stop’. Perhaps there aren’t quite a hundred monkeys yet, but we might be up in the mid-seventies in some places.

It would be easy to lament the fall, but then that’s a tiring game and it doesn’t leave you a winner. Britain as a modern energy-rich nation, it seems certain, had peaked and was now on the downward trajectory and picking up pace. In Denmark there had been few signs of anything being out of order in the wake of the financial crisis, but in Britain the signs are everywhere and they are not possible to ignore. I’ve only been here a week, but a week is long enough to hear the shrill voices of alarm. High streets are shuttering up, companies are folding, people are worried about their savings and their retirements, poverty is getting worse. People shop in a place called Poundland - which is like Walmart but not as classy.

I sat through the Budget on Wednesday, watching it on television as I nursed one of the most savage episodes of flu I’ve ever come down with (‘High quality germs are the only thing we British still do well,’ quipped a friend). For those of you who don’t know, the government’s annual fiscal planning announcements are a spectator sport on a par with the American Superbowl in terms of press coverage and popular discussion. The chancellor, George Osborne, didn’t offer anything new. More giant infrastructure projects, tax breaks for gas fracking companies and, for the masses, a penny in the pound off pints of beer. The opposition jeered and heckled – so much so that the deputy speaker almost had to throw some of them out of the chamber – and then Ed Miliband gave quite a rousing counter speech attacking the government on its economic record. The expected GDP growth figures had been revised down again for the umpteenth time and now the Labour Party were enjoying their position as taunters.




It was enjoyable watching Miliband attack the assembled bunch of privileged millionaires on the opposite benches – the rough and tumble of British politics is in stark contrast to the staid and bland Danish version (even if it is merely a sideshow) - but the really funny thing was that if his party had been in power the economic growth figures would be more or less exactly the same. It should be clear by now that with persistently high oil prices, a Eurozone economy in recession, phase two of the financial crisis popping up in Cyprus, a host of massively over-leveraged large companies in the UK who are soon to face hiked interest rates, maxed-out consumers etc, etc, no amount of austerity easing or borrowing is going to continue to sustain the unsustainable.

Speaking of unsustainable, no sooner had I arrived here than the government gave permission for a massive nuclear power station to be built down the road from me. Okay, so Somerset isn’t quite ‘down the road’ but it would be the closest such large nuclear facility to where I live. It will cost £14 billion to build (and then some, probably) but the French utility EDF wants a guarantee on the price of the electricity that it will produce. It’s a safe bet that they want quite a high price for many decades, and if the government grants this then it will lock the country into paying a French company huge amounts of money into the far future, all the while endangering the surrounding land and seas. Local news stations have been giving it a positive spin, swallowing the hype about ‘5000’ jobs being created and interviewing a local dairy farmer who said he expected to sell ‘20% more milk to the thirsty power station workers.’ That’s if anyone will be buying his dairy products at all after the first inevitable leak occurs …

If Britain had an energy gauge you would now see the needle heading into the orange area. Nobody, well hardly anybody, is willing to face this uncomfortable fact. Indeed, it is being reported in the news today that Britain will run out of natural gas next week. Yes, you’d better re-read that. A cold front is coming in and covering the country with snow and quite simply, there ain’t enough gas in the system. Gas-fired power stations may also have to shut down, potentially leading to blackouts. But rest assured, the government has told us that we can just ‘go shopping’ for some extra gas in Russia. Hmmm, isn’t Russia currently blackmailing Cyprus over its gas reserves in exchange for bailing out its bloated and corrupt financial sector? How long before that big bear of a country has Britain in a similar head lock? I've written before about the coming energy crunch that is due to hit Britain, but I've barely unpacked my suitcase before the first wave seems due to strike.

But anyway. I’m not focusing on what’s dying, right now there’s just too much to point a stick at. Every end is a new beginning for something else. As I have mentioned in previous posts, Cornwall is an area rich in local producers, crafts people and artisans. Especially right down the end where I am now living, in Penwith. Tomorrow I’ll be attending my first Transition meeting at the town hall, which is but a five minute walk from the house we are renting, and I’ll be getting to meet some kindred spirits who gravitated here for similar reasons to me.

Then, if the weather clears up (it was sunny the first few days and has been raining non-stop since) I’m planning to plant a few fruit and nut trees over at our woodland. I have sent off for some replacement worms for my wormery after the last team were euthanized by the Danish biophobia police: it’s the first tiny step in helping to build up the soil on the pasture land I’m building up an edible forest on. I’ll let you know how it goes over at the Tales From Fox Wood blog.

19 comments:

  1. Hard news about the nuclear reactor. The sort of thing that settles in your gut like something you can't digest and can't vomit. I had got to the seriously intending stage of moving to a starting-up intentional community in NB (Canada) only to realize the location was fewer than fifty miles from Atlantic Canada's only nuclear power plant. Frustrating. People don't seem to realize that if the electricity fails for only a couple of weeks, those things are started on an irretrievable course of meltdown. It's blowing a gale now where I am that is fiercer than anything I have ever experienced, the latter including a couple of tropical hurricanes. Multiple trees down, local structures not even wholly repaired from the last big blow several weeks ago when a couple of roofs came off in their entirety, poof, yet to see what this tree-battering demon will have done. I just watched a plank of vinyl siding come loose from a nearby building and go up, up, up, in the updraft, up over the Bay, thousands of feet amazingly up it went, a whole plank of vinyl siding, still going up when I lost sight of it. While it snows and snows on the Mainland, and your own warm Guernsey drifts over. This is happening much faster than any of the projections I've read. We're in a psychotic carnival, one of those cheap, shoddy fairs on a huge tarmacked parking lot, and the ride we chose is spinning faster and faster and we can't get off. I remember those caged ferris wheels that tumble you over and over while going round and round and half the riders scream to the carnie from their puke-stinking steel-meshed cages, letusoff!, letusoff!, and the carnie doesn't even blink. You might consider relocating to Newfoundland. There are a lot of abandoned outports, accessible only by boat, where a determined group could hunker down and watch what's coming. My guess is that the best place to be will be the least populated. Let me know if you can find like minds and want to come. I'll join you. I can contribute horticultural and textile skills.

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    1. I like the steel-meshed cage analogy and can remember them well! As far as the nuclear reactor goes, well it's not a done deal yet because they are arguing over costs. That's an argument that will likely escalate - and then there are the 10+ years it will take to build the thing. Did I mention that there's already a nuclear power station there? It's smaller than the one they are planning, but it's quite far from me, really - about 200 miles to the east - and the winds tend to come out of the west.

      Intentional community? You should have a word with Aaron aka LucidDreams at emtmusings@blogspot.com.

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    2. No. Not like that, no criticism intended toward Aaron at LucidDreams. Just like-minded people electig to live in proximity to each other, off the grid, what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours, everybody minding his/her own business. People would sort themselves out into their own levels of want and contentment. It's not even possible to live in willing poverty in the "system". Compulsory utilities are expensive; alternative heating, animal husbandry, not permitted; jobs are foul and degrading, people compelled to work -- all the hours of their endless, clock-dragging days -- just for the wherewithal to ensure they have food and shelter enough to ensure they show up for their foul, degrading work the next day. Nothing new in *that* observation. And for what? A particle board house with vinyl siding, black mold eating at the carcinogenic adhesives even before its construction is complete, all the beams and joists and struts put together with hardware "joiners", production of which latter outsourced to cheapest Chinese bidder, good stuff, eh, sleep easy in your "quality home", zero construction skill or integrity required. That's all people really get out of it; and a few frenzied, exorbitantly overpriced vacations in "sunny wherever", where the only object is to stay so blotto for two weeks that you won't have the presence of mind to shriek in despair at your predicament. Boy we sure are having fun here in sunny wherever! So. When do you suppose Starbucks will open a franchise on the peak of Everest? --Just self-regarding people, content with mismatched clothes, who cares, anyway?, whatever fits, and food, whatever's in the pantry. I eat boiled potatoes with garlic and salt and pepper, soaked in vinegar, and homemade bread and yogurt (cultured from dry milk powder) almost every day. I haven't died of malnutrition yet. Why is it that people living in systematically mandated poverty have no access to garden plots!? That leaves most of my miniscule, unearned, social-parasite income for books and materials for my work in the fine crafts -- "uneconomic" production, people moue glibly, greedily, in fake comaraderie; badgering me to sell, offering me packs of cigarettes for fifty hours labour. Go where your heart and reason lead and break the rules, or acquiesce. You do have that choice. If even a few would come together, people can get by on so little -- fuck the solar panels, they're just another trap -- and everybody grew a lot of everything, like the townspeople in Jerome Bixby's, 'It's a *Good* Life', our choiceless world being a resounding metaphor for Bixbay's grey nothingness outside the village -- even with climate change, there'd probably always be enough of *something* to eat. That means all their (our) time is OURS, for prideful, passionate work, me in textiles, you in whatever. Once one has her/his tools, which pretty much everyone can get one way or another, usually legally, and a garden, you're fixed! What's wrong with poverty? "My mind to me a kingdon is, such present joy therein I find." We need to reclaim our lives and our integrity.

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  2. I've been watching the nuclear power debate with interest. Like you, I left the UK thirteen years ago and came to California. We've been considering Cornwall ourselves, my wife just got back from spending eight weeks there. She loved the area but was shocked at how badly the UK economy is faring.

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    1. The UK, economy-wise, feels like some kind of twilight zone. On the one hand we are seeing the rise of extreme poverty, and on the other it is BAU and people are driving round in their new BMWs and talking about holidays in Florida.

      My wife went down to the job centre yesterday and asked if there were any jobs. There are plenty, she was told, and could more or less expect to pick one up within a week or so.

      The UK economy might be on a downward trajectory, but let's not forget it is also one of the world's richest, and all that money isn't going to disappear overnight.

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  3. Heard about the nuclear plants, but the source said no one was likely to spend the money so its all conceptual. If the UK's lucky the Uranium will run out before the electricity does.

    How are you going to deal with the cold? Firewood and a rocket mass heater sounds like the best option. Also theirs gravity lights being built and designed in the UK.

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    1. I'm not too worried about the nuclear being built out. I doubt it will ever be affordable.

      I have plenty of resources to deal with the cold. I can get wood from my woodland and I have snapped up two very efficient cast iron wood burners in Denmark. Nobody makes efficient stoves like the Scandinavians do - for them it's (historically) been a matter of life and death to make sure yours stove is efficient.

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  4. I must say that when I first started reading your blog, I was a bit scared. Recently, one of the other peak aware people on the web I had been following, KMO of the C-Realm podcast, had left his powered down living space for New York City. I had just recently downsized my own life and thought to myself that if everyone was doing the opposite after doing what I had just decided to do, then maybe I had made a huge mistake. I have to admit that early on in the blog, you were playing coy with your readers by not initially telling the whole story as to why you left Spain. I am glad you made it back to a happier space and I feel a little more secure in my own life decision. -Brian @ theemergist.wordpress.com

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    1. Thanks Brian. I'm not doing anything too radical imo. Neoprimitivism is out for me. If it were just me on my own then maybe I would be living in the bushes and eating squirrels. Having a family puts some limits on what I would like to do and what I am able to do.

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  5. Jason; I wouldn't sweat the nuke too much. They are very expensive, way beyond the initial sticker price,and even if the guaranteed rates deal goes through, financial liability backing is getting to be a tough hurdle as well. did the gov't aproval include for that, or was it simply permitting? During the last portion of the nuke buildout here in the States, there were many nukes that got started and never finished. Some were all the way up to ready for fuel, and still got mothballed. The general financial climate is much weorse now, so I will be surprised if any more get built. There are actually two being built right now, the first in thirty years or so, but I bet they never finish.

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    1. Hi Steve. As I mentioned above ... I'm not overly worried. They reckon it will take 10 years to build, so we can perhaps double that, or even triple it if there are lots of protests. By then the scale of the cost will seem astronomically unaffordable.

      I only really mentioned it to shed some light on the kind of debate going on here.

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  6. Thanks for the plug Jason.

    Glad to hear you've made it back to your magical homeland. You've embarked on another great journey. Yet this time it seems the opposite of your nomadic ways. I'm looking forward to seeing how the hobbit house in your woodland foxland turns out. You're an inspiration to us all. I wish we were on the same side of the pond.

    The Foxstead project hit some speed bumps, but it's still got traction. Seems we may end up in NE Texas for a bit before arriving in Arkansas. We've got a new member offering up 40 something acres. Seems water is the problem due to overall drought in Texas...but you can't look a gift horse in the mouth. Arkansas is definitely the last great frontier in the states. Undeveloped Ozarks which can be had for 17 to 18 grand an acre. We'll see what happens.

    If anybody reading this is interested in what we are doing with the Foxstead project, you can find out about it at doomsteaddiner.org. Go to the forum and look for the "community owned doomstead" thread.

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    1. Ozarks? Is that where that movie 'Winters Bone' is set? Looks interesting ...

      I'll be following with interest. Would love to visit one day.

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  7. Hi Jason, welcome back to blighty to you and your family. I've been hard at it planting cherry trees, plums, hazlenuts and an assortment of berries over the last month in my garden and allotment and now look forward to reading how your food forest develops.

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    1. Thanks Phil. The only tree I've managed to plant so far is a half-dead Christmas tree bought from a supermarket in Copenhagen 3 years ago. I've been so sick with fu since then that I've hardly been outside - a real welcome return!

      Feeling better now, after some Chinese herbal medicine that cost and arm and a leg.

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    2. Those Corns have obviously been harbouring some virulent flu strains as a welcome to newcomers and tourists and to sort the men from the boys. I'm sure you will have passed the test. At least we have a late spring this year so the sap will not be rising yet and there are still tree planting opportunities.

      My favourite medicine is honey, freshly squeezed lemon juice and whisky topped up with hot water. It always does the trick for me. Does that count as herbal?

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  8. Running out of gas? hmmm... Sounds like the start of an Alex Scarrow thriller: Last Light, Afterlight.

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    1. Never fear - apparently a ship-load of LNG has just arrived from Quatar. Phew - anyone would think the msm are playing false jeopardy with us.

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  9. I just qualified for a FREE BURGER KING GIFT CARD, claim yours, this promotion is open...

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I'll try to reply to comments as time permits.