Grecian2K
Very well known Exeweb poster
I can't believe that I'm saying this Tavy but I'm in 100% agreement here. 
Olive branch on offer here!
Trouble is with the solution that you make at the end is that it will take far to long for the present crisis.
Just as with railways the 60s/70s/80s "slash and burn" destruction of the mining infrastructure renders any quick restoration. A lot of my working life was spent around the former mining areas and the speed with which all traces of the industry was obliterated was astonishing.
OK some of the closures were economic but a lot more were political.
Regards fracking that is classic NIMBY territory. A few years back Cuadrilla were doing some mild exploration in Sussex (near our head office) driving past the "protest site" was quite amusing. Not the usual suspects - the "crusties" with their rusty bikes - but very nice families with the picnics out and their expensively printed protest banners on display by their neatly parked gas guzzling 4x4s...so stereotypically "middle England on manoeuvres".
Incidentally (and rather astonishingly) very little attention has been paid to the news - even at the height of an "energy crisis" EDF (the French state energy company) have quietly shut down production at their Hinkley Point B facility - even though their proposed replacement there is years behind schedule. And billions over budget.
Nuclear is obviously not without it's attendant risks but it is probably as close to "zero carbon" as you can get. Also, possibly, consider tidal power. An "infant" entrant, certainly, but surely worth further consideration. After all, is there anything more reliable than the diurnal rise and fall of the tides?
Sadly though, as I said, all of this is long term. We are paying the prices for half a century of governments (of both hues) in thrall to the economic orthodoxy that demanded "The State" should be made to appear as small as possible.
Those chickens do, now, suddenly be coming home to roost. All it takes is a madman in the Kremlin (or elsewhere) to pull the plug and shoite inevitably ensures. Putin may not be winning the "war on the ground" but he is making frightening inroads in the economic one.
Olive branch on offer here!Trouble is with the solution that you make at the end is that it will take far to long for the present crisis.
Just as with railways the 60s/70s/80s "slash and burn" destruction of the mining infrastructure renders any quick restoration. A lot of my working life was spent around the former mining areas and the speed with which all traces of the industry was obliterated was astonishing.
OK some of the closures were economic but a lot more were political.
Regards fracking that is classic NIMBY territory. A few years back Cuadrilla were doing some mild exploration in Sussex (near our head office) driving past the "protest site" was quite amusing. Not the usual suspects - the "crusties" with their rusty bikes - but very nice families with the picnics out and their expensively printed protest banners on display by their neatly parked gas guzzling 4x4s...so stereotypically "middle England on manoeuvres".
Incidentally (and rather astonishingly) very little attention has been paid to the news - even at the height of an "energy crisis" EDF (the French state energy company) have quietly shut down production at their Hinkley Point B facility - even though their proposed replacement there is years behind schedule. And billions over budget.
Nuclear is obviously not without it's attendant risks but it is probably as close to "zero carbon" as you can get. Also, possibly, consider tidal power. An "infant" entrant, certainly, but surely worth further consideration. After all, is there anything more reliable than the diurnal rise and fall of the tides?
Sadly though, as I said, all of this is long term. We are paying the prices for half a century of governments (of both hues) in thrall to the economic orthodoxy that demanded "The State" should be made to appear as small as possible.
Those chickens do, now, suddenly be coming home to roost. All it takes is a madman in the Kremlin (or elsewhere) to pull the plug and shoite inevitably ensures. Putin may not be winning the "war on the ground" but he is making frightening inroads in the economic one.
