Rationing as an essential part of life

10 June 2008 

WARNING!  This is my green propaganda, green economics coming out as I

munch my lunch!

Thanks for the thoughts, Colin, on Newsnight.

I have not heard that speculators and the work of OPEC are responsible for
the 12p/litre price difference between petrol and diesel.  I have heard
that it is due to the greater demand for diesel than petrol and greater
difficulties in processing diesel compared with petrol.  As regards oil in
general, experts on Radio 4 news programmes have mentioned speculators as
being partly to blame, as well as supply/demand problems.

Far safer to take home the message of rising prices that the more we
conserve the stuff through keeping to speed limits, cycling and
driving/flying less, the more we will keep prices down and preserve the
planet's wealth.

Far more sensible to assume that we may be approaching peak oil plateau and to
take the green message more seriously that money and energy do not grow on trees.  The problem is that none of us want to change our lifestyles
and patterns of behaviour until we are forced to!  I certainly don't want
to give up my Scottish car camping holidays in Scotland in April and May
every year.  But, as you so rightly put it at Llanrug, fuel rationing must
be introduced for the good of all of us and future generations.

I am now writing about fuel rationing being more important than congestion
charging and, rationing as an essential part of making all life last that
little bit longer.

All the best

Tim

PS  The first law of capitalism and of conventional economic wisdom is that
we must rip into all finite resources as if they are infinite.
The second law is that you live only for the present and pay no regard over
our future prospects.
The third law is that you don't cost in anything like the full or complete
or external costs of our exploitation of our one-off cornucopia of
resources.

It is a live now pay later economics where the message of ever-rising
prices for food, fuel and everything else has no bearing on our over
consumption, overpopulation, overreaching of ourselves.  We just carry on
overdoing it without any acknowledgement that the careless, "You've never
had it so good" bonanza may have something to do with it!

Our leaders and the people are all in denial, I think!