to Nick Verduyn

Dear Nick - and Liz (who may have commented on WhatsApp but then deleted it)

As I see it, the scandal is that every government has a policy of turning gas into electricity even when North Sea gas is severely depleting and LNG is having to be shipped in from overseas.  We have interconnectors to the European mainland, that means we are becoming more dependant on other nations for gas.

There is less gas around so prices are rising to bring inflation and suffering for the poor, especially in this coming winter.  There is no cheap gas, anywhere, it seems.  Russia dominates the gas market and decides who to sell to.  At the same time, there is no policy to reduce demand for electricity or gas.  Little insulation of the housing stock and even new homes are being built to insufficient insulation standards, too.  This will mean retrofitting today's new properties in coming years!

EVs are dependant on the fossil fuels that are becoming in short supply and which, in burning, screw up the planet's climates.  We are well and truly snookered! 

Our only hope is renewables and in our own salvation.  The government is clueless and ineffective.

Let me try this out on you!

MY CLUES FOR A CLUELESS, FLOUNDERING, WAYWARD GOVERNMENT!

1. Each person has patriotic (and selfish!) duty to minimise their use of gas and oil.
2. Lag ourselves and our buildings.
3. 18 or 19 C max for the room you sit in.
4. Don't heat other rooms.
5. Every roof in the land plastered with PV on every E, W, S roof.
6. Every home, office, factory as a mini power station, like my home is.
7. Battery storage from when the sun shines.
8. Food farms NOT solar farms and land for timber growing to minimise the use of climate disaster cement.
9. Lockdown for climate by an immediate 50% cut in leisure car mileage from what you did in 2019.  As I'm doing.
10. Fuel rationing, as part of climate lockdown, as we almost did in the last energy crisis of 73/74.
11. Immediately abandon ruinous, grossly irresponsible and luxury High Scandal 2 that is only of help for those travelling between four cities and two airports.
12. Abandon the other transport mode construction that simply complicates life for public transport users having to switch between what is becoming a host of different modes and classes of travel, dependant on your income.
13. Keep it simple with bus and train, only.
14. Continue with offshore and onshore wind farms, such is the crisis.
15. STOP the cycle of demolition, building, demolition, rebuilding.
16. STOP the destruction of urban railway lines.
17. START the upgrading of cycle-walk mudways and puddle-strewn towpaths for self-powered use by responsible shared users.
18. Very strict enforcement over cutting air pollution from wood-burning stoves.
19. Preserve remaining gas reserves for when the wind won't blow and the sun won't shine.
20. Induction electric cooking or, cooking on wood-burning stoves.
21. STOP preparing for war with massive rises in military expenditure.
22. END the military strutting on the world stage, especially in the South China Sea.  How would we like it in the N Atlantic?
23. Put the military workers preparing for war into insulating every building and making every building PV dependant.  PV and wood is all we've got!
24. Voluntary and compulsory climate lockdown before it's forced upon us, anyway.
25. Compulsory water meters installed.  Water is a scarce resource, too in a fast-warming world!

FINISH FOR GOOD, the live for today in heavenly delusion and hell for tomorrow economics.