Pfft a sensible post. Go away and don't ruin my cynicism.
I have below average bills because we adjusted our behaviour a couple of years ago by choice not because we had to. We still can do a lot of things to reduce our consumption as a household. We are working slowly to improve what we do without being full on evangelical greenies.
I do read a lot of threads on mn where people say how much they use and wonder how the hell they are using so much.
Then I have family stay or visit friends and see habits which I take for granted.
And thats part of it. If everyone reduced their consumption then demand isn't as high. And if demand isn't as high then prices won't peak at even higher levels.
The person who insists on having their heating set to 23C all day and all night because they can and they have the means to afford and its no one else's business really doesn't get that it still impacts other people.
I had an argument on mn this week with people over weight and paying tax and how someone being overweight becomes everyone else's problem due to the taxation system and impact on hospitals.
Yet this is viewed as unacceptable and judgmental. And accused of not doing the same thought process for other issues which is rot.
The problem is, it doesn't stop our connectivity. Our lifestyle choices are not individual. They do not exist in a vacuum. They are not neutral in terms of how they affect others.
We do all need to reconsider aspects of our lives that we take for granted, and make small changes, regardless of cost and our ability to pay. We shouldn't be shouting to the rooftops about how wonderful we are for doing it. It should be a given as a mindset that everyone should realise.
I know penny dropping is happening in my closest circle of friends. We will afford the hikes. But it will affect us and we are all talking about how it will impact use directly and indirectly this year and in the longer term.
And then there is stuff we can do on a community level. I know it's going to catch out families in DS's class. Families you don't expect. People who have unwittingly over stretched.
The whole thing is awful.
And it does annoy me in terms of all the blame the Tory comments. This isn't an issue that's restricted to the last 12 years. It's about a period of short termist policy making chasing populism which has existed in this country for much longer than that. In cultural terms the concept of the yuppy was socially accepted and encouraged. And projections about global warming date back that far. As do projections about the reserves of fossil fuels. So even if you don't believe in the former you still should be concerned about the impact of the latter. All of this is without the Ukrainian situation which has merely brought forward issues by only a couple of years.
We need a real shift in mentality across the board in everything we do.
As others are pointing out, this isn't about wanting to return to decades ago or how we should have an expectation of progression. It's ultimately about the fact that society isn't grasping we have finite resources and our innovations to mitigate against that, isn't keeping pace with our excessive demands. We need to curb the excessive bit as a society.
We face massive challenges as a society which require planning over successive governments. And this is the bit we are really failing on because this is costly and there isn't an incentive for that kind of investment which won't see returns within the period of the current parliamentary cycle.
Instead the focus has got locked into a series of successive crisis which have been compounded by poor civil contingency planning. And the response is to further cut civil contingency planning.
As time passes I do wonder which crisis will be the one which is a step too far and civil order breaks down. And how as an individual, and a collective local group, can I plan for that? The fact that I'm even considering this as a pretty rational and level headed person is nuts.
Its not OK to just be going 'I'm alright jack' because that misses the point and the reality of how this winter might well play out.
Those left without power after storms last winter found out they were on their own for weeks. There wasn't a cavalry coming to help. That was the reality for all regardless of income. And thats the lesson we all need to consider going forward.
Life isn't going to get easier. It's not a given that living standards are going to continue to improve nor even be maintainable at their current levels. It's a massive fallacy everyone needs to get their heads around. If you look at data the converse is true. We are going to go into some sort of decline. We can slow the pace which will allow the innovation to reduce the impact if we are careful. If we don't we are liable to fall off a cliff and have massive social issues of which the coming winter is just one of the first.