Greenest government ever? Depends how much it costs us

Sorry, we’ve used all the cheap gas and oil from the North Sea in a generation. What are you proposing to destroy next?

I’m afraid in most peoples’ minds cheap = abundant.

Even when North Sea oil and gas were at peak production in the mid-1980s, I built my house to Scandinavian standards of insulation – forgoing several foreign holidays to help pay for this – burnt wood from my own garden and ran a 900cc VW Polo. To me, it was the responsible thing to do, even before Chernobyl put the kibosh on nuclear energy. Meanwhile, the rest of the UK still seemed intent on burning as much of the North Sea’s reserves as quickly as possible.

And (I see No2Wind makes a similar point below) having already done my bit to minimize my family’s energy use during my lifetime, why are we now being screwed over to pay for the feckless to start installing loft insulation and CFL light bulbs, just as the Golden Goose (or should that be “Buzzard”) is about to lay its final eggs and we can least afford it?

Yet fuel is still too cheap to encourage most people to change their behavior. I hear a lot of whining about paying more to fly the family off to some exotic destination for a fortnight’s holiday, but people don’t seem to question the need for it. Businesses continue to overheat their offices and shops throw their doors open in a futile attempt to warm up the High Street in winter.

As you say, we need fuel to survive, not to drive around in 20mpg Range Rovers fitted with inefficient low-profile tyres, so we can pretend to be David Beckham. Being stupid certainly isn’t being green, and the only way to make people less stupid seems to be to make them pay an awful lot more for the privilege! It’s unfair on the rest of us with a normal IQ, however.

“Em”, I agree completely with your 9:39 posting. It called to mind something I have set in my computer because it is so true and is an apt comment on the green religion being pushed by our recent Governments; I hope you enjoy it.

The Green Thing
Checking out at Tesco, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”
. The cashier responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”
She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day even though we shopped with our own grocery bags and used free recycled brown paper bags in the shop.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the shop. The shop sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were re-cycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocers and didn’t climb into a 200-horsepower machine every time we had to go two streets. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby’s nappies because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 3,000 watts of electrical power — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn’t have the
 green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief
(remember them?), not a screen the size of Yorkshire. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us.
When we packaged a fragile item to send in the post, we used wadded up old news-papers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right. We didn’t have the green thing back then.
When we were thirsty we drank from a tap instead of drinking from a plastic bottle of water shipped from the other side of the world. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical socket in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerised gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000
miles out in space in order to find the nearest fish and chip shop.
But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?
Please forward this on to another selfish, grumpy old git who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person.
Remember: Don’t make old people mad. We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to p*@s us off.