{"id":2871,"date":"2013-08-30T15:06:42","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T14:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=2871"},"modified":"2015-06-24T21:55:25","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T20:55:25","slug":"one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week-parallels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=2871","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week- parallels"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are often parallels between the past and the present.\u00a0 This occurred to me as I mulled over Greenbelt, in particular the communion service which looked back over the last 40 years of the festival.\u00a0 Which year would I be talking about 1973 or 2013 in the following description?\u00a0 A year in which there was a middle eastern war which led to tensions between Russia and USA (and other countries on either side), the price of oil soared and there was the threat of power cuts in the UK with a dire economic situation.\u00a0 In fact parallels between the two years mean it could be either.<\/p>\n

There are course some differences as well as parallels.\u00a0 In 1973 the miners in the UK helpfully went on strike (the mining industry was state owned, although there had been national strikes when it was in the private sector) during an oil crisis caused by the Yom Kippar war<\/a>.\u00a0 Since coal provided more than 40% of our electricity plus a lot of heating this led to power rationing in the UK, along with petrol rationing caused by the Arab oil embargo.\u00a0 We call this the 3 day week<\/a>.\u00a0 I can remember some aspects of the 3 day week well even though I was quite young, since we were off school (hurrah),\u00a0 we had lots of homework (boo).\u00a0 My mum worked part time as a teacher and parents looked after each others children.\u00a0 I went round to my friend Adrian’s house.\u00a0 He had both a Scale electric set and a Hornby OO permanently set-up on huge boards that lent against a wall.\u00a0 We had a go at the Scale electric but I’ve always been more interested in trains than cars so I persuaded him to get the other board into place.\u00a0 It was fully landscaped with trees and hills, station, tunnels etc and we started putting the trains out and people on platforms, then the power went out.\u00a0 What I can only vaguely remember is the huge queues of cars at filling stations and don’t remember shops lit by candles (although they were).\u00a0 I do remember my mum lighting the oven opening its door to let the heat out and us all sitting there by candle light around it.\u00a0 With the electricity off it was the only source of heat.<\/p>\n

The energy crisis had a huge effect on me.\u00a0 In fact its probably part of the reason that I wanted to write our book<\/a>.\u00a0 But its effects were far wider than that.\u00a0 For the first time people started thinking seriously about energy in general and oil dependency in particular.\u00a0 Research in alternative energy started and a few years later the first early wind turbines and solar panels started appearing.\u00a0 In the UK along with the advent of cheap north sea natural gas, individuals, government and businesses started quietly reducing their dependency on coal.\u00a0 The coal heaps we played on at School until we were chased off, unnoticed by us, disappeared.\u00a0 Governments forced car manufacturers to make their cars more fuel efficient and overall Western countries gradually cut their energy consumption per head.<\/p>\n

2013 is not the same, despite the parallels.\u00a0 There are no unions ready to go on strike.\u00a0 With concern about climate change cars have been made an order of magnitude more efficient.\u00a0 There are multitude of different ways to generate electricity apart from hydro, coal, nuclear, oil and gas and these renewable methods have costs that are plunging.\u00a0 Nevertheless the spectre of a wider middle eastern conflict loams.\u00a0 A worrying proportion of the world’s gas and oil passes through the strait of Hormuz.\u00a0 Iran, Syria’s friend could try to disrupt it, but even without some analysts say the price of oil could reach a record high.\u00a0 There is another final difference compared to 1973, conventional oil production has almost certainly peaked and last year conventional gas reserves showed their first ever fall.\u00a0 We are however still very dependent on oil. This leaves us with another set of parallels between ’73 and ’13, the energy challenge posed by 1973 is not over.\u00a0 In fact it maybe just be beginning.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are often parallels between the past and the present.\u00a0 This occurred to me as I mulled over Greenbelt, in particular the communion service which looked back over the last 40 years of the festival.\u00a0 Which year would I be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week"],"yoast_head":"\nThere are often parallels between the past and the present.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There are often parallels between the past and the present. 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