Don’t be fuelled..

They’ve just kept finding more of the stuff. Not for much longer though. What’s left is increasingly difficult – and gobsmackingly expensive – to pump out of the ground, usually deep beneath the ocean floor. Which is one of the reasons the price has just hit $ 100 a barrel – or probably will have by the time you read these words.

Remember when we were told by some wise observers that the Iraq war might be justified because it would help stabilise oil at about $ 20 a barrel? Most of the experts now agree we have passed the “peak oil point” and it’s all downhill from now on – or, rather, uphill as far as the price is concerned. And remember, it’s not just filling a petrol tank where we shall feel the pain… it’s everywhere.
The world runs on oil – whether it’s manufacturing fertiliser to grow our food or generating electricity to heat our homes. So what can we do – apart from getting the needles out and start knitting night caps to keep us warm in our icy bedrooms?

Well, one part of the answer may be something called “transition towns”. They’re springing up all over the country. The idea is that local people get together and arrange, for instance, to do a deal with farms in the area to buy their produce. So instead of buying carrots that have travelled halfway around the country to be packed and then sent back to your town, you buy them direct. And you don’t pay the supermarkets’ mark-up either.

Schemes to generate electricity locally are being set up too. By the time the juice from a big power station comes out of the socket in your wall half of it has already leaked out of the cables carrying it through the grid.

So it makes sense to do what Woking in Berkshire has done and develop ways of generating electricity locally. And they’re not just saving the planet, they’re saving a fortune in cash as well. It makes good economic sense.

Sunday Mirror