THE BATTLE FOR BALCOMBE has taken a new twist as the first town in the UK to be identified as prey for the Fracking lobbyists have decided to ‘go green’ and get off their fossil fuel addiction. How significant this is remains to be seen but a question posed to me this week is what difference would it make?
Well to put it simply, if you reduce the demand, what incentive is there for the oil companies to supply an unwanted product? This is perhaps the single biggest reason why in 2014, despite the marvellous advancement in our technologies, we have not managed to find a way to harness all the renewable sources of energy, the sun, the wind, tidal, wave and geothermal; because the powers that be know that if we are able to get off the dependency of the oil rigs and drills, their illusionary power would evaporate. Our addiction to energy is no different to that of any of the other addictions the human species suffers with, but is perhaps the most destructive on a global scale.
There are a great many videos and experts that explain the potential of renewable energies on the Internet, that break the myths of the likes of the Daily Mail and the other energy deniers that reside in the corridors of corruption in parliament, but instead they remain enthralled to the power of the lobbyists energy firms or worse, remain ignorant themselves to the possibilities that lay at our feet. A recent example of this occurred when I had to explain the process of vertical farming to an MP who believed that capitalism had “fed the world”, despite the fact that global hunger statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations state that 842 million people in the “undeveloped” world do not have enough to eat (not to mention the half a million hungry in the UK and the fact that food bank use tripled in a year). MP’s like this have a full-time job representing the people and should be full-time students of the world around them to ensure we have the best available choices for our future and not be slaves to the corporate suits.
Technology is advancing in a way that far exceeds our grasp, the technologies of tomorrow are now a reality which can revolutionalise our way of life in the same ways the smart phone or the steam engine did, all we have to do is be daring enough to want it.