Today (Thurs 5th June 2008) I have a letter printed in the Dereham Times in reply (in large part) to the comments made by Mr David Milburn of North Elmham in a letter in last week's Times. The Times has not printed my letter in full and I'm particularly disappointed that they have missed off my last paragraph which gave details of this blog. How will everyone find this blog to continue the debate if the Times refuses to publish the details of the blog address?
Below is my letter to the Dereham Times in full. The Times has titled my letter "Attitudes to oil use must alter" (which I'm much happier with than the title they gave to my previous letter!). The parts in italics are what the Times has printed;
In reply to David Milburn (letters, May 29), I wish to stress that my previous letter (May 22) NEVER said "We can live without cars"! That was a headline invented by the Times' editor which I believe misrepresented what I had to say! I fully accept that some people would find things very difficult without cars, especially considering our government's failure to ensure that we have access to high quality public transport.
The fact remains that soaring global demand for oil at a time when "cheap oil has gone forever" (Jeroen van der Veer, CEO of Shell) and production is set to begin a terminal decline will continue to drive fuel prices ever higher. A cut in UK fuel tax may provide some temporary respite for drivers. But it would likely have to be offset by other tax rises (say income tax!) and it would send quite the wrong message - that we can all continue to consume oil as usual (which we can't)! Mr Milburn suggests that that fuel taxes should be reduced to the point where "... few people would be worried about the cost of filling their tank..." This view is frankly shocking! We should all be "worried", not least by the environmental costs of burning so much fossil fuel.
So you see Mr Milburn, I am quite firmly on planet Earth!
Our economic and social structures over the last 60 years have been built on the liberal use of energy from relatively cheap and apparently limitless supplies of fossil fuels. But we must now realise that we have hit the finite limits of these resources and our attitudes must change! We will have to make big reductions in our energy use and switch to sustainable alternative energy sources like wind and micro hydro-electric. The use of oil for transport is the greatest and most challenging part of this transition due to its pervasiveness, our high dependency on motorised transport, and a lack of ready alternatives to oil based fuel!
Think back to the last fuel price protest blockades, and how shops were empty and much of the country ground to a halt within a few days without oil! Now imaging what happens to us when global conditions severely restrict the amount of fuel available to the UK! If we are to prevent this from causing severe crisis then we must start building resilient communities that are far less dependent on the consumption of oil to get along. We need better local services, reversing the closures of village schools and post offices. We need to create local jobs so that people don't have to commute large distances, and we need to promote the local consumption of local produce and products that haven't been transported vast distances (with the escalating fuel costs that that transportation entails).
We have a choice;
EITHER we plan for higher oil prices and reduced availability, taking steps to reduce our high dependence on oil (and through this we can also improve our genuine quality of life as we go),
OR we can ignore the warning signs and wait until severe crisis hits and forces us to react, by which time we will have lost the chance to do many positive things and be prepared!
I've created a blog to encourage further local discussion about these issues at; http://transitiondereham.blogspot.com. I believe that the focus on UK fuel taxes is an unnecessary distraction from the far more serious global issues around Peak Oil and its impacts, along with Climate Change, which require us all to make very big cuts in our use of fossil fuels.
Matt Walker
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