Shopping locally

Saturday's Eastern Daily Press (14th June 2008) has the right message. Its front-page headline says "WE'RE STILL GOING LOCAL; Consumers say it's more economical".

Highlighting their own "Shop Here" campaign, supporting locally owned independent shops, the EDP cites its own new survey which says that "consumers still back their local shops - and say it is actually more economical to shop locally, cut back on trips to out-of-town supermarkets and conserve their own fuel." The article includes comments from a number of local Norfolk producers who all appear to be reporting growing demand for their produce despite having to increase their prices to pass on some of their rising fuel costs to their customers.

The EDP article by Kathryn Cross also reports that "Russian oil giant Gazprom predicts that the price per barrel [of oil] could hit $250 before 2009 is over, which would catapult the cost of a litre of unleaded petrol to an incredible 230p and push energy prices sky-high." I'm not at all surprised at these figures! But it should make everyone think; how will we cope IF in a year from now fuel prices are nearly twice what they are today (on Saturday 14th at both Morrisons and BP prices are 117.9p for unleaded and 130.9p for diesel)?

Will we all half our car use? Will we be wasting less good food and buying less heavily processed (energy intensive) food in less excessive, oil based and environmentally damaging packaging? Will we all be growing more of our own food in our own back gardens or in a vast number of new allotment plots that the council is going to have to provide for us somewhere (probably instead of the possible 3500 houses that the Breckland LDF has identified space for around Dereham)?

We WILL ALL have to change our ways to adapt to the soaring cost of energy. Is it not far better to start planning for these things now and begin to implement the changes we need to make, rather than wait until crisis forces us to react? And if we wait for the crisis the resources and options we have to deal with the issues will be severely limited.

With the Shell tanker drivers strike this last weekend and the threat of another 4 day stoppage this next weekend, coupled with increasing road haulier demos against high taxes, I suspect that it may not be long before we get at least a short taste of what life after oil will look like unless we do something about it!

The EDP's Shop Here listing is here

The EDP article mentioned above can be read on their website here

The EDP website www.edp24.co.uk