Off-Grid, Please, God...

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As a concerned citizen of Planet Earth, never mind one concerned with my own dwindling resources, I've been spending a lot of time [on YouTube, mostly, I will admit] digging around for information about solar electricity generation. There is so much information out there it boggles the mind, although I will say this: the investment costs in the technology are really coming down fast. Even ten years ago, the chances of any kind of payback on it all in one's lifetime seemed slim: and therein laid the rub. It's difficult to sell an otherwise sound idea - and alternative and sustainable energy is now utterly, incontrovertibly, the only game in town - when there is no tangible financial incentive to buy.

I was just watching a video about Robert Llewelyn's zero-emission home in the Cotswolds [natch], and whilst I love the actor and his work, and his undoubted commitment to environmental issues - he's been doing this stuff for years, now - the glaring issue is that he has undoubtedly very extensive financial resources to implement all the stuff he does. I've no argument with that per se, as I would do precisely the same myself, given access to a similar bank account and income: rather, I believe that these affordances should be made to the population as a whole, through the agency of government. How this is achieved is moot, but at this moment in time, we are staring into the climate maelstrom, and action really, really is urgent.

Capitalism left to its own devices will not work: most people simply can't afford any investment in renewables, and the market is just not open to them, even though prices are heading in the right direction. What's needed is a state-funded kickstarter to not just encourage home-owners to install - at no cost to themselves - personal energy-generating systems, but to actually enforce universal adoption of these technologies, without caveats or means-testing. A major corollary to this would be the strict enforcement of agreed technical and installation standards to prevent the inevitable tsunami of cowboys and sharks entering the fray, that our current bunch of libertarians would inevitably welcome with open arms, in the name of 'free enterprise', as with the PPE profit-fest during Covid. Regulations are boring, but necessary.

If this all sounds a bit socialist, it is, well, a bit; but it should not prevent honest trade, from and with, reputable companies: which at the end of the day is what we all want, anyway. It's a no-brainer: support good business, and save your own money & the planet in the process. Social Capitalism, if I can coin a phrase, can and needs to work: but it will take a major paradigm-shift in political and economic thinking, and a lot of pain to the current Masters of the Universe, to implement; but the timescale in which to do so is frighteningly short. The doomsday clock is ticking ever faster: time, most assuredly, is relative, and now, very short indeed...

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