Goodbye to All That...

The last of coal-fired power generation in the UK: at midnight tonight, that's it for coal, 142 years after Edison started generating electricity at his Holborn Viaduct coal plant in London in 1882. On the turn of tomorrow, the sole remaining plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar will shut down for good, in both senses of the word. It's interesting to reflect that as recently as the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition government, the UK generated around a third of its electricity using coal. From midnight that figure will be zero: a sobering thought, given all the renewable naysayers spouting spurious arguments about the country's ability and will to implement sufficient wind, solar and geothermal, etc., energy to supply its needs.

Less than ten years later, research, technical advances, political pressure and changing energy demands, have seen a dramatic up-turn in implementation of non-fossil fuel modes of generation. A good start, but it is only a start: we need to keep up the pressure. More importantly, we need to contribute positively to the global energy equation, not just in producing our own clean energy, but in our wider, economic choices: blindly continuing to consume from the worst global polluters simply can't hack it for much longer. That will take political and economic will at the macro level; however, as always, we could all contribute by choosing more carefully in our purchasing of goods and services.

In order for that to be a reality, the desperate need for cheap stuff has to be removed from the equation. And that will require a far stronger domestic economy, wage rises and an improvement in social services for the majority of our population: a poor population has few to zero purchasing options when it comes to making the right choice for the planet - good is inherently more expensive, and when you're on the breadline, your priority is survival, no more, no less. What needs to be addressed at root, is capitalism itself.

Capital is not neutral or independent in and of itself, despite the macroeconomic free-thinker's theories and dogma: a world fit for the majority of the people who inhabit it is a healthier world; economic common sense dictates that to be the case: a population without the adequate wherewithal to consume outside of survival itself contributes little to the economy, which in turn suffers. Without balance in the economy - which necessitates regulation and control, something that those on the political right abhor - capitalism will simply continue to live off its own fat until it has eaten itself and destroyed everything else around it. The planet needs better, simply to survive...