We can do that here too. We have the resources and know-how. All we need is the consensus and determination to do it. Then we would have copious amounts of clean energy produced with our own resources within our own borders.
Scotland already gets 29% of its energy from renewables. By 2020 it will be 80%. They are leading the planet on this. Let’s do the same.
At the moment renewable energy will be driven by economics, it is not the source of power that wories me so much, it is more who will control it and will it mean cheaper energy for you and I? Under the present system I doubt very much if it will filter down to cheap energy across the board. In spite of Scotland’s energy being at present 30% renewable, we are still facing large hikes in the price of energy, people here are struggling to pay their heating bills. Do you think they care where the energy comes from? Leave the system as it is and we will always get shafted, change the system and there is hope of a better world for all, cheap energy included.
“We can do that here too.” But we won’t, because we have coal and oil, offered by huge companies that make big campaign contributions, and employing millions (many in unions) that no politician in his right mind would risk putting out of work.
Obviously British politicians are not in their right mind since they closed all Britain’s coal mines, steel works and shipyards. As one mob got voted out the next mob got voted in and now it is the turn of the social services to be decimated. As long as they keep the party political system they have nothing to fear, the people keep voting in some mob or other, it doesn’t have to be the majority of the people that vote them in, as long as they beat the other party then we have the new corporate worlds minders in place with the stamp of legitimacy called an election.,
Why did they close all those facilities and factories?
Different reasons come up, some say that Thatcher shut the mines to destroy the last powerful union left in the UK, the NUM, National Union of Mineworkers. The fact that we then imported cheap coal from Columbia and her husband was big in Columbian mining had nothing to do with it. The big money in industry was moving to cheaper labour elsewhere in the world, plus the Thatcherite theory that the UK could survive and prosper as a financial and service centre. People? What are they?
Seems like a case where all politics are NOT local. The existence of an underclass anywhere in the world pretty much dooms the union movement anywhere else in the world, so long as the economy is globalized. And not just unions, but all workers skilled and unskilled, unionized or not.
Social justice should not be “merely” a moral concern, it should be an economic concern as well.
PS: Thatcher also stated that “there was no such thing as society, only individuals.” Long live the rat race.