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British National Party

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The background, the facts, figures, politics and analysis.

Opportunity?

We are faced with a situation in less than a decade, of rising oil prices which will rise so high that many of us will be forced to abandon our petrol and diesel fuelled vehicles. Transportation of all goods and freight will be effected. The cost of everything from groceries to imported clothes and toys and medicines will be higher, in some cases prohibitively so. Electricity generation will likewise be effected as natural gas becomes an expensive and unattractive fuel for electricity consumption. Some aspects of the lives of all of us are going to change.

It might be a time of apocalyptic events but if there is enough awareness of the issue, certain preparations made and a psychological adjustment to a world without oil, then such a change in world events may be a time for tremendous opportunities. These are just some of the situations which might arise and which present themselves as new opportunities.

Travel and transport

It will be travel and transport that see the biggest likely upheavals. Oil accounts for 90% of UK transport, the remaining 10% is accounted for by electric trains, trams and underground trains.

A daily commuting trip of 100 miles will be prohibitively expensive, even filling up a car for a cross city trip of 5-6 miles will no longer be cost effective. Things will change.

Commuters will initially be inclined towards greater use of public transport but as even the cost of using trains and buses starts to rise then individuals will be forced to make key life changing decisions. Working from home or working closer to home will be options. Walking or cycling to work with the knock on health benefits of keeping fit may be appropriate for some. There is much talk of fuel cells replacing petrol driven engines.

Centralised society

A society which feeds information and power down from the top is an energy intensive arrangement. It requires a large bureaucracy, huge databases and all the technology that is needed to keep those databases up to date. It requires efficient communication between executive, legislative and judicial branches. It requires streamlining and standardising everything from police procedures to the national curriculum. Remove the energy powering these complex centralised behemoths and they cease to function just as flicking the power switch on a computer stops it working.

Power is returned to the end user, the consumer and the citizen. Town councils which throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries ran efficient and effective administrations with considerably less influence from Westminster and Whitehall will be the decision making bodies of the future.

Wider still, a centralised Euro empire with its hub in Brussels will never be able to function. The bigger the empire, the greater the infrastructure, the greater the usage of energy to maintain that infrastructure. The project to enslave all sovereign peoples of Europe in a Soviet style European Union will never come to fruition. The peak oil crisis will be welcomed by all patriotic people of Europe and decision making will be repatriated to the lowest appropriate level

Environment

One thing is for sure, the countryside, the wildlife and human health should benefit enormously from an oil crisis. Most of the UK's 31 million vehicles will not be going anywhere. As the price of crude rises, pump prices will follow suit, pricing all but the very wealthy or very determined or very criminal off the roads. There will be no need for new motorways, no new town by-passes, saving for prosperity our native woodlands, meadows, heaths and downland. Agri-businesses will not be spreading artificial fertiliser on our farms, nor will they be applying pesticides. Water courses will be improved and all manner of flora and fauna will once again thrive. Endangered species of butterfly, newts, orchids and birds will have a reprieve following years of decline, a consequence of industrialised farming which has destroyed habitats, killed with pesticides and fouled the waterways. Human health will benefit as well.

Health

People will still die, suffer from ailments and contagious illnesses and even if energy demanding organ transplants may not be possible, overall human health should improve. Those diseases and conditions that have resulted from decades of conspicuous consumption will become a thing of the past. Obesity resulting from the mass consumption of junk food and factory processed food will yield to healthier eating habits and more exercise as consumers walk and cycle rather than depend on cars.

Cancer has been seen as a scourge of modern living. Those chemicals which have given us fizzy drinks in plastic bottles, banana flavoured milk shakes without ever have been within a mile of a real banana, barbeque flavours and provided industry with lubricants, catalysts and feedstocks for the past 60 years have left their legacy in the food chain and the environment.

Post-oil more people will know exactly what they are eating. They will either be growing food themselves in their gardens, allotments or they will see the market gardener, the orchard grower, and the pig farmer tending to their crops and animals. They will be buying from a butcher or a greengrocer who has seen the items from farmgate to shop shelf. They will once again be involved in the natural cycle of planting and harvesting, birth, maturity and death. Without pesticides and artificial fertiliser, all food will be by default "organic" putting an end to the duality of food marketing. Organic food will quite rightly be available to all on a level economic playing field unlike the current situation where foods labelled as organic are paradoxically more costly than non-organic foodstuff.

Stress- the modern psychological condition resulting from overwork, commuting, dealing with deadlines and never ending demands for improvement will give way to a slower pace of life, a lifestyle more in keeping with the human mind and human time scale.

Family life

Post-oil means post mass production of processed foods. Someone, male or female will need to cook a family meal. Instant microwave TV dinners will give way to properly prepared and cooked meals mostly using ingredients locally grown and harvested with the minimal of processing. Dinner will be a family experience, just as it was throughout our nation's history before the advent of cheap oil. Sitting around the evening dinner families will be doing what families have always done since Man began to use fire to cook the kill.

Instead of being dependent on a centralised State bureaucracy and a Nanny State parents will take more interest in bringing up their own children and children might be inclined to take more care of their elderly parents and grandparents. Without the same degree of reliance on complex health and rescue services individuals will assume self-responsibility for their own actions. The extended family will once again assume its place as the foundations and building bricks of a healthy functioning society.

The new economy

Big financial institutions will try and keep a lid on things but the cycle of economic growth fuelled by debt will come to a crashing devastating halt. The fall out will be of world shattering consequences but change will make available new opportunities and human needs will necessitate new forms of economic activity.

The Danes are well in the lead with their wind technology and a radical approach to ownership has been adopted. The first turbines were erected by guilds or co-operatives, which required member-owners to live within 3 kilometres of the site. The guilds eventually organized as the Danish Wind Turbine Owners Association, which became a powerful political force. Today, 100,000 Danish families own wind turbines or shares in wind co-operatives. Although the rules have been relaxed following pressure from the big utility companies a stakeholder in a wind turbine or wind farm is allow ownership of up to 30,000 kWh per year by any person who lives or works in the borough or who owns a house or other property there.

If Denmark can lead the way with wind farms then there is no logical reason for such co-operative enterprises to exist in other areas of activity; food production, manufacturer of bicycles, printing presses, house building, craft workshops and countless other goods and services.

Small businesses benefit

People will still need to eat, drink, clothe themselves, fill their homes with both the essentials and the nice things that make a house a home. People will still need attend to their personal hygiene and amuse themselves when not working. But the things that people will buy will need to be sourced, manufactured and sold locally. Mass transportation of Chinese made cotton T-shirts will not be possible. In fact unless we return to using sail or steam (coal driven) ships, cotton from the US, Egypt, India will not reach Albion's shores, so alternatives will be needed.

Massive new business opportunities will exist for small enterprises, individually owned, family run and co-operative ventures. Mass production will be unfeasible and businesses will source primary raw materials locally, turn those materials into finished products locally, sell locally and employ local people.

A massive renaissance of traditional crafts and cottage industries may take place. Wood turners, leather workers, blacksmiths and stone workers may be struggling to keep up with demand. A restructuring of the education system will be necessary to provide training in new skills and old crafts as demand for graduates in sociology, media studies and peace studies will be even more unemployable than they are now.

Differences

Because mass transport of goods will not be possible and because local raw materials will be sought for various activities, there will be an end towards the trend of standardisation.

Recent news stories bemoaned look-a-like Britain. Market towns from Falkirk to Exeter have town centres that are virtually indistinguishable from one another. 10 years post-oil, we will see the end of the dominance of High Street chains; goodbye to the golden arches of McDonalds, goodbye to Gap, so long to Starbucks and cheerio to Comet and Currys.

Houses will be built using materials locally sourced. Bricks and mortar will not longer be appropriate or possible in all of these islands. East Anglian houses may see brick walls with Norfolk reed thatch while while Welsh builders opt for slate roofs and stone walls.

No new skyscrapers and towering office blocks will be built. Everything will be conducted at a more human level and in a more human time scale. Because flying will be next to impossible people seeking to recharge their proverbial batteries will look to holiday closer to home. Parks will be seen as valued places of retreat, even if only for a few hours; their pavillions and monuments restored and plots carefully tendered.

Global warming stops.

If global warming is caused directly by the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which has been generated by the burning of fossil fuels, and there are strong arguments which assign the blame to carbon dioxide and equally strong arguments which disprove this conclusion then the release of carbon dioxide by burning oil and gas will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as renewable alternatives are sought and used. It may be too late to undo the damage which some have attributed to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the past few decades, but the process will be brought to a halt. As more land around the planet gradually returns to natural vegetation over a period of centuries the carbon dioxide levels will return to a pre-oil boom level. Readers of this page will not reap the benefits but our great great grandchildren probably will.

Conclusion

Change is inevitable but one person's apocalyptic view of the same situation could be interpreted as an opportunity by another. Britons are resourceful, innovative and can be pretty bloody minded in a crisis. We can knuckle down, roll up our sleeves and get on with life even without all the labour saving devices, the shopping malls and the twice year trips to the Med or Florida.

Comments

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