Thought Experiment

What a ridiculous phrase that title is. Why not just call it a discussion, a debate, an examination of, exploration of… or just a good chat about something? Giving it the dignity of that stylised monicker seeks to elevate anybody’s random question into some sort of enlightened scientific enquiry. Anyway, last night Gaia Vince, on BBC’s Inside Science, chaired such a so-called experiment on the possibility of abundant cheap energy, with various contributors coming up with Utopian visions of pastoral bliss, free from toil, and oil.

It is almost as if the people consulted about such matters have little grasp of human nature, a failing which seems to affect most policy makers across all aspects of governance. Not only is cheap and abundant energy – for the whole world, by the way - a highly unrealistic scenario, they seem to forget how the human economy apportions resources. And how the human masses react to the meagre shares they are awarded. There are non so equal as those who control the means of production and distribution.

It was quite good timing though, just after Grants Shapps’ appointment as Minister for Energy Security and Net-Zero. And what a title that is! A bit like having a Minister of War AND Peace… or, indeed, the Ministry of Truth. Energy Security AND Net-Zero? We could have energy security almost immediately if we abandoned Net-Loser today and got on with oil and gas while building plenty of nuclear capacity. Sure, keep the windfarms, at least until the maintenance cost renders them uneconomic. If we get nuclearising right now, we should have stations on-stream before the windies collapse… around 2050 I reckon.

It strikes me that we can have either, but not both. But even if we all got behind the green catastrophe it is doubtful that baleful Britain has the ability to deliver. It should be clear by now that we are hopeless at infrastructure. The Victorian legacy systems are straining at the seams and we have done precious little to prepare for the serial failures we now see on a regular basis. 

Water, sewage, rail… all in tatters. Our roads are fucked and as for HS2, it is clear that while a small number of consultants will make fortunes from the white elephant, the project will never be completed, much as the M25 (proposed in 1944, given the go-ahead in 1975) which is still not finished and costs £billions in maintenance and disruption. The latest, HS2 Plan B, should be called HS2B or not 2B.

The engineers and inventors and pioneers of our past must look down from their celestial rest in despair. They must wonder how we can have so many people sitting idle, or else doing nothing productive, while a diminishing work force is taxed to the hilt to pay for it all, yet nobody dares propose the simple solution of getting everybody back to the real grind of building a society and an infrastructure fit for the future. And there is no sign of anything getting better.

So here’s a little question for you all: do you think we will ever achieve either energy security or net-zero, or will we simply fail at both? Answers in a thought experiment.