Honorable Mention

Brighton during the coming energy crisis

By Doly Garcia

Predicting the future is always difficult, as there are so many variables, some of them unknown. Don't take this future scenario as anything better than an informed opinion. If you have some information that will make an important difference to this scenario, I'll be grateful to hear about it.

Overview of the near future

In the short term, the best model to look at when thinking what will happen in Brighton is the energy crisis of the seventies. It started on 1972, with the strikes of coal miners, and got much worse on 1973, when the OPEC raised the prices of oil fourfold, while the miners where still going on strike. This led to inflation, economic recession, the pound sinking on 1976, and culminated on the winter of 1978/1979, the "winter of discontent", with many civil servants going on strike for better wages, power cuts due to lack of fuel for the electric power stations, pieces of uncollected rubbish everywhere because the dustmen were on strike, rats swarming in the London underground, and emergency ward closures in hospitals.

Similarly, the coming energy crisis is going to hit in two fronts. If in the seventies it was oil and coal, in the near future it will be oil and gas. The world demand for oil is already greater than the supply. The same will happen with gas soon (the year estimated by Colin Campbell, the founder of ASPO, is 2012). In Great Britain, the amount of gas produced in the North Sea is already declining, which is why electricity has become more expensive. The transport of gas is difficult, which means that, while we can import the gas we need, it will be more expensive.

The first thing to expect, following the seventies model, is economic recession combined with strong inflation. The specific characteristics of the recession and the precise time when problems will arise are difficult to predict in detail, because they will depend to some extent on future government decisions that we can't even guess. However, there are some likely outcomes that we can expect. The first is inflation: everything will cost more because most prices will be influenced by the higher cost of transport. At the same time, there will be economic recession with high unemployment.

Personal incomes are likely to fall for many people. This can become a serious problem if people find it difficult to get housed, as it happened in the seventies, when the numbers of squatters increased dramatically.

In the seventies, because inflation wasn't being effectively controlled and there were limits on wage increases, many workers went on strike. This is a situation that may or may not be repeated in the future, depending on political decisions.

As for unemployment, not all sectors will be affected in the same way. It's more likely that school leavers will be one of the groups that will find it harder to get employment, as well as older people. As a rule, those under 20 and over 40 are most likely to become unemployed. Another group likely to suffer is immigrants, especially those with a background very different from our own: Muslims, Asians and Africans. In the seventies, job creation schemes from the government didn't help much, and the same is likely to happen in the future.

Manufacturing production declined 15% between 1979 and 1983 as a result of the crisis. Many industries, especially steel, are very energy-hungry and dependant on the cost of energy.

In the seventies, the sales of some products changed for reasons that can be traced more or less directly to the energy crisis. The sales of bicycles went up. DIY-related products went up as well, because it was cheaper to do home improvements oneself than pay somebody to do it, coupled with a slight increase in the time people could be at home. Tobacco sales declined, because people were giving up unnecessary luxuries. But alcohol sales increased, due to the more negative mood of the times.

The economic problems will have a knock-on effect on other areas of life. For example, in the seventies the birth rate fell and from 1975 to 1977 population figures went down. It's fairly safe to assume that the main reason for this is that many people preferred not to have children in an adverse economic situation.

Another knock-on effect was an increase in violence. The riots in 1981, the "summer of fire bombs", were mostly caused by high unemployment and frustration in an economic recession. Also, the confrontations with workers on strike were more violent than they were ever before. Some workers abandoned some of the traditional restraints on the right to strike, for example putting patients' lives in danger. The crimes of violence against the person increased, as well as the crimes by young people, often unemployed, particularly personal violence and vandalism. Racism also increased, mostly due to a perception that immigrants were stealing British jobs. All these situations are quite likely to repeat.

In the seventies it took 6 years for the situation to become seriously uncomfortable. Similarly, I would expect at least 5 years until discontent is general. The winter of 2010/2011 could be a rough equivalent to the winter of 1978/1979.

Further in the future

It's harder to predict things the further we go in the future, but one thing is clear: this energy crisis won't finish in a short period. Once the world production of oil and gas starts to decline, nothing can make it go up again. There is a limited amount of both in this Earth, and if technology to extract them faster is developed today, it will only mean that there's even less left for tomorrow. This means that the only way out of the crisis is developing alternative energies. Unfortunately, alternative energies are still in development, and more specifically, substitutes for oil are few and mostly in their infancy. This means that it will take a significant time of research and development of infrastructures to solve this crisis.

To imagine the sort of things we can expect in 10 to 15 years time, we can look at a time of even greater fuel scarcity: the Second World War. In that period, the government recommended that people remove inessential light bulbs from their homes, and eat cold food instead of hot as often as possible. Those who lived in the country were encouraged to heat their homes with logs. Shop window lighting was banned, as well as the manufacture of many electric appliances. Homes were given a fuel target that they shouldn't exceed, and the target was calculated depending on the number of people living in the household, the number of rooms in use, and a regional allowance, so that people living in the North were allowed more than those living in the South. Heating was seriously restricted, and usage of hot water bottles and coats indoors was widespread. There was a general rule that one shouldn't use more than 5 inches of hot water for a bath.

Transport is likely to become similarly restricted. Bicycles will become the main form of personal transport, and a return of horses for transport of goods in carts is very likely.

If the scarcity of fuel becomes similar to the Second World War situation, what about food? Shall we expect food rationing, as well? A quick comparison shows that the Second World War food situation was nothing like we may expect in the future as a consequence of an energy crisis.

The food shortages in the Second World War were mainly due to a significant reduction in food imports, caused by less available ships (many merchant ships were used for the war effort, and many were sunk by the German U-boats), less suppliers (there were no imports from the enemy countries or from Spain, that had just suffered a civil war) and less purchasing power (the UK developed an impressive debt during the war). The imports of food in 1945 were half as much they were in 1939. On top of this, the lack of ships also affected fishing, that was greatly reduced in war times.

An energy crisis won't reduce the numbers of our ships or our suppliers. It may reduce our purchasing power, though. And it will certainly increase the cost of transport. Shipping is the cheapest form of transport, but the transport of food before and after it's shipped will be significantly more expensive. This means that food from abroad is likely to be available, but expensive. And the current distribution system used by supermarkets will need to be revised, to cut on unnecessary transport. There will be a strong incentive to grow as much food as possible locally, and a revival of the Second World War use of allotments and gardens to grow vegetables is very likely. The UK can increase the amount of land used for agriculture easily. Currently, it's at levels similar to 1939 (12.5 million acres in the present, compared to almost 12 million acres in 1939). By 1945, it had grown to 18 million acres. A similar growth is entirely possible in the future. There are other areas where there is plenty of room for improvement: currently, it's estimated that about one third of all the food suitable for consumption in the UK is thrown away, either by supermarkets to keep with sell-by regulations, or by individuals at home that don't want to use leftovers.

If anybody is worried about the possibility of starvation, it's highly unlikely. It didn't happen in the Second World War, and the food situation as a whole was worse. Food disruptions are also unlikely, because the British government has kept to this day the war system of storing emergency food supplies, in case of any major disruption. What about rationing? The main reason for rationing is that the government wants to insure that everybody has access to the basic food necessities when there is a serious shortage of food. But it looks like it will be food luxuries what is likely to disappear from our diet, rather than necessities.

All this may look like a very dismal future, but let's not forget that in spite of all the privations, civilization didn't collapse in the Second World War. And in many respects, we are likely to be better off than our grandparents.

Brighton: two futures

Brighton, the same as most places in the South West area, suffered comparatively less in the seventies. Similarly, it's to be expected that Brighton won't be one of the places worst hit by the recession.

Brighton has a number of characteristic features that will make it a case apart from other British cities, which means that the picture will be slightly different than the general picture for the UK sketched above. Let's look at each of them in turn.

Tourism. Brighton is very dependent on tourism and weekenders. At first sight, this sounds like bad news, because if people are going to cut on unnecessary traveling, holiday traveling may be one of the first things to go. On the other hand, many people who usually take a plane to some faraway destination on their holiday may find that plane fares have gone up spectacularly, and choose to have a holiday in Great Britain. This means that, with careful marketing, Brighton could actually experience and increase in English tourism that offsets the losses. The weekenders that come from London are unlikely to be discouraged to come due to an increase in the price of transport, because London is close enough that the cost of coming here is insignificant compared with the total amount of money they would normally spend on the trip. But it's more than likely that they will have a tighter budget than they've had so far, and spend less in Brighton than they did before.

Commuters. Brighton has a big population of commuters. 17% of people work 20km or more from home. They are going to be some of the first people affected by high prices of oil. What happens to them will depend greatly on the choices they make: relocate, share cars, change method of transportation, grit their teeth and hope that things will get better? If commuters are informed of what's coming and make good decisions, they will be the first to be prepared, instead of the first to be hit by the crisis.

Environmental activism

Brighton is a city that's known by the strong interest their inhabitants have on environmental issues, and it is in fact the city most likely to win the first green MP. However, this interest doesn't mean that Brighton, at this point, is particularly well informed of the coming energy crisis. If all the environmental groups start making energy policy a priority, and there is a generalized effort to optimize usage of energy, promote alternative energies and encourage the use of local resources (like, for example, allotments to grow vegetables), Brighton could become a model of good management of an energy crisis.

Political influence. Brighton is a city with unique opportunities to change British policy, given that the annual conferences of the major parties are traditionally celebrated here. It's also a place where it's possible for a squatter to become a mayor, like we all saw in the case of Steve Bassam. In other words, if there are political solutions for some of the consequences of the crisis, Brighton is uniquely situated to influence these decisions, even at a national level.

London. For good and for bad, Brighton seems to be only a hop away from London. London, like any of the great cities of the world, is heavily dependent on getting a huge amount of necessities transported into it. This can be beneficial for Brighton, if we get our share of the supplies destined for London, or disastrous, if we don't.

You will have noticed that the above paragraphs were full of "ifs". This is why I say that Brighton has two futures: a dark one, where nobody has prepared for the crisis, and a bright one, where people have prepared and set an example to the rest of the UK and, indeed, the world. There is a seventies precedent: the North Laine, that had become practically a slum and all city planners intended to convert in an office area, gradually became what it is now thanks to the concerted efforts of the people who lived there, first to elevate it to the category of Conservation area, and then to improve it without losing its natural charm.

Doly Garcia
Brighton Peak Oil Group
e-mail: doly@powerswitch.org.uk
website: www.bpo.user.xirium.com/

Copyright © 2006 by the author

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