2079

You may wonder if this is far fetched, if I am exaggerating. But at the end of 2005 a gas shortage occured in Siberia that killed many people. The Scandinavians wanted to charge three times as much money for the gas in their pipeline and the Russians didn't want to pay, so in the end, the amount of gas in the pipeline was reduced and supplies were cut off. It can happen. Britain has enormous reserves of coal that may never be used during our lifetime. Coal was once made into town gas, although in the 1970s it was eventually made from oil. But no one seems to be doing anything about this. There is enough coal in the world to last for centuries. Yes, but at what depth? The Chinese coal of the 20 hundreds is near the surface, as our coal was 200 years ago. When Wesley visited Low Fell and Chowdean, where I live, there were pit heaps all over the place. You would not associate the area with coal mining now. The coal reserves of Gateshead have long since been exhausted. Durham, Northumberland and Yorkshire have huge reserves of coal under the sea or in areas difficult to work. China will go the same way in 70 years, especially the way we use their coal now. Uranium will run out in 50 years time. The present generation of nuclear power stations are not a solution to the energy crisis. Sellafield wanted to have a big reprocessing plant to reprocess nuclear waste for a new generation of fast breeder nuclear reactors. People talked about the country becoming the world's nuclear dustbin. For 30 years these plans have been deeply controversial. I am convinced of the much greater undiscovered riches of renewable energy, solar panels that produce 10% of their maximun output on a cloudy day, windmills, tide power and wave power. But the money invested in these things is hopelessly inadequate. Tragedies of the kind that happen in Siberia happen because we stick with our current technology until they happen and don't think. Even the new gas pipeline recently built from Britain to Scandinavia was long overdue. Our gas prices went up to two or three times their previous level while we were waiting. Something terrible has to happen before anyone takes any notice. Governments have no plans to deal with the energy crisis. They may only be capable of disaster management after disaster occurs. I hope you can still read this computer file in 2079 and I hope you can decide whether I have made the story too frightening or not nearly frightening enough.

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David arrived home from work. He opened the door of his tiny flat. He pressed a switch that looked like a light switch on the wall. The bed descended and filled most of the room. David lay on the bed and put the earphones in his mobile phone. David listened to the world on his mobile, unable to afford a flat large enough for the luxury of a television with a screen big enough to actually see. He selected Google News.
"Today the world price of oil has risen to 100 euros a litre," said the announcer. "Rises in recent years have been considerable, and this represents ten times the price of oil in 2060. The government said that they would not decrease the tax on diesel and petrol and the price at the pumps is likely to rise still further. There were considerable queues outside service stations this morning as motorists waited to buy petrol before the new price increases came through to the forecourts."

"It's going to be impossible," said one motorist. "At the moment we're just about surviving. We've got to pay congestion charges, and we've got to pay so much money for petrol and diesel and the government does nothing to lower the tax. It's the better off who have a car now. My wife works as well and we have no children, but we have no money. We have a car."
"I don't know what it's going to be like when the new changes come through," said another motorist. "It's hard enough to run a car already."
"Can you not just leave the car at home and get a bus?" asked the reporter.
"Have you any idea how much that would cost? I could rent a one bedroom flat for the amount of money I would have to pay for an all zone bus pass. And that's now, goodness knows what things'll be like after this increase."
"Prices this evening are rising to 170 euros a litre for diesel in some areas, 150 euros a litre for petrol, 250 euros a litre for coal methanol, 190 euros a litre for bio-diesel and 160 euros a litre for liquid coal gas. This morning a man in Somerset was prosecuted for running a small motorcycle on whisky. Brian Watson had his 50 cc motorcycle crushed and was fined 3,000 euros and ordered to pay 750 euros in costs. It is against the law to use fuel without paying duty to the government. Michael Beaston is the government Transport Minister. Mr. Beaston, this is a very serious situation. Every year the shortage of fuel becomes worse and worse, every year we hear worse and worse figures and more and more horror stories. Fuel prices are now at a crisis point. Are we going to be unable to get people to work? Are we still going to be able to move food around?"
"I wouldn't say that things were at a crisis point. Let me reassure the public that we do have the transport infrastructure in this country to move food around. We have a very large number of container ports. There's one at Kingston Upon Hull, there's one at Middlesbrough, there's one at Liverpool. There are very few places where food has to be transported more than a hundred and fifty kilometers by road. The modern lorries are very efficient. They carry two containers, one on the back of the lorry and one on a trailer, and each is the size of a double decker bus. They consume only one litre of fuel for every three kilometers. One of the motorists you interviewed said that an all zones bus pass costs as much as renting a one bedroom flat. That might be true, but most bus companies give the passenger a number of options and not only an all zone bus pass. You can choose on which days you wish to travel, you can choose in which zones you wish to travel, you can pay 10 euros per zone per day."
"That is now. That is without these increases. Mr. Beaston, the price of fuel for the bus companies has doubled in one day."
"The cost of fuel is only one of the things that has to be considered when running a bus company. I would expect prices of bus fares to go up by less than that. I'm sure people will still be able to get to work."

"What about the effect of these price rises on the domestic supply of electricity and gas?"
"Most of our power is nuclear."
"Yes Mr. Beaston, but the price of uranium on the world market is not a lot more stable."
"There have been some price increases in recent years but this has been offset by the fact that people are living in smaller houses."
"But Mr. Beaston, what about the power cuts?"
"I think that the power cuts we have in this country are more of an inconvenience. The electricity is still working most of the time. People are left without it for an hour or two, perhaps once a week. I don't think we're on the verge of a major disaster."

David turned off Google news and went down to the take away at the end of the street to buy a sandwich. His flat had a shower and a toilet, but was much too small to have a kitchen. David lived on sandwiches, pasties, chocolate bars and pies.
"Fish and chips, please," said a smartly dressed middle aged lady standing in front of him in the queue.
"Fifteen euros, please," said the young girl behind the counter. At that moment the lights went out. The manager came from the back of the shop with a large battery torch.
"I'm sorry there won't be any fish and chips," he said. "I can give you sandwiches, pies, any cold food." David took a pasty and a sandwich. "Ten euros, please." He gave the manager the money and the manager pressed some buttons on his mobile phone to record the transaction. As the minister had said, the power cut was just a minor inconvenience. No one really minded. Not yet.

David went to the bus station to get his monthly bus pass. The price had risen slightly. David lived a long way from where he worked. He travelled through eight zones to get to work. He worked five days a week.
"2500 euros, please," said the lady behind the counter. This was a third of what David earned, even though he had a reasonable job. He reluctantly paid the money and went to work. The public transport system hadn't been upgraded to cope with the increased number of people who were no longer using their cars.
"We're full," said the driver of a little single decker. Perhaps it was only possible for the bus companies to make money when their passengers were squashed in like a tin of baked beans. A double decker bus arrived. "Three more on," said the driver. Three more people got on. The bus left. At least now David was at the front of the queue. A bendy bus arrived. Here there were quite a few seats and about a dozen people got on, still leaving a few behind in the very long queue. Once on the bus it sped down the nearly empty roads. They were nearly deserted. There was one food lorry, puffing and panting to move two shipping containers at 50 kilometers per hour down the inside lane. The bus overtook it on the outside. It also overtook a tiny motor scooter, it looked like a children's toy scooter and a man in thick protective clothing was standing up on the platform holding the handlebars. He was going a little faster than the food lorry. Eventually a car overtook the bus when it came back onto the inside lane, a small blue hatchback and the only car that they had seen in a long journey.

David arrived at work. "2500 euros my bus pass cost me," he said to his friend Simon. "Every little bit of money I have is either spent on sandwiches, on rent for my tiny little flat, or on bus fares."
"Maybe you should move to a smaller flat," suggested Simon.
"My flat is tiny. The bed fills most of the room."
"Maybe you could look for a job nearer home."
"That would be the ideal solution, but jobs are not easy to get. It took me years to get this one. I suppose I should just think myself lucky that I've got a job at all, and that I can live on my wages at all." David called his mother on the mobile phone.
"Mother, can I come to your house for tea tonight? Can I come to your house for tea most nights? I'm having to pay a bit more for my bus pass with the fuel going up. I can't come at weekends because the bus pass is only Monday to Friday. But if you can give me a decent meal five days a week and I only have to pay for a few snacks, it'll really make a difference. Yes, I promise I'll eat out properly at a cafe on Saturday and Sunday." David's job involved looking for national insurance numbers on the computer. The employers emailed him with the personal details of hundreds of employees. It wasn't possible to spy on people using the internet, hackers and viruses were problems that were virtually unheard of, over 80 years of internet use security systems had slowly become impenetrable. David copied the whole sheet of information into a computer program that searched for all the numbers within a few minutes. He then emailed it back to the sender. Sometimes a member of the public would want to know their national insurance number. This took a little bit longer, as it meant searching for each individual number or sometimes telling them to attend an interview. David did a job with one pocket PC the size of a notebook that an entire department would have once done. Somebody must have made an awful lot of money out of the information revolution, and it wasn't David.

David arrived at his parents' house for tea. It was close to where he lived and he did not have to make much of a detour by public transport. His mother was preparing the meal in the kitchen. She was holding a tin of stewing steak.
"This tin of stewing steak is five times smaller than it would have been twenty years ago," she said. "Just so the government can say that there's no inflation. These tins of vegetables are smaller too. The shops are still making their money, even with the fuel crisis. Have you ever seen an 85 gram tin of baked beans? That's not even enough for one person. All right, they sell them for virtually nothing, but in reality this food costs five times what it cost twenty years ago."
"I can give you some money for the meal," said David.
"No, I heard what you said on the phone. Things are a little bit tight. With me and your dad it's okay. We've got your sister Maria, Sam and little Tyler sharing a flat with us. They pay the bills. Maria and Sam are both working. I don't know what we'd do if they weren't." Mother put some pasta in a pan and began to boil it. Maria, Sam and Tyler came into the kitchen.
"Hello David," said Maria.
"Hello Maria. How's my little nephew?" asked David.
"Hello Uncle David," said Tyler. They all sat down at the kitchen table.
"Derek," shouted Mother. David's father Derek came running into the room and sat down at the table. Mother put some plates on the table and picked up the pans and doled out the food. It was a mixture of pasta, stewing steak, baked beans, carrots and tinned potatoes, pasta making up the main bulk of the meal and nothing else being present in particularly large quantities. A small quantity of tinned tomatoes had been added to give the illusion of a sauce. You could eat a whole plateful of the pasta mix and still feel hungry. "Do you want some more?" asked Mother.
"Yes," said David.
"Yes please," said Maria.
"Absolutely," said Tyler, holding up his plate.
"Tyler, what should you say?" asked Maria.
"Yes please, Grandma." Mother put some more food onto Tyler's plate. "Thank you." After two portions, David felt satisfied. Tyler didn't.
"Please Grandma, can I clean out the pots and pans?" he asked.
"He means he wants to eat everything in the pots and pans," said Sam.
"I wonder where he gets it from," said David, laughing. "I used to say things like that when I was a little boy." Mother piled the remaining food onto Tyler's plate. "What's for pudding?"
"We don't usually have any," said Father.
"I think Tyler is quite full," said Mother.
"I couldn't eat another thing," said Father.
"Is there anything else to eat?" asked Tyler.
"No," said Maria. "We let Tyler have the best of the meat or the fish. He needs plenty of iron, calcium and protein. When you get older, you don't need quite so much."
"When you get as old as me you can't eat a great deal anyway," said Father.
"We're all feeling the pinch," said David.
"Yes," said Mother. "Sorry if you feel your journey here has been wasted."
"No, not at all," said David. "It was quite a substantial meal, even if I had to eat two portions of it. Thank you for your efforts."
"You could ask your mother to make you some sandwiches for work tomorrow," said Father.
"In that case I really should offer you some money."
"That's all right," said Mother. "We'll talk about it at the end of the month when your wages come. David, you could catch the seven o' clock bus tomorrow and call in here on your way to work. I could give you some salmon sandwiches from the fridge."
"I'm sorry we can't give you a bed here," said Father, "but your sister and Sam sleep in what was once the living room, and Tyler's got the other bedroom."
"That's fine," said David. "I think you're managing very well." At that moment the lights went out.
"Power cut," shouted Tyler, turning on his small pocket torch.
"It's all right," said Father. "It'll only be for half an hour."

The family waited half an hour and the power didn't come back on.
"Any minute now," said Father. They waited another half hour.
"Can't be long," said Sam.
"I wonder if something's wrong," said Maria.
"What's the worse thing that could possibly happen?" asked Sam.
"I dread to think," said Father. Tyler turned on his mobile phone.
"Should I select Google News so you know what's going on?" he asked.
"He's well trained," said David.
"Yes, Tyler," said Maria. "That would be very helpful." The sound of Google news came over the tiny loudspeaker.
"There are huge areas of power blackouts across Europe tonight. They are believed to be caused by a failure in the natural gas supply in some areas which led to many people turning on electric heaters. These overloaded the international grid which has been struggling to cope with demand. The government issued the following advice."
"We would urge people to wrap up warmly. Wear two jumpers, wear your outdoor coat, wear a hat, wear any warm clothing you can find. And please turn off your electric heaters. If people turn off their electric heaters, the international grid should get back to normal again."
"I feel cold," said Mother. "The heating's not on either."
"Like the man said," said Father, "it's going to be a cold night." By the light of Tyler's torch everybody put on their outdoor coats. Father and David put on hats. Sam and Tyler put up their hoods.
"I still feel cold," said Mother.
"You need an extra jumper," said Maria. "Here, have mine." Maria removed her jumper and gave it to mother. "I have a thick full length lady's winter coat. I can manage without a jumper."
"I can manage without a hat," said David. Mother put on David's thick, woolly hat. The electricity came back on but not the gas central heating.
"I'm feeling cold," said Father. "Would it be all right to put the kettle on?"
"He said no heaters," said Tyler.
"A kettle's not the same. It would be on for only a few minutes," said Father.
"Perhaps we'd better not," said Maria.
"I'll go and get an extra shirt and an extra jumper," said Father, going to his room.

David returned home to his flat. He was worried that the electricity might be off. Would it be possible to get the bed down from the wall? Fortunately the electricity was on. He pressed the switch on the wall and the bed descended, filling most of the room. The room was freezing cold, far colder than anything David had ever experienced in a building before. Cold like a frosty day with a howling wind. The electric heater on the ceiling had been disconnected by the landlord, following government advice. David climbed into bed fully clothed. The following day he woke up at six o' clock and put the mobile phone on Google News.
"Millions of elderly people have died during the night following a huge power blackout that effected most of Europe. Particularly cold weather caused the gas supply to be unable to cope in some areas which resulted in the gas being cut off and people turning on electric heaters. The electric heaters overloaded the international grid, causing power blackouts that lasted for several hours. The government advised people to wear warm clothing and to turn off their electric heating. Weather forcasters indicated that more cold weather is on the way." David looked out of the window. There were two inches of snow on the ground. He went into the bathroom and turned on the taps. At least the water was still flowing. He turned on the hot tap for quite some time, it still seemed to be producing hot water. Perhaps by running the hot tap for several minutes at six o' clock in the morning while the gas was still on, David could prevent a burst pipe. He kept the mobile phone with him and laid it on the tiny windowsill.
"The Health Minister issued the following statement."
"We would urge people to wear warm clothing, wear their outdoor coats indoors, wear two shirts and two jumpers, and wear a hat as lots of heat can be lost from the head. Make hot drinks and keep them warm in thermosflasks for when the electricity goes off, which will hopefully only be for short periods. Please don't use electric heaters and use gas central heating for no more than a few hours a day. You should still use gas cookers and gas water heaters normally, but try not to use a gas fire. We want to make sure that there is enough energy to go around."

David got the bus to his parents' house. When he arrived there it was warm. He met his father in the kitchen.
"I turned the central heating on for three hours, just to take the chill off the house. Didn't want to have a burst pipe. I will turn it off again. I know what they said. Your mother's all right. She's tucked up in bed with a t-shirt, a blouse and two jumpers. Do you fancy some cornflakes?" David put some cornflakes into a bowl and took the milk out of the fridge. "Fancy some toast?"
"Yes," said David. Dad put two slices of bread into the toaster. David finished his toast and cornflakes and took his salmon sandwiches from the fridge. He walked back into the snow, which was now a blizzard. There was the usual queue for the quarter to eight bus. The driver let one person off, let another one on, shouted, "We're full," and quickly drove away. Another bus arrived two minutes later. Six people got off. Twelve people got on before the driver shouted, "No more. That's all." At least David had managed to get on. The bus was crowded like a tin of Heinz baked beans, a crowded bus being as close as most people got to a tin of Heinz baked beans nowadays. Only the wealthy could afford Heinz and the tins of beans that came from Eastern Europe were tiny and tasted horrible. Eventually David arrived at work. It was cold in the office, but David had wrapped himself in extra clothing.
"Do you not want to put your coat on?" asked the young female manager.
"No. I'm well wrapped up. I'm wearing a t-shirt, a long sleeved shirt, a cotton jumper, and an acrylic jumper."
"I'm impressed. You should work for the Department of Health giving government advice," she said.
"David," asked Simon, "after work some of us are going to go around the local streets with hot soup and old clothes, knocking on people's doors and asking them if they're all right. Do you want to come?"
"Yes, certainly."

A big van drove down the road full of volunteers. David jumped out with a flask of soup and knocked on the door of a house. An old man opened the door. He was wearing a hat and a coat.
"How are you?" asked David.
"We're managing fine."
"Do you want a flask of hot soup?"
"Yes, that would be very nice."
"Do you need any warm clothes?" asked Simon, who was standing next to David with a big bin liner full of clothes. "I recommend wearing a t-shirt underneath your ordinary shirt, it'll keep you a lot warmer."
"I'll have some t-shirts," said the old man. David called his mother on the mobile phone.
"Mother," he said, "I'm going to be late. I'm doing some relief work, knocking on people's doors with old clothes and soup." He then turned on Google News.
"Millions of relief workers all over Europe are providing door to door deliveries of second hand clothes and soup to try and prevent a repeat of last night's tragedy. An emergency meeting of the European Energy Committee was held today. The European Commissioner made the following statement."
"The committee agreed to the construction of a new generation of fast breeder nuclear reactors which would run on reprocessed nuclear waste and the production of large quantities of domestic gas from coal to replace natural gas. Owing to the shortage of Asian and Eastern European coal it was proposed to reopen some of the coal mines in Western Europe and the United Kingdom. A new system of electric trams in the cities would also provide cheaper public transport in most areas and take the strain off dwindling fossil fuels. We would warn people not to be complacent but to still use fuel sparingly as these changes will take several years."