The Pacific Age

I am grateful to that prolific and entertaining member of the Twitterati, Londiensis, for altering me to the news that Germany is planning to close all its nuclear power plants over the next decade. Apparently due to the Fukushima incident in Japan. This is a country that obtained nearly a quarter of its power from nuclear (and doesn't suffer from earthquakes). What strikes me is that if Plan A was at some stage nuclear power, Germany's not got many rational Plans B. It seems that Germany has a few options now. It can move towards greater energy efficiency at a stunning rate. It can once again start exploiting its coal fields. Or it can become dependent upon Russian gas. Or the people of Germany can sit in their cold houses on cold winter nights, having burnt down the last of the Schwarzwald to keep warm, and listen for the wolves of winter to close in. *** And, thanks to Peter Kirk, I should add that the current Plan B is actually to build loads of wind turbines. I apologise for a lack of research here, but think my point still stands - not least since the change in policy has brought the closure of the reactors forward by an average of 12 years.

We seem to be in a cleft stick. One where we want to continue with the consumption of our past - but we don't want to pay for it, either financially or environmentally. Yet we pay for pointless and inefficient wind turbines, which fail when the wind doesn't blow. And cover houses with expensive solar panels, which don't work when the sun doesn't shine. We can't burn coal because we don't want the carbon emissions, and we're scared of nuclear. In short, we've lost our nerve and our vision for the future. And we've no idea of a way out.

In the States, the problems seem worse and the solutions more gormless. The Government's response to a lack of growth is to pump more borrowed imaginary money into the economy. And yet, deep down - if the threat to the world is the consumption of resources - how can growth be the measure be which we drive our economies? Surely growth - the production of things from other things, using energy, which must be produced from fossil fuels or nuclear power, carried around by powered transport - surely growth is the enemy of the environment? Why are the visionaries of the West not putting forward their policies for the only rational strategy - a managed reduction in the size of our economies? How can growth, measured in the gross way it is, be good? And how could an economy like, say, Ireland's, based on debt and property prices, ever have been thought a success - even before the rug was pulled from under it?

Meanwhile there's China. A country with confidence. A country with faith in the future. A country that opens a coal-fired power station every few days. A place making itself rich producing the cheap rubbish with which we make ourselves comfortable in our fin-de-siecle, life-fearing, future-fearing decline. As the sun sets in the West, it's rising with a vengeance in parts of the East.

Those prophets of a quarter of a century ago, Humphreys and McCluskey, when they weren't annoying Ray Barnes with their dancing didn't just pretend to see what the future would hold:

The Pacific Age is growing strong
Its arms embrace with a killing grace
It shakes your hand as it takes your place.

Once our politicians were dreamers, visionaries, powerful people - people that could set up an NHS, fight a World War when the nation's back was against the wall, even - dare I say it - take on the Unions. Now they smile their shiny-faced smiles while they watch their country's decline. Ed, Dave, Nick - they're interchangeable, they're optional, they're not  much good. Just tweaking the crenellations on the sand-castle as the Pacific tide comes in. We've lost our vision, we've lost our way. We've no prophets - just the amusing, made-for-TV ones like Howard Campings. We've no real poets - just the re-hashers of old songs for Reality TV talent-show winners. We're not going crossing any deserts, because we've no Promised Land. So we'll drive miles to the bottle bank to recycle bottles, while we plan our next cheap plane flight for our next cheap holiday. Then we'll suddenly notice how expensive food's getting, and petrol, and wonder why. We'll play with our technology. We'll buy our smart phones. And we'll sit and get washed away with the rest of the West and no-one will miss us. And our children, assuming they can still afford food, will have to learn to make cheap clothes for the Pacific consumers of the future.

Sorry, bouncy happy thoughts will resume tomorrow. You know what it's like, a wet Bank Holiday.