OT(ish): Over on aus.bicycle re petrol protests

in message , John Blake
') wrote:

In a thread headed

22 Sept. No petrol day

There seems to be a desire to have a protest over there re high fuel
prices. Might be an interesting read - might not.

Why should cyclists (as cyclists) want to protest about high fuel prices?

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; L'etat c'est moi -- Louis XVI
;; I... we... the Government -- Tony Blair

Simon Brooke wrote:

Why should cyclists (as cyclists) want to protest about high fuel prices?

That they're not high enough? ;-)

R.

in message , John Blake
') wrote:

In message id on
Thu, 15 Sep 2005 11:30:08 +0100, Simon Brooke wrote in uk.rec.cycling
:

in message , John Blake
') wrote:

In a thread headed

22 Sept. No petrol day

There seems to be a desire to have a protest over there re high fuel
prices. Might be an interesting read - might not.

Why should cyclists (as cyclists) want to protest about high fuel
prices?

Because the cost of delivery of goods to retail outlets increases with
the increased cost to manufacturers / processors / hauliers /
distributors? It affects us all even though we are not directly
dependant.

It does indeed affect us all. If the price of fuel continues to rise
steeply, commerce and industry will wake up out of their torpor, get on
the clue train, and start designing and making us products for a low
energy future, so that we can continue to live lives of close to current
levels of material comfort even when the fossil fuel has all run out.

If, however, fossil fuel remains absurdly cheap until the last barrel is
pumped, we're in for a very hard landing indeed. Possibly not in our
lifetimes, but definitely in our childrens'.

You may recall that after a few days protest last time around there
were fears that stores would run out of stocks of food. Costs of
delivery to retail outlets, even those out of town stores, get passed
through to all customers. I don't know of a store that gives me a
refund because I complete the final leg of delivery to home by bicycle
or for not using their carrier bags to get the stuff home. But they do
charge if I want them to do a home delivery.

One of the major supermarket chains has all the sandwiches for all its
stores throughout the UK made by a firm in Aberdeen. Every one of the
supermarket chains sources its fruit and veg nationally, with
strawberries from Perthshire and apples from Somerset being trucked into
the same distribution hub - typically in the English midlands - and then
trucked all the way back to Somerset and Perthshire.

Rising prices for fuel will mean that a lot of this nonsense just stops.
It means that the farmers who are currently busy protesting about the
price of fuel will suddenly have a real market again and will no longer
have to live on subsidies from the rest of us, because it will be
cheaper to source food locally than fly peas from Peru. The 'cost of
delivery/retail prices will rise' nonsense is largely just that -
nonsense. Yes, we won't be able to buy the same fruit and veg all year
round. Yes, we'll have to get used to the fact that crops are seasonal.
These are not tragedies. And in any case much lower energy distribution
systems - railways, canals, ships - already exist in a high state of
development. If trucks are priced off the roads, the food will still get
through.

A high fuel cost economy is not a disaster. A low energy economy is
actually inevitable within two generations. The problem is to get from
here to there smoothly, without massive disruption - and the way to do
that is to keep hiking the price of fuel smoothly but steadily, whatever
the underlying price at the wellhead.

The government has an energy generation crisis looming and will in
this term of government have to sanction the construction of power
generating plants. Alternative fuels should be considered and whilst
nuclear is least desired, it may soon come to be the only option.

It's not an option I favour. We have Windscale just across the water from
us, and americium and plutonium blows around in the dust in this village
- not healthy stuff. I'd much rather see an economy which learns to do
more with less energy.

So going back to your comment, we as cyclists may not want to protest
about high fuel prices per se, but we can try to propagate
increasingly well thought out reasons for lobbying for a shift in
emphasis on what is causing the lemmings to act in the way they do.

I think we're more or less in agreement.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
.::;===r==\
/ /___||___\____
//==\- ||- | /__\( MS Windows IS an operating environment.
//____\__||___|_// \|: C++ IS an object oriented programming language.
\__/ ~~~~~~~~~ \__/ Citroen 2cv6 IS a four door family saloon.

Simon Brooke wrote:
Every one of the
supermarket chains sources its fruit and veg nationally, with
strawberries from Perthshire and apples from Somerset being trucked into
the same distribution hub - typically in the English midlands - and then
trucked all the way back to Somerset and Perthshire.

Waitrose is starting to get a clue. It sources some of its fresh
produce locally (local to the particular store, that is).

R.

and the way to do
that is to keep hiking the price of fuel smoothly but steadily, whatever
the underlying price at the wellhead.

Won't the increased demand from China coupled with the need to get oil from
more expensive sources do this anyway?

On Fri, 16 Sep 2005 10:33:08 +0100, Richard
.address.uk wrote:

Simon Brooke wrote:
Every one of the
supermarket chains sources its fruit and veg nationally, with
strawberries from Perthshire and apples from Somerset being trucked into
the same distribution hub - typically in the English midlands - and then
trucked all the way back to Somerset and Perthshire.

Waitrose is starting to get a clue. It sources some of its fresh
produce locally (local to the particular store, that is).

Did you catch some farming programme (possibly On The Farm) on Radio 4
the otherday. Couple set up a goat cheese enterprise and sell it
hither and yon, locally, West Countryish. They've managed to get the
local Waitrose to stock it but to do this the stuff goes to Stevenage
first then back to "their" Waitrose.


Mind you, I though Waitrose HQ was Bracknell not Stevenage.

Tim