Well we are in a dreadful pickle aren’t we. Christmas is going to be the worst ever. No cheap, plastic, Chinese here-today-gone-tomorrow toys under a non-existent Christmas tree. No factory-farmed turkey. No smashed avocado for breakfast. THE HORRORRRRRRRRRRR!
Oh, strap on a pair. What’s wrong with a jar of homemade marmalade from the mother-in-law (best in the world – the marmalade, not the in-law), paper chains made from discarded colour-magazines, a whole poached wild salmon, and my home-made, home-grown plum compote. Compared to Afghan women, Chinese Uyghurs, and white working-class northerners applying to university, what’s to complain about?
The fact that so many people are complaining and panic-buying is symptomatic of the underlying causes of many of our first-world problems. There are a couple of self-perpetuating societal ills that run much deeper than any flawed trade agreement or Chinese-induced pandemic (gee I've got it in for these guys today).
The long-term ‘Predict and Provide’ approach to Government policy and corporate strategy consumes resources we don’t really have. It’s a self-perpetuating confidence bubble that, if not bursting right now, is noticeably deflating.
What P&P means is that Government and their corporate partners in crime predict what people will want in the future and work their socks off to provide all wishes. You want a cheap, carbon-emitting, noise-polluting trip to Ibiza, plus another to Grenoble, and a couple of city breaks to boot? Every year? To the end of yer natural? You got it! You want out-of-season food every week in the supermarkets? You got it! You want bottomless supplies of electricity to power your expensive household gadgets? You got it! (Yes, I loved Roy Orbison.)
If you get that 1 + 1 = 2, then you can work out that the more you provide, the more resources it takes – money, fuel, land and landscapes, time, workers, trees, lighting, tranquillity (a stress-relieving resource) ... The more resources required, the greater the probability of there being one weak link in the chain of events required to provide everything. And as all chains for all events related to all resources and all wish-lists are all connected in a complex web of dependency, then at some stage at least one link is going to break, ricochet, and burst that bubble. (Phew – I really struggled to combine those two metaphors.)
Government should instead re-strategise within a ‘Demand Management’ framework, i.e. acknowledge there are natural limits to natural and other resources, and don’t facilitate more whatevers for ever more puerile use, such as watching Wacky Races or getting sunburned in Spain. If the wants are not provided, then people will have to do without and adjust, and it needn’t be a hardship.
Here’s an example. Some time ago, a wind farm was proposed in a nearby village. Four of the tallest turbines in the country were going to be sited between a pretty hamlet and an ancient village. Much was made of the ‘green’ contribution to Britain’s electricity needs until, I pointed out using the developers’ own data, that these four turbines would only produce sufficient electricity to power every television in mainland Britain for thirty minutes ... in one year!
I know!
Turn off your darn TVs for 30 minutes every year – that’s one paltry episode of East Enders (or should that be one episode of paltry East Enders), a much easier, cheaper, more sustainable, long-term solution.
Ahhh, I can hear the ‘growth’ argument – we have to build more, produce more, spend more in order to grow the economy more, which benefits everyone. Nooooooooooooooo. If we re-directed investment away from destroying the planet, the landscapes, the tranquillity, not pandering to wants but fulfilling needs, then we’d still grow, but in a more sustainable direction with more beneficial results for more people. Investing in cleaner air (by NOT expanding airports for example) will mean healthier lungs and less strain on the NHS. Investing in intelligent, systemic, natural flood defences will mean less money required for disaster management and recovery. Invest in agriculture to provide jobs as well as improve food security. I could go on (and often do).
By not ‘growing the economy’ through Predict and Provide, the Government might not increase its coffers as much, but they’d have less to fund so wouldn’t lose out.
The second underlying cause of our current ‘shortages’ is the ‘Just in Time’ corporate model, whereby stocks are kept as low as possible and reliance is placed on deliveries ‘just in time’ to complete an order. As such, there’s minimum resilience in the system for temporary hiccups in supply chains, as now. But it means profits are higher and executive bonuses are greater, and that’s what drives corporate decision-making.
But without Just in Time we’d have to build more storage including humongous warehouses, I hear you cry. Well. if we didn’t try and Predict and Provide then we’d need fewer of the end products so less storage. In any event, instead of wind turbines at sea we could have storage facilities – a great use for old ships and liners. And what about those now defunct airport terminals if not airports. Be still my beating heart.
What’s needed for Demand Management, and less Just in Time and more resilience, is something that is plainly anathematic to successive Governments – joined up thinking for the long term, where problems and solutions are managed systemically and consistently. Unfortunately, politicians plan for the next election, if not the next opinion poll, and complex joined-up narratives don’t produce catchy sound bites. So, a pipe dream?
I hope not because I think we’re fast approaching the needs-must deadline.
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