How to regenerate the islands?
The Guardian today clears highlights the problems facing these islands with the demographics going against us. The specific cases they highlight are symptomatic of what needs to be addressed and urgently.
Has any suggestions for reversing the trend, or should we just sit here and slowly moulder into the grave, reliant on hand-outs and the occasional tourist who can afford the ferry fare?
Uig appears to be bucking the trend - and that is good news - but for how long?
Has any suggestions for reversing the trend, or should we just sit here and slowly moulder into the grave, reliant on hand-outs and the occasional tourist who can afford the ferry fare?
Uig appears to be bucking the trend - and that is good news - but for how long?
6 comments:
More particularly, should the Isles be 'regenerated' artificially at all?
Interesting point: I lived for a while in upper New England, which a hundred years back looked remarkably like the Highlands do today, and for the same reason. The chief industries were arable farming in the early 1800s, and when the American Midwest was opened, most of the hill farmers took off for the much easier life out on the prairie.
They were replaced in New England by sheep graziers, whose stock kept the forest grazed out until the 1930s or so. Vermont and Maine were relatively treeless places.
Eventually the sheep went away, too, because it just wasn't an economical way to earn a living compared to, say, working in Boston or New York, or setting up sheep-raising out West.
Today much of upper New England is sparsely populated--the old industries are gone, population has radically declined: much as what has happened in the Isles and the Highlands.
My question: on what basis could remote areas reconstitute their economy? If people find that there's more opportunity in the cities, that's where they'll go--and no amount of investment in the Isles could ever compete with the infrastructure and opportunity of the big cities.
In other words, I have serious doubts that any such investment could ever succeed in building some alternative economy--not even sure on what basis that economy would function. 'Tourism' appears to be the most likely choice for an area of great natural beauty, but lacking other natural resources.
Which is, btw, why I think 'wind turbines' are a huge mistake--they simply cannot be the basis for a robust economy, since they form a single base of investment--a monoculture, if you will. When nuclear plants are built--and they will be--the much-cheaper electricity from that source is going to seriously undercut 'wind' electricity.
I don't know what the answer is, but I suspect it would involve a mix of tourism, local fishing (if the EU ever permits such a thing), and local crafts, with a mix of telecommuting high-tech enterprises perhaps thrown in (ie programmers, consultants etc who live on the Isles but 'dial in' to remote workplaces.
That's my take, anyhow.
"Eric Jacobson said... When nuclear plants are built--and they will be--the much-cheaper electricity from that source is going to seriously undercut 'wind' electricity."
Maybe cheaper just now but in the long term, I’d have to say, not bloody likely.
It is far from carbon neutral once mining, milling uranium into yellowcake and distributing it is taken into account and the price of doing all of the above will fluctuate with the price of oil. The only way the price of oil is likely to be going over the long term is up as we've picked most of the low hanging fruit and we are onto looking at non conventional sources which cost a lot more per barrel to produce.
There are other greenhouse gases produced in the processes above which are far more potent than CO2 and figures on how much of these are emitted are not readily available as far as I can ascertain (would welcome anyone correcting me on this, I'm thinking of CFCs).
Also, mining the stuff is environmentally ruinous. Up to 1000 tonnes of rock has to be processed to get a single tonne of yellowcake. Not only is the remainder of this rock left radioactive indefinitely, the amount of rock you will have to process will only go up for each tonne of yellowcake as you start to diminish the high quality sources for this finite fuel stock. I add emphasis to the word finite because people seem to think that nuclear = infinite. No such thing on our tiny little planet.
"So what? there's loads of the stuff left"; at current rates of consumption, there is maybe 75 years left of conventional uranium (and that's me adding 25 years on to the figure I come across most often), but we all know that consumption will leap as more and more countries jump on (back on in some cases) the nuclear bandwagon, and then it will become a loss in energy terms to extract the stuff from the ground. "Och well, we'll just extract it from seawater when that happens"; at thirty parts per billion, you'll need very roughly two cubic km of seawater to get a tonne of yellowcake which again would mean an incredibly energy intensive operation and diminishing returns over the long term. I don't want to fill this entry up with too much more in the way of dull figures, but who wants to bet me that once you take all factors into account, the process of extracting, milling and transporting uranium from seawater will not be a net energy loser? I’ve seen estimates that it would take three times as much energy to extract a tonne of yellowcake from the sea as that yellowcake would go on to generate in useable electricity.
I could go on, but I won't. If anyone wants to come back at me with any counter arguments e.g . breeder reactors, chemical means of seawater extraction that don't involve depleting some other finite resource heavily or more efficient reactor designs then feel free. After all, Angus's blog seems to be quite a good place for lively and frank debate.
I just hope this has given anyone who stumbles upon this something to think about. I know it's not got much to do with Angus's original post but I just can't help it when I see people talking about nuclear. It may be a foregone conclusion but it isn't necessarily going to work out well for us, even if the 6 o’clock news type worries we hear about are overcome.
It puts me in mind of a hungry man climbing a succession of ever higher mountains with increasingly smaller potions of food at the top of each; does that sound sustainable to anyone?
Good point Angus, I can see some have not thought this through
If the island is depopulating, then who is living in all these new houses and why is it near impossible to find accomodation to rent
you know anonomous2 that is a really Good Point. Obviously I can keep my door open in London because no-one I know has been burgled!
Uig !!!! Its fast becoming a "New England" ... its full of either people who have sold up down South and bought cheaply up here or holiday homes that are only occupied in the summer months.
However - you and your fellow short sighted councillors seem content to regenerate the place with Eastern Europeans!
Post a Comment