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How can England possibly be running out of water?

theguardian.com

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Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#91

Post by PaulRobinson »

tome wrote: post #84
sandbags wrote: post #34

As the article mentions, privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources. What the article doesn’t mention is that pre-privatisation a new reservoir was built every year up to about 1960 and then every few years until privatisation in 1992. So we are about 30 years behind in adding capacity to the system. This combined with the inadequate levels of i…

> privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources Why does privatisation mean that the government can't build infrastructure? I think the answer is more likely nimbyism than privatisation. I personally think it makes no sense to privatise infrastructure for which no competition can reasonably take place, and I'd include distribution networks of many…

"Privatisation" does not preclude government investment in infrastructure.

"Thatcherism" does, however. It is a warped [Ayn] Randian view of capitalism and those who drive it. State intervention into the machinery of capital, even when it comes to essential infrastructure, is considered a corrupting influence.

Nobody able to change national policy within Downing Street or even ministries in Whitehall, at the time - or since - has had the gumption to say it's not working and we need to do something about it.

You are however right, that NIMBYism has also worked remarkably well - the planning process in the UK is the reason we can't build HS2 cheaply or quickly, and that is relatively painless compared to wind farms, solar farms (also often blocked), never mind building a dam and flooding an entire valley, which was the old way of creating new capacity.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#92

Post by richrichardsson »

helqn wrote: post #56
tempfile wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the "easy fix"? Mass deportations?

Stopping immigration in its tracks is the first step. If anything it doesn’t stop increasing. Then we can talk about the next steps.

Investment is the easy fix, but it's easier to blame immigrants than do that.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#93

Post by fragmede »

atoav wrote: post #57
sandbags wrote: post #34

As the article mentions, privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources. What the article doesn’t mention is that pre-privatisation a new reservoir was built every year up to about 1960 and then every few years until privatisation in 1992. So we are about 30 years behind in adding capacity to the system. This combined with the inadequate levels of i…

Privatization just means that if you were interested in the outcome before (having water), they are now interested in the money that can be extracted from it. And that means their interest is to but a modern branding onto an operation that has been stripped for wires as long as it works. I grew up during a privatization wave in my country and the promise of the proponents always was that private ownership means waste…

Waste and inefficiency should be stomped out, but it doesn't need to be ground down into a fine dust and then vaporized into nothingness. A little bit of waste is fine. You want slack in your system in case of emergencies.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#94

Post by defrost »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #86
Frieren wrote: post #3

> Future generations, who will be dealing with long, dry summers, would probably be shocked at the profligate way clean tap water was used to flush toilets, water gardens and run washing machines. Climate change means societal change. There was a time that Northern Africa was one of the best places in the world to grow crops. They were at the top of civilization for thousands of years. Climate changed, what people co…

[flagged]

https://www.britishmuseum.org/learn/schools/ages-7-11/ancien...

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#95

Post by KaiserPro »

helqn wrote: post #56
tempfile wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the "easy fix"? Mass deportations?

Stopping immigration in its tracks is the first step. If anything it doesn’t stop increasing. Then we can talk about the next steps.

Congratulations! now you have a island at the wrong end of a population boom.

All of your former productive workers are now retired, and the rest are expected to pay for the retirees and aging infrastructure.

Now, is growing by a million a year a good way to build long term? no.

Is depopulation going to make the country better? also no.

Immigrants aren't the problem here, They're not the one scaring away buisness, not building homes, not changing the law to make needed changes.

The people who are to blame are the commentariat and the rest of the "political calss" who refuse to accept blame or change.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#96

Post by KaiserPro »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #42
antonvs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-dont-we-get-o...

Article is outdated (2008) and makes a single argument: Desalination requires too much energy. Becaues it is outdated, it doesn't account for the excess energy a lot of places and countries have from wind and solar. Water desalination is a prime candidate (along with Bitcoin mining and AI model training, sigh ) for using available excess energy from renewable that cannot be stored otherwise. Clean/drinking water can…

The UK also doesn't have enough power, well not enough to do whats needed for desalination.

It would be _vastly_ cheaper and easier to build reservoirs.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#97

Post by secondcoming »

bbrks wrote: post #85
kawsper wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That surprised me too. Flatrate is the default, but you can get a metered water connection installed if you want, and it is often cheaper than the flatrate.

It's not the default. You cannot buy a new house today without being on a meter. That is the default. It's just our housing stock being so old and decrepit, where nobody can be bothered updating anything even if it's provided for free by the utility companies, that the majority of houses simply do not have a water meter! There's a general sentiment that smart meters and metered water will make costs skyrocket or some…

Except in Scotland where your water charge is added to your council tax and so there are no water meters.

I pay £190 per year for unlimited water.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#98

Post by actionfromafar »

jameslk wrote: post #36
bayarearefugee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we're not going to lower the taxes on normal wage earners, silly. But we need to lower the taxes on the wealthy and corporations (and reduce or eliminate regulations) so they can distribute their capital to make new water! Don't you know anything about modern economics? :D

Does this snarky point you’re trying to make connect with anything in the article? I saw no mention of taxes

This is why we are where we are.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#99

Post by tome »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #91
tome wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources Why does privatisation mean that the government can't build infrastructure? I think the answer is more likely nimbyism than privatisation. I personally think it makes no sense to privatise infrastructure for which no competition can reasonably take place, and I'd include distribution networks of many…

"Privatisation" does not preclude government investment in infrastructure. "Thatcherism" does, however. It is a warped [Ayn] Randian view of capitalism and those who drive it. State intervention into the machinery of capital, even when it comes to essential infrastructure, is considered a corrupting influence. Nobody able to change national policy within Downing Street or even ministries in Whitehall, at the time - o…

> Nobody able to change national policy within Downing Street or even ministries in Whitehall, at the time - or since - has had the gumption to say it's not working and we need to do something about it.

Thatcher's been dead for 12 years and out of power for 35, so I'm not sure why it should take much gumption. All it needs is national leaders who believe in the flourishing of the country, and that that requires infrastructure development, not just banks, software and scientific research. Unfortunately I don't see any such leader on the horizon.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#100

Post by Theodores »

tankenmate wrote: post #12
chii wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so a few oil countries can squish some extra money so none of the users of those oil, who paid for it willingly, had any responsibility at all then?

although a good point, there is obvious surface level nuance though; oil companies hid the research of climate change for a decade or two, they also lobbied (and still do) against subsidies for renewable energy and for oil and gas subsidies (in development in most countries, and even end customer price subsidies in others). and of course there's further nuance below the surface as well.

The research wasn't entirely hidden as they did not have a monopoly on it.

In the 1980s, as a child, I remember learning at school about the greenhouse effect, or whatever we called it then. It was not difficult to understand, and neither was the 'nuclear umbrella' that we also had to contend with.

In the mid 1990s I was working in TV weather. We self-censored ourselves regarding global warming, or whatever we called it then. None of us were paid by big oil.

The euphemisms for 'climate change' tell their own story, it seems we need to downgrade the wording for the inevitable catastrophe every decade or so, I think we are on 'climate emergency' now.

As a result of what I learned in school, I genuinely adopted a low-carbon lifestyle which was quite hard to do when everyone was going the other way. If you step inside a car (when you have chosen to not own one) then you are deemed a hypocrite. If you don't eat those cows that create so much methane then you will be called a hypocrite for owning a leather belt. If you read a book then you will be called a hypocrite since trees had to be pulped. Be green and those stuck in the past will get all passive aggressive on you even if you aren't preaching to others.

When all is done we could collectively blame the oil companies for obfuscating the evidence of climate change. Similarly, when all is done with the current genocides going on, we can blame the politicians or the media for not letting us know the truth. Yet we are all a few clicks away from seeing how our alleged enemies 'report our crimes'. Yet, consciously or unconsciously, we censor ourselves.

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