Is the UK sustainable?

Ricochet J

Ricochet J

Ricochet J

Soldato
Joined
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Should the need arise:
- Would we be able to produce/use our own coal/oil/gas/uranium reserves for ourselves?
- Would we be able to feed our people from UK produce?
- Would we be able to manufacture our own equipment for our own use? Such as ships, aeroplanes, cars, tools, turbines, computers etc.

It's a lot of people's understanding that we source a lot of stuff from overseas because it's cheaper. But how much of it can we do for ourselves?

It's a debate we were having at work today. What do you think?
 
Ricochet J said:
Should the need arise:
- Would we be able to produce/use our own coal/oil/gas/uranium reserves for ourselves? No certainly not on oil/gas
- Would we be able to feed our people from UK produce? No - you wouldn't have enough
- Would we be able to manufacture our own equipment for our own use? Such as ships, aeroplanes, cars, tools, turbines, computers etc.

Depends on the turbines, and if you mean all computer components. If so, no. Everything else yes.

It's a debate we were having at work today. What do you think?
Click to expand...
 
Call it a hippyish statement, but this is why we should be ploughing a lot more money and energy from the non renewables into renewables. Such that we can get e.g. solar power down in price and up in efficiency such that it really does have a long term effect on the needs of a household.

I get the impression that it's still quite expensive and there's a 0.5% reduction every year.
 
In a word, NO

Most of our coal mines are now flooded, our industries are no existent and the rare earths needed for some high tech stuff is imported.

Food - well we struggled in WWII and when had a whole lot less people.
 
We're rather overpopulated as it is. If some of us moved to Eire and some of the larger isles like Island of Mann, to spread the population out, then the farmland-to-person ratio may suffice. I don't know about vehicles. We had decent computers in the 1980s though. Think about retro stuff, then the advent of 32-bit Acorn RISC machines. Sadly they got overshadowed by the Apple/IBM PC takeover. So if we did bring back Acorn RISC and take it on from there, we could have something contemporary homebrewed in the UK.
 
as a side point, if law and order broke down in Britain for whatever reason and there wasn't enough food to go around, electricity, and water . I think the police and army would be unable to control the country.
 
Monserrat said:
We're rather overpopulated as it is. If some of us moved to Eire and some of the larger isles like Island of Mann, to spread the population out, then the farmland-to-person ratio may suffice. I don't know about vehicles. We had decent computers in the 1980s though. Think about retro stuff, then the advent of 32-bit Acorn RISC machines. Sadly they got overshadowed by the Apple/IBM PC takeover. So if we did bring back Acorn RISC and take it on from there, we could have something contemporary homebrewed in the UK.
Click to expand...

we may have made some computers but the components were imported.
 
Ricochet J said:
Should the need arise:
- Would we be able to produce/use our own coal/oil/gas/uranium reserves for ourselves?
- Would we be able to feed our people from UK produce?
- Would we be able to manufacture our own equipment for our own use? Such as ships, aeroplanes, cars, tools, turbines, computers etc.

It's a lot of people's understanding that we source a lot of stuff from overseas because it's cheaper. But how much of it can we do for ourselves?

It's a debate we were having at work today. What do you think?
Click to expand...

1. yes = reopen all the collieries closed down in the 80's

2. yes = Cut imigration quotas to bare minimum required to plug skills gap in UK, proactively round up the illegal imigrants and send back, ignore EU / UN statues regarding sending illegals back to a country where they could end up getting executed by their own government, if they are criminals why the hell do we want them here in the first palce (playing devils advocate here big time !!!!!) thereby reducing overall population, put chinese style laws in place of 1 child per family

3. Possibly but would require massive capital injection to our old industry sector / heavy industry that has been pregresively closed down, make corporation tax more attractive to companies to want to set up shop here. labour costs may not be sustainable though if they have to pay over the odds

Yes its an extremely blunt tool the way I described, completely non workable unless you get cut throat government that ignores almost everything from a world wide perspective and have very blinkered vision for UK only.
 
Monserrat said:
We're rather overpopulated as it is. If some of us moved to Eire and some of the larger isles like Island of Mann, to spread the population out, then the farmland-to-person ratio may suffice. I don't know about vehicles. We had decent computers in the 1980s though. Think about retro stuff, then the advent of 32-bit Acorn RISC machines. Sadly they got overshadowed by the Apple/IBM PC takeover. So if we did bring back Acorn RISC and take it on from there, we could have something contemporary homebrewed in the UK.
Click to expand...

"farmland-to-person" ratio would stay the same.

we would still have the same agricultural production capacity, and the same amount of people.

spreading the people about does little in that case.

also - we have no way currently of manufacturing many things contained within PC's now.
 
wildman said:
1. yes = reopen all the collieries closed down in the 80's

2. yes = Cut imigration quotas to bare minimum required to plug skills gap in UK, proactively round up the illegal imigrants and send back, ignore EU / UN statues regarding sending illegals back to a country where they could end up getting executed by their own government, if they are criminals why the hell do we want them here in the first palce (playing devils advocate here big time !!!!!) thereby reducing overall population, put chinese style laws in place of 1 child per family

3. Possibly but would require massive capital injection to our old industry sector / heavy industry that has been pregresively closed down, make corporation tax more attractive to companies to want to set up shop here. labour costs may not be sustainable though if they have to pay over the odds

Yes its an extremely blunt tool the way I described, completely non workable unless you get cut throat government that ignores almost everything from a world wide perspective and have very blinkered vision for UK only.
Click to expand...

I am understanding that the coal mines are flooded out and the prospect or reopening them is zero? I may be wrong.
 
brilliant opening statement using the word 'sustainable' then listing fossil fuels which are finite and non renewable.
 
Biohazard said:
Yes.

It's got little to do with old mines and whatever condition they are in, but where you could have news ones.

There is still a LOT of coal kicking about in seams.

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Scotland-plugs--into-Forth.6329104.jp

We sold off our rights to oil and gas however.
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is there anything our governments have sold out !!!

List of flogged family silver is high, a few to mention

Airports
natural Resources
Public Transport
Gold reserves
Healthcare (soon I guess)

damn it will be the british subjects next, sold to the Chinese or north korean government slavers to work in their Uranium mines !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
We own the falklands, which has crap loads of oil. So yes we'd have ample supply for the UK.

Intensive farming is easy enough for the UK, our land produces excellent crops, mass greenhouse farming already produces massive amounts of food, if the demand is there our countryside can easily fulfill it.

We certainly have the expertise to build all the high tech equipment we need, we simply need the raw materials to do so, which would be the main unsustainable aspect given the scenario.

We could also just recycle Luton, it's has no purpose apart from the airport, no-one would miss it.
 
Any country can be sustainable, it depends entirely on the level of sustainability and implementation of systems to compensate for an insular economy.
 
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