The Oil Drum: Europe

I'm not even sure that 3 seasons of full scale hurricanes would change attitudes far or fast enough, so deeply entrenched are economic models of 'endless growth'.  As an example the weekend supplements of even 'environmentally aware' papers such as the Independent and Guardian are full of travel articles encouraging readers to fly / drive to far away places more frequently....and Gov't is helping accommodate same by ambitious plans for road and airport expansion.

Imo the principal cause of change for millions of individuals will not be persuasion but basic economics i.e. make the environmentally undesirable behaviour expensive enough and demand for such activities will then drop.  Gov'ts are hardly likely to impose what would need to be extremely harsh taxes on such activities voluntarily - in a democracy that effectively would amount to political suicide.  Instead take another look at the potential UK trade balance by 2014 based on DTI / JESS forecasts discussed here: http://uk.theoildrum.com/story/2006/5/26/20429/8203#21 . UK trade deficit is currently running at around £3bn per month or £36bn pa...and that's based on relatively neutral energy trade balance thus deficit is mainly down to import of food, goods and the tourist trade imbalance.

Now if UK is to move from a roughly neutral energy trade balance in 2005 to a monthly energy deficit of £4.5bn by 2014 i.e. £54bn pa annual energy imports are going to increase over the 9 years from 2005 to 2014 at £16.4 million per day.  I'm not an economist but based on these numbers it would not be unreasonable to conclude that sometime, likely well before 2014, the 'wheels are going to come off the UK economy'.  The result will be a depreciating currency, rising import costs, higher interest rates and large scale recession.  In turn recession will curb demand for travel and energy consumption - those without work don't tend to drive or fly very far.

It might sound rather harsh, but that's one of the more likely scenarios if Gov'ts don't take a lead and start to influence big changes in behaviour.  In the absence of such action it will be down to economic forces and probably Nature to implement such changes...and they are unlikely to be subtle.