Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Falling living standards are contributing to a shocking surge in malnutrition, and diseases which were prevalent in the 1800s. My question – how much of this hardship is due to the skyrocketing cost of Britain’s green energy disaster?
According to the Independent;
Malnutrition and ‘Victorian’ diseases soaring in England ‘due to food poverty and cuts’
Cases of Victorian-era diseases including scurvy, scarlet fever, cholera and whooping cough have increased since 2010
Cases of malnutrition and other “Victorian” diseases are soaring in England, in what campaigners said was a result of cuts to social services and rising food poverty.
NHS statistics show that 7,366 people were admitted to hospital with a primary or secondary diagnosis of malnutrition between August 2014 and July this year, compared with 4,883 cases in the same period from 2010 to 2011 – a rise of more than 50 per cent in just four years.
Cases of other diseases rife in the Victorian era including scurvy, scarlet fever, cholera and whooping cough have also increased since 2010, although cases of TB, measles, typhoid and rickets have fallen.
Chris Mould, chairman of the Trussell Trust, which runs a nationwide network of foodbanks, said they saw “tens of thousands of people who have been going hungry, missing meals and cutting back on the quality of the food they buy”.
The article in the Independent carefully avoids mentioning the cost of energy, but you don’t have to look far for evidence that electricity prices are placing a lot of stress on British household budgets. Quite apart from devastating job losses which occur when energy intensive industries are forced to close, because they can’t compete with lower energy costs in other countries, Eurostat reports that electricity costs have surged from £0.121 / kWh in 2010, to £0.155 / kWh in 2015 (USD $0.23 / kWh), a rise of 28%.
A lot of British homes rely on gas for heating, this isn’t always the case, especially in isolated rural regions. In any case, the price of gas has also surged, from £0.035 / kWh, to £0.046 / kWh. Thanks to British hostility to fracking, British gas supplies and prices are vulnerable, to political instability in Russia, and to sudden cold snaps – Britain is on the end of a long supply chain of countries which quite reasonably place the needs of their citizens first.
What evidence is there that green policies are exacerbating this price spike? Willis did a compelling analysis in 2014, which shows a strong relationship between installed renewable capacity, and domestic energy prices.
Figure 1. Electricity costs as a function of per capita installed renewable capacity. Wind and solar only, excludes hydropower.
British people are slowly waking up to the cost of green energy. For the British middle class energy costs are a serious annoyance. For the poor, rising energy prices are an unmitigated disaster. Adding to this burden, in the name of saving the environment, must be contributing to the ongoing surge in poverty related illnesses. One can only imagine the quiet suffering of British parents and grandparents, growing numbers of whom are going without, destroying their own health, to ensure their children get the warmth and nutrition they need.
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“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”
Scrooge trembled more and more.
“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!“
Or maybe they are culturally wards of the state, unable to fend for or defend themselves.
OK I must respond to this but it is a bit OT.
Perhaps the recent “immigration” of illiterate and uneducated “immigrants” might be a contributing factor.
The main reason for such problems in the UK is the infantilisation of a significant proportion of the population by 70 years of welfare and socialism. A good 10% of people are incapable of managing their lives, and those of their multiple offspring (one thing they are good at is copulating), and lives lives of total disorder, almost entirely on welfare. A friend of mine is a secondary school teacher, in a poor area of an otherwise average town, and he tells me of the children who are sent to school not having been fed, with inappropriate clothing, with no school supplies, without even basic training in social behaviour. This at age 11 plus. Not down to lack of funds, the parent(s) will have all the latest electronic gadgets, satellite TV, and smoke and drink, but couldn’t care less about their children’s needs. They are seen purely as a source of income – historically the welfare system in the UK paid out more money the more children you had – this is about to change. Socialism ruins countries, some quickly, some slowly. But it ruins every one.
I lived in a poor part of the UK for a decade on a very, very low income. The priority was always heat over food.
Food is a variable but the cost of heat was pretty much fixed. If the cost of fuel goes up, the nutrition will go down. That’s my experience.
One of the most insidious lies told by credulous Warmists is that we have nothing to lose by trying to fix Global Warming, even if it turns out to be false.
The truth is that the opportunity cost of wasting money on this fraud are counted in millions of lives.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
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These statistics aren’t particularly scary when considered in perspective, but the obvious fact is that increasing energy costs are hurting people today. The environmentalist religious dogma harms people today. Regardless of what people pretend in the future, green-policies cause pain, suffering, and death today, especially to the poorest among us.
Remember, first, do no harm.
Even when it is not within our power to do good, we can always refrain from harm.
The Greenie ideology is a cruel, heartless, anti-human one. Although an increase in diseases of the past could have other causes, common sense tells us that raising the cost of energy for no reason is both stupid and hurtful to people, especially those least able to afford that increased cost.
When the full costs, in the $trillions wasted, and resultant needless economic hardship of many, including the deaths of millions are finally realized, there should be a sort of Climate Nuremberg for these bastards.
Massive immigration is putting pressure on low income families. Scarce housing, competition for health care, schooling and a number of imported health deficits added on top.
Eric, you have been taken to task by the scientifically analytical for not suggesting other causes of nutrition and health decline among the poor (immigration seems the bigee) and rightly so. So, shame on you. As you can see, WUWT posters filled in the blanks admirably. What your critics missed, however, is that at the margin, even little things make a huge difference. At the margin, a small increase in energy costs must be compensated for by the poor in that position by reducing energy consumption, stinting on food, clothing, transportation….When the change in energy costs is a few hundred percent (certainly relative to North American energy costs and we are doing our best to catch up with EU’s idiocy), the poor are thrust below the margin where lies illness and death. Not only can they not afford heat and light, but everything else we use is made more expensive by rising energy costs. For some reason, people who have taken cheap energy for granted for so long, under-appreciate its critical place in the wellbeing of the economy and its people.
Yes, immigration brought unwell people with them, some carrying Victorian era illnesses, but it seems that their wellbeing has been much better underwritten by government than is the case for the indigenous unemployed poor, with elderly on small pensions, etc. It’s apparently not the immigrant who is buying 1930s encylopedia brittanica sets and large dictionaries at garage sales to use for burning to heat with. No. Government scrambles around (certainly Germany is right now) building anew and refurbishing old warehouses and filling up hospitals. It wouldn’t do for a UN policy to have the unsavory optics of recent immigrants foraging for books to burn, for sticks, bits of coal and an ugly piece of thrown out furniture. It wouldn’t do to turn away a new immigrant from a maternity ward. They not only would be ’embarrassed’ internationally but the immigrant community shows they know how to protest and exploit political correctness. They were even demanding train tickets when they reached southern Europe to help speed them along north and there were accounts of them simply taking over first class – who in EU would complain to them? No. The government knows that the proud old Brit is not going to make a fuss. I think (hope) the biggest fuss is in the offing, though.
In my experience of the immigration process in several countries (Belgium, Australia and New Zealand) health checks are quite rigorous, although focus on conditions such as HIV.
A truly risible article and not worthy of inclusion on a generally well informed web site.
To link malnutrition to green energy policy has but a small fraction of the scientific validity associated with climate/CO2 – and the consensus on this site of the latter is sceptical.
Completely ignored in the article is growth in elderly numbers, immigration, birth rates in different communities, financial crisis, static and reducing real wages, and even the possibility that reported cases may have increased simply due to reporting – data collection methodology and definition.
The post simply asked the question: “how much of this hardship (falling living standards) is due to the skyrocketing cost of Britain’s green energy disaster?” Nothing “risible” about that. And the connection of falling standards of living to increased levels of malnutrition and disease is easily made, despite the fact that other factors may be involved as well.
you are also missing the fact that the government is sponsoring the green revolution. Hence if the leadership is so stupid as to promote such stupid notions then they are probably stupid all round. AND I would add that I think the leadership of most of europe and north america is increasingly STUPID.
it is those same stupid leaders who are allowing the mass immigration of uneducated migrants into the west and they bring their diseases superstitions with them.
The infectious diseases can be explained by immigration and (for cholera) visits to the Third World, plus reduced vaccination, but scurvy and rickets are of course dietary diseases. Scurvy results from humans’ inability to make vitamin C (a genetic affliction shared with our closest primate kin, ie other apes, monkeys and tarsiers), while rickets is caused by lack of vitamin D and some minerals, like calcium. Why scurvy is up and rickets down warrants study. Would be instructive to see which ages, sexes and ethnicities suffer from these dietary deficiencies.
GM: If the immigrants are eating lots of sugar-laden and/or starchy, cheap junk food since their arrival, that could exacerbate the lack of vitamin C. IIRC, the sugar molecule is shaped similarly to the vitamin C molecule. If the body requires vitamin C, but only finds sugar in abundance, that could lead to scurvy because the sugar molecule gets plugged in where the vitamin C molecule would otherwise go.
As for rickets, it will probably show an increase after a winter of no sunshine, since it may take that long for the body’s stores of fat-soluble vitamin D to be depleted.
Just a couple WAGs.
Reply to GM ==> Older folks don’t tend to eat fruit — expensive, particularly out of season, and somehow frivolous. Orange juice is expensive. Older folks easily develop Vit C deficiencies.
Impoverished [immigrant and local] children as well, for whom fruit is a luxury seldom tasted.
Marks and Spencer (mega-food store chain in the UK) started fortifying dairy products with Vit D in 2011 and is just beginning to fortify bread flour. That’s the rickets story.
Maybe they should start fortifying with Vit C as well. Kids juice boxes and the like.
The lack of any body surface exposed to the sun severely curtails Vitamin D among those who cover every inch before leaving the house ‘for religious reasons’.. That sort of dress may be fine in sunny countries but it certainly isn’t at our UK latitude and with our weather.
One of my sons suffered from a lack of Vitamin D because of his indoor job and lack of time in the open air even though he eats a good balanced diet..
Spitting in public died out in the fifties due to social pressure, it is back again, imported from regions where it is socially acceptable.
‘Cases of malnutrition and other “Victorian” diseases are soaring in England, in what campaigners said was a result of cuts to social services and rising food poverty.’
So, the campaigners have taken their wallets out and are helping these people. Wait . . . what? So they are just complainers. It is cheap to complain.
It amazes me that liberals/greens are behind quarantining everything…..
…are the first to disavow religion…trace evolution from animals
…and would never consider quarantining people
it is all those thing but MAINLY it is that Britain has imported so many people who have no education that the numbers are being changed by the demographic changes.
wearing a burka does add to the prevalence of rickets.
marrying first cousins adds to mental deficiencies.
believing in a 7th century barbarian as the example of how to live leads to drinking camel urine. that can’t be good.
“General P. Malaise
December 24, 2015 at 7:27 am
wearing a burka does add to the prevalence of rickets.”
Say what? I was called a “fat head” for posting fact about sugar. This is pure uninformed rubbish.
this is an easy one: the deluge of immigrants into the UK from third and forth world countries
amen
The process of migration involves health checks.
Close reading of the original Independent article reveals that the report is very similar to the US one I dissected in my recent essay “What Are They Really Counting?”.
There may not been a major change in anything really, except in what they are counting. and probably how they are counting it. The dates coincide with the implementation of IDC10 diagnostic codes in the US (and these are international codes, so they may have begun in the UK at the same time).
“Cases of other diseases rife in the Victorian era including scurvy, scarlet fever, cholera and whooping cough have also increased since 2010″…..only scurvy is caused by diet. The others are communicable diseases, common in areas of overcrowding with less than perfect sanitation. Whooping cough is prevented by vaccine in the US — most children are vaccinated against in starting at 2 months.
Scurvy is lack of Vitamin C — preventable by $8 of vitamin C per adult per year — about 2 cents per day — less if purchased as USP Ascorbic Acid powder and added to one’s diet (we did this with our kids, especially during the winter). One can buy 1 kg of Vit C for $20 — that’s 10,000 doses of the required 10 mg per day — 2/10th of 1 US cent per dose. Of course, most people get plenty of vitamin C in their regular diet from fruits and vegetables.
The Independent report indicates that it is MOSTLY old people ““Much malnutrition is preventable, so it is totally unacceptable that estimates suggest there are at least one million older people malnourished or at risk of malnourishment.”
UK’s “Food Poverty” is the US’s “Food Insecurity”.
In the US, older people become malnourished because they are old — they are cooking for one (or sometimes two) — they aren’t that interested in food anymore — they eat what they have or what is easy. In the US, they go to McDonalds for the special of the day — often their only “real meal” in the day (I know, the McD’s $2 special is not a real meal, but they don’t).
How do I know? Well, there are studies upon studies — but better than that, I am one myself, and it is my personal experience as well. I am not malnourished only because my wife looks after me and sees that I eat enough and the right things — but if she is gone for the day, she comes home to find I haven’t eaten. when she is gone for a week, visiting kids, I can get into real trouble. “Just not interested….” “I wasn’t hungry…..” “Nothing looked good…..” “I forgot…” And I am not yet a doddering old fool, just an “older gentleman”. My mother had to force my grandfather to eat in his later years, or he would have just skipped it altogether.
All that said, it is usually a failure of families — a failure to look after their old folks, Mom and Dad, and Gran’ma and Gran’pa. Don’t let them die of heat exhaustion in a heat wave. Don’t let them freeze to death in the winter. Don’t let them suffer from malnutrition. A telephone call once a month is not looking after them.
[Obviously, someone should have said “Don’t get him started…” ]
“Kip Hansen
December 24, 2015 at 8:03 am
“I wasn’t hungry…..””
I am suffering that through depression and I am not 50 yet.
Reply to Patrick MJD ==> For me, it’s not depression (I had that in my uni years), I just get busy with intellectual stuff — reading, researching and writing and can’t be bothered to stop and eat….
Or if “on-call” and work 24rhs a day for 6 days non-stop. I slept a whole 48hrs after that…eating was not a priority then. And my family suffered.
The article isn’t properly clear. In the UK NHS levels of ‘Malnutrition’ include both undernutrition and overnutrition.
The majority of poverty in the UK is down to choices – there are some genuine cases too. A choice between booze, fags, Sky TV and other lifestyle choices or buying food and energy – saying that its not easy living on benefits – I was, until very recently on carers allowance £62 ($90) a week…..
I find a lot of comment on WUWT is based on politics and the majority is right of centre which is a shame as the scientific argument becomes blurred – this on both sides of the Atlantic….
Me I’m a left wing, eco, vegetarian skeptic who is yet to see even one piece of evidence for CAGW but a lot that earth is just going through its natural cycles and there is little we can do to influence that – but I personally prefer living green but that doesn’t include large scale renewables as they don’t make economic (or eco) sense…..
Eric give the writing a rest for the holidays the anti this and anti that rants are getting a bit stale……
Stale? The people of Ontario, Canada have a situation where electricity is being wasted and/or sold outside of Ontario at below cost.
They are being charged high rates for electricity which is creating energy poverty. Many have to choose between eating and heating. Also causes food prices to increase.
This is the same thing as limiting the food supply for people and then giving the food away or letting food spoil.
This is due to Ontario’s “green” energy policies with renewable energy with no end in sight for this situation.
The “Soaring Cost” argument is a fallacy since the govt subsidizes the cost for poor families. The rich pay for the poor’s energy, no matter the real cost, since the rich can afford the real cost too. I’m not being flip…this is how it is supposed to work (from the Marxist POV). Now, the REAL story would be something like “There are no more rich people left, since they’re all broke too.” Then Marxist nirvana will have been achieved.
Property is theft don’t you know. Likewise to live you kill something and digest it.
You have to decide, do you want rugged individualism with no laws ( my choice ) otherwise stop complaining.
Bruckner8 December 24, 2015 at 8:11 am
Not where I live they don’t. The Gov’t provides some food stamps, and there are WIC programs, but not everyone is either eligible, knowledgeable, or interested.
And the sad truth is, the soaring cost of energy affects everyone. Electricity cost is going ballistic in California, and I don’t see any government programs for that. My electricity bill just went through the roof in the last year … where is the government program to protect me?
Please send me the details of where I can apply for your magical benefits, because you know what? I don’t believe it exists.
Finally, the idea that it is enough for the government to partially prop up some of the people who have been screwed by the policies of that same government, well, that idea doesn’t pass the laugh test. I’m not interested in putting a bandage on the government-caused wounds … instead, I want the government to stop wounding (and killing in some cases) the poor by artificially hiking the price of energy. I’m interested in fixing the problem, not the symptoms.
w.
This article seems dubious given that one of the most obvious problems amongst the population here is the number of folk who are overweight, in some cases grossly so. Energy costs are certainly an issue created by deliberate government policy, but it has not reached the point of catastrophe yet! Speaking of food cost I spend three times as much now as I did 16 years ago. My heat and lighting costs have also trebled despite using led lighting and a modern gas boiler.
selling off utilities to foreign governments is obviously going to be a success.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution,”
– Christiana Figueres, who heads up the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change
No Christiana! Your are not representing mankind – you are not representing the poor- you are representing yourself, you allies, and what seems to work fine inside your heads.
If United Nations had respect for human rights – there would have been alternatives to you – I would have been given the opportunity to vote. There would also have been an opposition to the way United Nations is governed. However, you were appointed by Ban Ki-Moon – not voted for.
I would not have voted for Christiana Figueres.
Bravo!
Writes Science or Fiction:
Which is why “Hobbits” (thank you so much, Senator McCain!) such as thou and I are never, ever going to be asked to vote on government empowerment for apparatchiki like la Figueres.
She brings this to mind:
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.” ― Murray N. Rothbard
when I used to live on the Isle of Wight (spit) we used to access the old TB sanatorium. Interestingly underneath it there was a railway tunnel cut into the cliff about 100 m long obviously for tipping clinical waste into the sea.
One cause of poverty is lack of jobs. But govt. does everything in its power to prevent, inhibit or otherwise make it difficult or uneconomical to hire workers.
Aside from an infinite list of employment taxes, rules, regulations, prohibitions, etc., one must add all the taxes and fees placed upon necessary items to get on in life.
And of course, many “advanced” economies are now doing everything in their power to raise the cost of energy in all its forms, preventing the construction of needed energy infrastructure to bring cheap energy to the citizenry and by shutting down energy facilities in lieu of finding ways to modernize them and KEEP THE JOBS OF ITS WORKERS.
Once again the ordinary person is getting totally screwed over by the ruling elites. Ah, yes, the elites whose wealth and influence exempt them or otherwise make them immune to the hardships they foist upon the working (or non-working) stiffs.
While folks like John Kerry (5 homes, a private airplane, a 70 ft. yacht) and others tell us WE must pay more or do less, they continue on as did Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette. If you recall, things did not end well for the latter two individuals.