From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
AUGUST 28, 2023
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Here’s another great idea from the net zero establishment: only heat your home when it is warm and sunny outdoors. In its Sixth Carbon Budget paper, the government’s Climate Change Committee advises homeowners to turn their heating on in the afternoon, so that they can turn it off again during the evening when demand for electricity is higher. ‘Where homes are sufficiently well-insulated,’ it says, ‘it is possible to pre-heat ahead of peak times, enabling access to cheaper tariffs which reflect the reduced costs associated with running networks and producing power during off-peak times.’ In other words, boil yourself when the outdoor temperature is relatively warm, and with any luck you might still be tolerably warm when it is freezing outdoors at eight in the evening.
The advice is an admission of where we are headed. At the moment, for most of us, there is no difference between the price of electricity during the afternoon and the evening – it is only at night that we can buy off-peak electricity. That is not how it looks like being in the future. A big part of the plan for decarbonising the electricity system is to manage demand by varying tariffs throughout the day. That is the whole point of smart meters. We had a foretaste of this last winter when customers with smart meters were offered small discounts if they agreed to turn off appliances during the early evening on days when demand was high but, thanks to a lack of sun and wind, renewable energy was in short supply.
That, however, is only the beginning. At the moment, with the help of back-up from gas plants, we don’t have a huge problem in balancing demand and with supply. But by 2035 (2030 in the case of the Labour party) the government wants to remove all fossil fuels from the electricity grid. What do we do then? No-one seems able to explain. Investment in – very expensive – energy storage isn’t coming along at anything like the pace it would need to if we are going to be able to enjoy an uninterrupted supply of power throughout the day. Given that the supply of wind energy can fall away to virtually nothing during calm periods, and solar energy falls to zero every evening, we have a very serious problem. The tendency for still periods to concur with the coldest winter nights exacerbates the problem – especially if the country does as the government wants and switches to heat pumps.
As you can see, from the report of the Commons Business Select Committee ‘demand-side response’ is a big part of the energy industry’s plans. But it isn’t going to be nice little incentives like those offered to householders last winter in the form of £10 vouchers and the like. In future there will be a lot less carrot and a lot more stick – with surge pricing structures akin to those used by companies like Uber. Just think of the price of electricity is going to have to be jacked up to match supply and demand on a cold, still winter’s evening when – in normal times – demand would be at its highest.
In Britain’s net zero future it won’t just be a case of turning your heating on a few hours early to pre-heat your home. Many customers face being priced out of the electricity market altogether when supply of renewables is weak. On a sunny, windy afternoon you may be able to turn on your heating with abandon, even if you don’t need it on. But freezing, still evenings? Maybe there will be a special deal on woolly jumpers.
We have lots of videos to view on Net Zero at our ClimateTV page.
Clark has also written a book, called ‘Not Zero: How an Irrational Target Will Impoverish You, Help China (and Won’t Even Save the Planet)’.
The UK Net Zero plans are simply impossible. They are to double electricity demand bu moving everyone to heat pumps and EVs. while totally moving generation to wind and solar. By 2030 according to Labour, and by 2035 according to the Conservatives.
It can’t be done, because intermittency. As you can see, and as I keep pointing out, here:
http://www.gridwatch.co.uk/wind (and also check out total demand and solar).
The UK has two or three periods a year of a week or more when their 28GW of wind does less than 5GW. And a dozen or more days a year in addition when it does less than 0.5GW. Solar vanishes from about November through February.
They have no plans to continue supplying power during these periods.
But even if they did, the local grid is not up to delivering it to houses on heat pumps and EVs. Service stations are installing charging points but cannot get them supplied even now. ON the scale of the EV rollout, there is no chance of there being anything like enough installed and working.
Remember that EVs have shorter range and take 5-10 times as much time to refuel. Not going to work.
The government also plans on having 600,000 heat pumps a year installed from 2028. Last year it was 55,000. Go figure. Even if they could get them in, there is going to no power for them. Hence the dawning realization by the CCC that what the energy generation plans actually mean is sitting at home in the dark and the cold during the long cold calm and dark January and February evenings. With your heat pump and EV chargers turned off by your smart meter. And maybe not even able to boil a kettle for a hot water bottle.
The political class in the UK has taken leave of its senses. Or its in denial.
They really think this is going to contribute to saving the planet!
As per the calcs used to set the ‘Price Cap’, the typical UK household is taken to be using 8kWh of electricity per day = 2,920kWh per year
1/ It’s easy to work out that an EV will require 1kWh per day every day for each 1,000 miles it is driven annually
Using the 10,000 miles/year number that car insurers assume for annual mileage means an extra annual demand of 3,650kWh
2/ From anyone’s experience in the UK, they’ll know that a 1kW electric fan heater will keep a single room in a typical home ‘liveable’
Assuming that a Heat Pump delivers an efficiency factor of 3, that means that the pump will require another 8kWh per day – just to keep one room in a well insulated home ‘warm’
Those two things, the EV and the heat pump means UK household electricity consumption will go from 2,920 kWh to 9,490kWh
How can that possibly happen, they can barely keep the lights on at the minute…….
The thinking here makes Brandon look like an Einstein
“an EV will require 1kWh per day every day for each 1,000 miles it is driven annually”
In my humble neck of the woods an EV charging from a street lamp post requires a parking permit (~£190/year)
I was amused to discover an EV Taxi which had been regularly charging from the lamp post adjacent to my house got a ticket (£55 if paid within 14 days) I haven’t seen it since.
Wait till the blade runners start immobilising the public chargers or nicking the copper therein, it’s lucrative in a cost of living crisis
It’s worse than that – while 1kW for one small room might be fine, 8kWh daily for the heat isn’t enough because it’s going to heat the whole house. It would be enough for the one room.
PETA, I understood this post entirely and it make me sad for humanity that we have persons in power who hate their fellow humans so much they are willing the see them live in frigid squalor than be prosperous.
home run on this one.
Why does cold kill? Unlike heat, cold initiates a stress response with release of adrenaline and noradrenaline (epnepherine and norepi). This raises blood pressure and increases metabolic rate causing stress on vulnerable cardiovascular systems. In addition, the stress response dampens immune function making the stressed more likely to succumb to infections.
Pete,
With more wind/solar, there will not be enough dispatchable electricity in the UK to adequately supply its stagnant/shrinking economy.
Here is an example of extreme dysfunction at the highest level, not just in the UK, but also Germany, France, etc., and the US.
China, India, etc., are happily using fossil fuels, including 8.3 billion metric ton of coal in 2023.
US/UK 56,000 MW OF OFFSHORE WIND BY 2030; AN EXPENSIVE FANTASY
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/biden-30-000-mw-of-offshore-wind-systems-by-2030-a-total-fantasy
EXCERPT:
The US government, not the US people, has the insane fantasy of wanting to build 30,000 MW of offshore by 2030, i.e., just 7 years, but several companies, building projects for Massachusetts, will be allowed to walk away from the signed PPAs, and rebid at much higher prices next year.
The UK government, not the UK people, has the insane fantasy of wanting to build 26,000 MW of offshore by 2030, i.e., in just 7 years, but Vattenfall, a Swedish company, has put 1,400 MW on hold in 2023 (will review its entire 4,200 MW zone), because Vattenfall spreadsheets show a “net revenue shortage” of about 40%, meaning the prices, c/kWh, offered by the UK auctions are about 40% too low.
https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/07/20/breaking-vattenfall-stops-developing-major-wind-farm-offshore-uk-will-review-entire-4-2-gw-zone/#:~:text=Vattenfall%20has%20stopped%20the%20development,revealed%20in%20its%20interim%20report.
BTW, about 7,000 MW of offshore wind bids were rewarded after the 4th Auction bids in 2022
The continent-based European big wind companies have only one third of the capacity per year for building 56,000 MW offshore by 2030, or 8,000 MW/y. These companies will concentrate on the U.S. market, because the Biden “Inflation-Reduction-Act” subsidies are about 50% higher than in the UK
NOTE: “The all-in, turnkey capital cost associated with a typical US offshore project, before bonus tax credits related to the “Inflation-Reduction-Act”, has increased by 57% since 2021,” Bloomberg recently reported, citing figures from Bloomberg-NEF, “Inflation of materials, energy, components, and labor costs explain about 40% of that, with 60% due to increased interest rates.”
NOTE: The EU, the UK and the Fed central banks just increased interest rates, which will make everything more expensive.
I fear smart meters won’t be enough to save the country from rolling blackouts in extreme circumstances.
That’s why I’ve got a camping gas stove and light, battery led camping lights. tealights, a homemade haybox ready and waiting. My only real concern is preventing pipes freezing in a really severe cold snap.
No need for concern. You have been assured by the UN that the globe is boiling. The last thing you will need is to heat the place.
One things for sure, once the elites start shivering or having their energy cut, things will change
Not really. The elites have plenty of money to pay for what they need. Look at the Obamas’ fuel storage, for example.
“I’ve got a camping gas stove and light, battery led camping lights. tealights, a homemade haybox ready and waiting. “
All you need now is a deck of cards….
A diesel generator with auto c/over would be better
Progress! Ugh…
That one’s easy. Leave the taps running.
(I’m not on a water meter. Works for me.)
Unless you have an artesian water system, electricity is involved at some point.
If there’s no electricity, you won’t get water, the network pumps etc won’t be running – you might get sludge which you won’t be able to boil either to prevent water borne diseases
Smart meters will be used under new DSR policies to drop large sections of consumers off the grid at stressed times, or auto switch you to exorbitant tariffs to nudge you to reduce demand – the more wind & solar are stuck on the grid, the more DSR will be used, with no permission required, they will simply switch you tariff, or switch you off
Here is a short recap of how we got here
Europe used to be smarter by using plentiful low-cost Russian gas, but woke Brussels p..ed off Russia with its “energy packages” (applauded by the U.S., because it has LNG for sale at much higher prices), plus the U.S. goaded Ukraine to become a ferocious barking dog from 2014 onwards, committing genocide/ethnic cleansing by killing about 16000 ethnic Russians in the Dombas area over 8 years, 2014-2022, and eradicating Russian culture everywhere in Ukraine, all while Brussels insisted on more of highly subsidized, expensive wind/solar/batteries to eliminate those evil, abundant, low-cost fossil fuels much beloved by China, India, etc., which have no intention to follow the West down its expensive rules-based/alternatives hell hole, as promulgated in Paris, and promoted by the private plane glitterati.
Please make sure your camp stove is rated safe for indoor use. Many are not and emit carbon monoxide. A CO detector would be a good addition.
I’m guessing that in a grid-down situation and people perhaps dying from inadvertent CO poisoning, that those deaths would count as “carbon deaths”?
Smart meters will guarantee rolling blackouts. Imposing blackouts is the whole point of them.
“The political class in the UK has taken leave of its senses. Or its in denial.”
Since the success – from their point of view, getting away with it – of covid lockdown, they have rediscovered the real power of the Parliamentary dictatorship.
Definitely covid lockdowns etc emboldened the ruling elites to add to their toolbox – project fear is a useful tool against the masses that has now been added to the climate alarmists armoury
The political classes only see the cash cow that nut zero has been presented to them as, by self serving activists and green blob shills – reality will be an unmerciful retribution as nut zero bites into peoples living standards & finances
Yep the 600,000 heat pump installations a year from 2028 is an impossible target. The charity Nesta, (formerly the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts) has recently pointed out that at least 27,000 engineers will be needed to meet this target and this would require more engineers to be trained every year than currently exist in the whole industry.
Prof Dieter Helm (Oxford Uni) has two recent pieces about Labour’s 2030 target and the Government’s 2035 target.
Re Labour “Supply chains do not yet exist to do all this fast track investment” and “Even £28 bn is nowhere near enough to get to the desired end point”
https://dieterhelm.co.uk/energy-climate/labours-28-billion/
Re the Government “Despite a further 1000 pages explaining Net Zero Strategy there is no credible plan to get from here to there”
https://dieterhelm.co.uk/publications/the-net-zero-2035-target-for-electricity-is-not-credible/
The UK is screwed up, especially at the top, Royalty on down
Spain lost to the UK in 1588 with its floundering Armada
Spain won at soccer, because the UK team was deemed “too white”?
The UK has lost its national purpose
It has become a tangled mess full of culturally different, un-British boat people.
Its failed energy policy is just another expected result of full spectrum wooly thinking
Instead of “Ruling the Waves” (in their dreams), it has become the impoverished, sick man of Europe.
It seems that there’s an “Energy Shortage” story about every other day here at WUWT.
Here’s a sampling of titles for the last two weeks:
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
Says Heavy Industry Should get Intermittent
New Book—Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure
Wind Output Plaguing Texas (ERCOT weathers on)
The Green Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think — Or Not
Texans Asked to Cut Electricity Use, As Wind Power Drops Off
Voters Will Need to Decide If Our Energy System Remains
Affordable and Reliable, Or Descends into Chaos
EPA Carbon Rule Will Lead to ‘Significant Power Shortages’
As far as I know a similar litany of bad news is not occurring in the so-called mainstream media. We all know that media reporters thrive on bad news, but as it turns out, not this bad news. It’s obviously the “Wrong Flavor”. Something is seriously wrong, we live in interesting times.
The blob and its propagandists can not foresee the carnage that will come with nut zero and climate alarmism, but that reality will be a dish definitely served cold
If Biden in the basement had not been credited with all those fake and double counted ballots, none of these headlines would have appeared in print.
I refer you to holy scripture:
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” – —Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and Dr. John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, 1970
Only today’s liturgy has expanded to include the entire developed globe. Even those who produce ~1% of CO2 emissions. In fact it is they who must set the example…
“UK becomes first major economy to pass net zero emissions law”
And therein lies the problem. Parliament is never going to revisit that legislation. 2nd May 2024 (the next London Mayoral election) is still some way off and Khan is doubling down with the [blatant scientific] lies and the ad-hominems – far-right, conspiracy theorists, covid deniers, friends of asthma etc
The Conservative candidate has vowed to scrap ULEZ on day one. Will Khan survive? Personally, I think he’s already looking further afield for another opportunity, I’d expect nothing less given his record..
But a general election is an entirely different proposition – see above. The choices are
Con: Net Zero
Labour: Net Zero
Lib Dem: Net Zero
SNP: Net Zero
etc
“Britain’s net zero future ” is legally guaranteed.
It looks as if the “net zero” we are going to have in Britain by 2050 is net zero population remaining. At least the Greens will be happy; perhaps they will still be able to afford to heat their homes.
Nothing changes while that law is on the statute book.
As 2050 approaches, it will become extremely obvious even to politicians that the net zero target cannot possibly be achieved. What will happen then? I have an idea. Perhaps the British parliament will pass a law to cancel the laws of thermodynamics. That will teach those nasty climate sceptics a lesson. Net zero can be achieved after all!
I’m just sorry I won’t be around to say, “I told you so!”
You shouldn’t be so pessimistic. I plan to live to 250 years. My plan is more likely to come true than Britain’s net zero plans.
UK doesn’t really have any net zero plans just net zero waffle which requires that “and then a miracle happens” stage.
I’m not certain I want to be around.
“I’m not certain I want to be around.”
I can see why…
“NHS doctors and nurses have been advised not to ask patients “what is your name?” to avoid offending transgender people, it has emerged.
The guidance, posted at a leading London teaching hospital, advises staff on seven ways to be a “good friend” to transgender people.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/29/nhs-doctors-risk-offending-trans-people/
Any idiot trying that nonsense with me, will get short shrift
And your name is…?!!!!
It won’t get that far down the road – the adverse effects of nut zero will create mass push back, civil disobedience, social unrest and, unless Govts are willing to double down and keep harming the masses, nut zero water down / dismissal
As Chinese immigrants move into the now empty green and fertile isle, the coal mines will be reopened.
“UK becomes first major economy to pass net zero emissions law”
Funny, isn’t it, how few other lemmings have followed us over the cliff…
I think we perhaps should refer to Walruses going over the cliff?
Vote Reform UK
But it’s not socially guaranteed – mass civil disobedience will ensue if these dystopian, tyrannical regressions are forced on the masses, that is guaranteed
“No-one seems able to explain.”
They don’t need to explain, they will have moved on. They know that and in any event, nobody is responsible, they know that too. It’s modern government – nobody is responsible.
… and everybody [else] is culpable.
But it does take poor voting choices to make this bad modern government exist thus their energy poverty situation was preferred.
The rebellion must be harsh and swift to this madness!!
Sadly the rebellion will start only when it is already too late. Anything harsh or swift that got done would only be an act of vengeance; it could fix nothing by then.
Large (and small) UK landlords are already—right this minute—issuing good tenants with section 21 (no fault) evictions so they can sell up. After 2028 they can’t rent out houses that achieve an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) of less than C. The overwhelming majority of houses in the UK are below that level. The landlords don’t want to get crushed in the stampede to leave the burning dance hall. The forward-guidance is doing damage today. There is going to be a wave of homelessness amongst the young and anyone but the best paid. (Students are already turning down places at some universities because they can’t find accommodation.)
I notice that Scotland is going even further down the hole.Patrick Harvie, the Green Party zero carbon buildings minister is introducing changes to the Scottish EPC that are intended to prevent even private home owners selling their property after 2025 unless it has a heat-pump.
You have to be lucky or obsessive to find that kind of information, so the idea there will be a rebellion before we are plunged into the dark and cold is a pipe-dream.
Heat pumps, really! A few characteristics of heat pumps should be pointed out. For starters the BTUs that a heat pump can ‘pump’ decreases as the temperature goes down, a function of lower pressure coolant gas in the system. Not only that, but the COP goes down as temperatures go down so when it’s very cold the COP drops below 2. At about 20F or below there isn’t enough heat pumped to keep up, so when the heat pump is finally running 100% on the auxiliary heat kicks in and at that point the COP is effectively unity. This translates into a sharp increase in electricity demand, all at once, system wide. If the utility company is foolish enough to consider lowering the voltage then what happens is aux heat just runs more, and the current demanded by compressors increases because they try to remain in sync with with the utility frequency and maintain constant load, P=E*I. Thus current goes up tripping breakers that much sooner and you get blackouts. Genius!
I have a dual fuel system and can set the transition to gas at some temperature based on relative costs so with TVA power and gas here that’s about 20F.
The 80s called and they want their heat pump back.
Modern standard air source heat pumps work down to about -13F (-25C). Special extreme cold heat pumps work down to -22F. That’s the compressor itself and not any heat strips (which aren’t even installed in some locations).
The relatively mild winters most residents of the UK have won’t pose any challenge to a modern heat pump when used in a modern house. Now retrofitting historic structures with enough insulation and thermal windows might be problematic.
And the cost to buy and install that modern heat pump into the average UK home is what? Anything affordable to the average UK homeowner? And who is supplying these modern heat pumps on the scale demanded? (To say nothing of calculating the amount of extra electricity needed to run all these electric devices.)
“Nut zero” indeed. Plain stupid.
If you mean by ‘working’ the COP is >1 then yes. At cold temperatures, below 0F, the heat output is so small that the system might not be able to make up for the losses due to circulating the air continuously. As soon as the fan starts so will in-leakage of cold air. So no, in a practical sense they don’t work. It’s at these same cold temperatures that you need the full heat capacity of your heat pump, not the fraction that you will get in reality. You just can’t beat the second law in the end.
Here at 36N we have moderate enough weather and cheap electricity with a high proportion of nuclear from TVA , but in England above 50N not so much, and forget solar. New Year’s Day in London 1997 was the coldest I have ever been.
Bob,
statistically there are few homes built to current building regulations.
Insulation is excellent and means that using a gas boiler in one will use very little gas.
Probably less than the gas used to generate the electricity to power a heat pump (Electricity generation, transmission and distribution is not particularly efficient.), and no it won’t be renewables providing the power as only gas generation (in the U.K.) is used for grid balancing which means the extra load from heat pumps will be met by more gas generation, renewables being unable to respond to load change.
The whole nut zero conology just isn’t and won’t work no matter how many Government ministers, politicians of all 3 main parties, committees, quangos, NGOs, green con merchants, Ofgem, suppliers, interested parties nudge, push and coerce
It is an engineeringly incompetent policy, devised by people with no science /energy/engineering background or competence – they just see the cash cow element, not the self harm and indeed practical impossibility of it all
As a professional HV Electrical Engineer / Project Manager in the energy / power generation & distribution sectors for 40+ years, I can confidently, competently and honestly say, from intermittent, weather dependent wind & solar generation (with no storage), to battery cars, to heat pumps, to smart meters, it’s all one big deceit, an hoax, a blatant regression of UK citizen living standards, for some to make money from stealth green taxes, subsidies, levies, lucrative CfD contracts and constraint payments, in the faux promise of controlling climate change, reducing CO2 (a life vital gas) and stopping planet earth from boiling
If pursued, it will lead to power cuts, smart meter enforced power rationing (as in South Africa), ever increasing energy electricity prices, cold/damp/mouldy houses, outbreaks of legionnaires disease from cool heat pump water system aerosols and excess cold related deaths
I urge every right minded, responsible citizen to reject nut zero and all its tat – the authorities cannot win this war, too many people will be adversely affected, financially and health wise
Use the thinly veiled democracy we have and vote for smaller, anti nut zero parties and councillors
Yes, the blob will nudge and berate and drown you in propaganda, then they will start forcing and harassing and threatening as the push back gathers momentum, but stick to the great resist, your life may literally depend upon it
Looks like it is time to invest in a wood burning stove with a back boiler!
Expect local clean air laws to ban you using it and to ban anyone selling you fuel for it.
The manufacturers of ICE vehicles are being discouraged from selling them in future but local clean air zones will put them off the road even quicker. Consider the London ULEZ and its like, popping up all over the UK chicken-pox on a toddler.
If there is one kind of politician even more radical than the national ones it’s the local ones.
They will be banned, both purchase and then use. And your home insurance cancelled. Look at California, for an example. And I understand the Biden EPA is considering doing the same for the entire USA?
Here in British Columbia, Canada our provincial govt suppresses woodstove use as much as they can. The urban areas use Clean Air rules to further restrict usage. Home insurance is difficult to obtain.
It’s rather silly when you see the official caterwauling over a few wisps of chimney smoke in winter (Think of the elderly! And asthmatics! Don’t you care about them?) and compare it to the heavy blankets of smoke all summer from wildfires which is shrugged off with “just stay indoors”.
With the price of low miles free range eggs nowadays you have to freeze a few proletariat if you want idyllic weather.
Let’s be clear: the real issue is the duck curve. Morning and evening peak electricity demand when people are waking up/coming back from work.
Intermittency is a problem, sure, but it isn’t just the intermittency – it is that the duck curve am/pm peaks cause price spikes. Depending on the pricing scheme that utilities are allowed to charge under – these price spikes may or may not be factored into utility revenue schema. Last year – the spike in natural gas prices was clearly outside of expectations so extraordinary measures are taken to try and reduce consumer demand – overall is great but peak demand is even better.
This is also why heat pump and EV extra demand is a double edged sword for utilities: in general Western electricity demand is flat to down so more demand = good for utilities. But on the other hand, utilities are constrained in how easily they pass costs to their customers so high prices for electricity can actually be bad – certainly in the short term.
Storage in turn is highly nuanced. Short term storage – say to move 10 am to 2 pm peak solar PV electricity to the evening duck curve spike – is a very different technical and business proposition than storage between seasons (summer vs winter) or storage to compensate for long term (as in multi-month) shortfalls in intermittent generation (as has happened to Europe twice in the last 5 years).
The gist of the article is completely accurate: consumers are going to be the ones who are left holding the bag when these unproven systems cause problems.
Story tip.
Thousands of broken un-recyclable wind turbine blades being dumped in a small Texas town.
Hoping for “out of sight, out of mind”?
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/08/modest_texas_town_repurposed_into_a_dumping_ground_for_expired_wind_turbine_blades.html
“[T]he government wants to remove all fossil fuels from the electricity grid. What do we do then?”
You’ll freeze in the dark. Or swelter in it, as necessary.
“You get up at five a.m., because you work in the city and must be at the office at nine…Your electric percolator is gone…electric percolators are not manufactured any longer…they consume electric power, which contributes to the load of power stations, which contributes to air pollution. So you make your coffee in an old-fashioned pot on an electric–no, an oil-burning stove; you used to have an electric one, but they have been forbidden by law…When you had a car it took you three-quarters of an hour to get to the office, but private automobiles have been outlawed and replaced by ‘mass transportation.’ Now it takes you two hours and a half. You trudge ten blocks through the bitter gusts of a cold morning wind to your community bus stop, and you stand waiting. You have no choice–there are no other means of transportation…[When you get home you] look at your wife; the light is dim–electricity is rationed and only one bulb per room is allowed–but you can see the slump of her shoulders and the lines at the corners of her mouth. She is only thirty-two. She was such a beautiful girl when you met her in college. She was studying to be a lawyer; she could have combined a career with the duties of a wife and mother, but she could not combine it with the duties of heavy industry, so she gave it up. In the fifteen hours of this day she has done the work of a dozen machines. She has had to do it–so that the brown pelican or the white polar bear might not vanish from this earth.” https://courses.aynrand.org/works/the-anti-industrial-revolution/
Ayn Rand was a prophet. Proof right there.