The Guardian: How Thatcher's ideology of thrift prompted a British energy crisis

Britain's energy conundrum offers a morality tale of how Margaret Thatcher's ideology of private-sector thrift produced stupendous levels of waste. In its rush to crush the "enemy within" (the miners, in particular), the Iron Lady's government used up the North Sea's lavish gifts of oil and gas as if there were no tomorrow.

For years, cheap prices, abundant supplies and falling emissions as gas replaced coal meant energy was off the political agenda. Mesmerised by the bubbles in real estate and the city, Britain was lulled into a false sense of sustainable growth.

Meanwhile, continental Europe was engineering a similar illusion. Bereft of a European energy policy, France concentrated on its inflexible nuclear model, Germany put its eggs into the Russian basket, Italy banked on Gaddafi, and the rest of Europe prayed for the markets to be kind. This illusion continued while the eurozone was being fuelled with the pre-2008 capital flows that kept inflating its own financial, housing and public debt bubbles.
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