Great Britain has only two days of fossil gas stored after a decline in energy reserves, as more tankers carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) are diverted from their course to Europe towards Asia because of the Iran war.
Great Britain had 6,999 gigawatt hours (GWh) of fossil gas stored on Saturday, according to figures from National Gas, which owns and operates the gas national transmission system. This compares with 9,105 GWh a year earlier.
Maximum capacity is 12 days of gas, and current storage levels equate to under two days of reserves, leading to concerns that Great Britain could run out of gas if the crisis in the Middle East escalates further.
The UK doesn’t use US style zoning though.
And zoning on both sides of the Atlantic has very little to do with the under supply of housing.
The reality is private markets are really bad at building affordable homes, as It’s more profitable to build few homes and what does get built is built to rent out, with a hefty chunk of those rents used to inflate house prices further.
Maybe not explicitly, but make no mistake: “modernist” American city planners’ terrible ideas were exported to the whole English-speaking world.
Take Milton Keynes, for example.
It has everything to do with it! In most North American cities, something like 75% of all residentially-zoned land is single-family only. In the worst, it approaches 95% (e.g. San Jose, CA). Housing is not fungible: people want to live in or near the city center, not the exurbs, and in these places it is literally illegal to build the dense housing necessary to meet that demand.
I mean, think about it: the entire purpose of restricting density is to create shortages of dense housing; if the demand weren’t there, the restriction wouldn’t need to exist. Shortages are the goal! You might try to rebut that by saying they want single-family housing to be produced as a substitute good, but land is finite so physical reality does not work that way. If you restrict the maximum number of people who are allowed to live per unit area of land, then the rest of the people who want to live there, can’t!
The idea of fixing the undersupply of housing without abolishing zoning density restrictions is just straight-up delusional magical thinking. Geometry and physical reality simply does not permit it.
And getting back to the original point: when you literally enshrine suburban sprawl into law – whether by North American-style Euclidean zoning or whatever the fuck the UK did in New Towns like Milton Keynes – you force car-dependency and make your country vulnerable to oil price shocks. That’s just how it works, and windmills and solar panels have fuck-all to do with it!
What’s wrong with Milton Keynes, zoning wise it’s well planned and largely mixed used as opposed to euclidean zoning?
There is literally not true: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/research-and-policy/single-family-zoning-reform-highlights-a-breakthrough-in-california-housing-policy/
The idea that zoning is why private markets are failing to build supply is delusional, you can look at housing production in the US, tell me when zoning laws changed based on this chart: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST . Even more delusional when you’re talking about the UK which doesn’t have zoning.
Private markets just aren’t good at building sufficient adequate housing, because housing isn’t fungible building luxury flats for landlords to further inflate the housing market isn’t the same as building public housing or affordable housing.
“The fact that people just now finally made some headway in solving the problem proves the problem never existed in the first place!”
Sure, buddy.
They changed before the chart started. Your “gotcha” demand is disingenuous.
And yet that still has fuck-all to do with windmills and solar panels, so what’s your point? Do you deny that NIMBYs oppose public housing?
No it’s just a fact you are lying about San Jose.
So if zoning is the most important factor in the undersupply of housing then how come the supply has bounced around between 0.5M and 2.5M new units without zoning changes?
YIMBYs oppose public housing more often than NIMBYs.
What’s my point?
My point is trying to inject your libretarian housing politics focused on zoning to a discussion about gas reserves is stupid.
You spout nothing but bad faith bullshit and you accuse me of being the one who’s lying? That’s rich.
The fact that San Jose’s zoning law got overridden by the state two seconds ago doesn’t somehow magically instantly change the entire built environment of the city that resulted from decades and decades of the previous policy, and you fucking know it.
Cite or GTFO.
THEY WOULDN’T NEED THE GODDAMN GAS RESERVES IF THEY DIDN’T HAVE SO MUCH CAR DEPENDENCY!
How absolutely moronic and dishonest do you have to be to refuse to acknowledge that extremely basic connection?!
https://www.deanprestonsf.com/blog/yimby-mobilizing-to-block-affordable-housing-in-and-around-hayes-valley
The UK doesn’t have zoning, the car dependency is a result of defunding public transport, not zoning or NIMBYs.
The only person lying here is you, San Jose isn’t 95% single family zoned, it is legal to build multi-family units almost everywhere in San Jose.
And you are also being moronically dishonest claiming that zoning (which doesn’t work that way in the UK) is responsible for the UK’s car dependency.
You also haven’t explained what’s so bad about Milton Keynes, it’s a mixed use city with local shopping areas planned & built to reduce car dependency the car dependency isn’t a result of planning, it’s a result of market forces allowing supermarkets to undercut local stores, sorry this isn’t Reddit, you can’t pass of some YouTube videos as knowledge about the housing crisis here.