What ever happened to those good old days? You know, wake up in the morning, light a fire, nip out and kill a dinosaur for breakfast and then sit around amusing the family by whittling away at a large branch of a tree to form a cudgel to be used against the tribe of Neanderthals down the road before they become extinct.

Yes I know that dinosaurs were no longer around by the time we came along, but just treat it as artistic licence!

Oh and by the way, I’m sure that, locally, we weren’t called ‘cavepersons’; there are very few caves in Sussex.

The point that I’m getting at here is that in those far off days – and in fact, even in my parents’ days – nobody had to worry very much about the rapidly increasing cost of energy as most of the energy was created by running around the living room to keep warm. The majority of the population couldn’t afford it anyway.

It’s amazing to think that we are talking about barely a generation away, but there was a time, and not long ago, when winter was a time of abject misery. Food was always in short supply (anyone want another turnip?) and heating was restricted to two main sources, namely an open fire – which the family huddled around to keep warm – and an extra jumper or two. Take two steps away from the fire and you were freezing cold. Toasted front, ice lolly back!

“Gas, electricity price? Not interested, we don’t use much anyway. Can somebody nip down the road and buy a bag of coal before it becomes defunct? Put another piece of orange box on the fire.”

Don’t get me wrong here, I know that, even in these so called modern times, there are families who simply cannot afford to keep themselves warm in winter, but thankfully they are still in a minority. Alas this situation can only get worse. Energy prices are increasing rapidly. In these modern times, logs are primarily burnt for aesthetic reasons, by those who can afford them: “Don’t they look nice? Turn the heating up.”

Of course this is highly ironical as we are currently involved in a long-term process of covering the land with, yes you’ve guessed it, trees.

These days most of us really do have a problem, as not many houses actually have fire places so we’re forced to rely on gas, oil or electricity which is becoming increasingly expensive. Mind you, logs are expensive these days so we have a growing difficulty.

I should tell you that when we moved into our current house we were really excited that we actually had an open fire. For the first few days it was wonderful. Turn the central heating off, light the fire. Half an hour later, turn the central heating back on! See previous relating to cold back, warm front.

Actually these early pioneering days with an open fire were quite exciting – almost like home-steading really. Back at the company warehouse we had accumulated a large number of disposable wooden pallets; so I would bring a couple home and spend all day in the cold reducing them to burnable bits. We would then have enough free fuel to last us, well twenty minutes!

So pretty rapidly the open fire became redundant and I must confess it now contains an artificial gas fire. I suppose if all else failed … anyway at this stage we have no ‘grate’ expectations.

So are we returning to the days when ‘turn up the heating’ meant putting on another jumper? Quite likely, I would think.

Wind farms and solar panels make a contribution of course but these rely on our weather which, as we know, is notoriously unreliable. We’ve turned our back on nuclear options so we are still largely dependent on fossil fuels which are slowly reducing in availability.

We have to admit that the root cause of all of this is that world population is increasing rapidly and that overpopulation is the root cause of all of our energy problems. Thomas Malthus predicted as far back as the late seventeenth century that population growth, which is exponential, would rapidly cause a decline as food production was linear. He has not been proved correct yet due to the industrial revolution and our inherent quality of invention, but you don’t have to be a scientist to work out that world resources are finite and more and more of these resources are being used to produce more and more of us.

I’m fully aware that there are parts of the world where cold winters are not so much of a problem, but energy is still required for keeping cool or for industry.

Before you go, just remember that nobody has yet repealed the laws of supply and demand. So, as demand continues to exceed supply, so will prices continue to inflate. Perhaps you should do as I do and creep around the house like the secret police, turning off excess lighting and other unnecessary power usage and surreptitiously reducing the temperature on the thermostat. You will definitely save funds, but more importantly you might actually save the world!