Op-ed: Energy poverty and ‘Marie Antoinette’-style policies will bring social unrest

By Vasilis Kanellis

We have read patiently and in good faith the energy and environment ministry’s 23 energy-saving tips for winter.

A typical example was don’t cover your radiators (with doilies for example).

It might have added that everyone in the family should sleep together in the same room so that the rest of the rooms need not be heated, and if you sleep hugged it is even better, because heat is transmitted more easily between two bodies. As the Greek saying goes, “Cold, weather for two”.

Other advice included the use duct tape so the cold air will not flow in, and placing LED bulbs in all your lighting fixtures, even if you don’t have the money to buy them.

We were told to install thermostats everywhere, shut appliances when they are not in use, install solar panel water heaters, buy new door frames that are energy efficient with thermal insulation, prepare food with pressure cookers, replace boilers, and buy new energy-efficient appliances.

They might have added we should wash our clothes by hand in a washtub as in the olden days.

This is all well and good, but one might ask, how many households are in a position to implement the proposals? How many of them have hundreds or thousands of euros to spare to replace appliances or heating systems?

How many families can cut off the heating in their kids’ bedrooms, and how many can change door frames or install a solar panel water heater?

According to a study conducted a few months ago by the Poulantzas Institute, in Greece there is an extremely high level of energy poverty.

Specifically, even before the beginning of the current energy crisis, let alone the coming “black” winter that we are all expecting in our country, the data was bleak.

One in two households finds it difficult to cover its energy needs.

Seven out of ten households that find it difficult to cover their energy needs have a monthly income of under 1,500 euros.

One in three households limits basic needs (such as food and medicines) to pay its energy bills.

Four out of ten households heat only part of their homes.

Three out of four households are not in a financial position to implement energy-saving interventions at home.

One in three households delays payment of energy bills, while one in two households has bloated bills.

Two out of three households did not receive a government heating subsidy.

A study issued yesterday by the Research Institute of Retail Consumer Goods (IELKA), indicates that two out of three households turn off their electricity because they cannot pay the bills, while 67 percent have cut spending even on food purchases.

Is all this not enough for the government to comprehend that its energy-saving proposals are at best childish?

It is acting as if it is teaching a primary school lesson in environmental and energy sensitivity.

One thing is certain.

The government is not addressing the overwhelming majority of Greeks that lives on a monthly income of up to 1,000 euros.

It is not addressing families that aside from household bills must pay the expenses of a child studying at university.

It is not addressing the unemployed, and particularly young people who cannot find a decent job with decent wages.

Moreover, it is not addressing hundreds of thousands of families in the provinces, the grandmas and grandpas in the villages, who not only do not have radiators, but can barely afford το light a wood-burning heater.

A state that operates under the rule of law and that protects its citizens is not a state that subsidises poverty and offers such energy-saving tips.

It does what is necessary to eradicate poverty.

As long as politicians display a sort of Marie Antoinette syndrome in the way they treat people, and as long as citizens will die because they cannot adjust to the new era [as one minister declared], there will be destitution and energy poverty, and winters like the one of 1942, when Greece was under occupation.

Therefore, let us not later wonder about the coming social unrest.

Let us not be taken aback by the burgeoning popular rage against “left-wing” and “right-wing” policies, that seem to have landed from other planets.