On gas/fuel prices/heating

During the long long housing boom that's gripped this country these past few years, one of the home improvements fads has been in those older properties with lots of smaller rooms to knock down walls to make into single larger open plan rooms. Of course what people have forgotten is that people built small rooms in the first place because - in the days before central heating - they were easier to heat. Now what with gas prices suddenly going through the roof, making home heating silly expensive - I'm wondering if that continues for any length of time - that people will be putting those walls back up again.

Another thought - tediously and predictably every year we get advice to turn the thermostat on heating down a few degrees. Um. Now once you've done that once... you've done it. Or are these 'experts' expecting everyone to turn down the thermostat another degree or two year upon year - until eventually we're all using no heating whatsoever?

Something a friend said to me years ago has always haunted me - it was about us that live in the Northern hemisphere and she said - there are places where humans just weren't meant to be. It's all very well that we humans have had the intelligence to invent clothing and can build houses and ultimately cities - but it's been at the cost of massive pollution and determent to our planet's biosphere. Of course the answer to that is to get even smarter - but it's a moot point if the human race will manage to do that in time to avert even worse problems for ourselves further down the line.

Things we should have been doing all this time but haven't because it's been in too many big businesses interests (profits) not to...

Quick examples: All electricity stations generate tons and tons of heat and hot water - instead of pumping that out into the atmosphere - it could have gone to nearby housing estates and towns.

(It's the same sick mentality big corporations share that means supermarkets will throw out perfectly good food at the end of every day rather give it to charities or whatever. If they can't make a profit on something... they'll destroy it rather than let anyone else for it.)

There's been a lot of house building these past few years - but so many are still being built on out-dated old fashioned principles. IE they're still poorly insulated (why bother to build houses that are cheaper to heat - when the electricity and gas companies need to keep their huge profits year in year out?) - there's no thought given to things such as solar-panels, wind turbines etc. Nah. That's all mad eccentric stuff - won't be doing anything like that. Oh no.