This a rather personal rant about the recent referendum in Britain on the EU. There’s really nothing to do here with climate change, energy or science, so this is off-topic for this blog. I really have little to add to the many excellent commentaries about what this means for the economy. Read Martin Wolf in the Financial Times (Google the headline  “Martin Wolf Brexit will reconfigure the UK economy”to get around the paywall).

You have been warned. This is more personal impression than objective analysis. More anecdote than data.

The Brexit decision hit me in the gut. I’m saddened by the way my generation and my parents’ generation has suddenly reversed a trend towards peace, prosperity and openness in Europe. I feel oddly complicit in younger generations being denied the opportunity that my generation experienced as a result of dissolving frontiers and a chance to identify with an expanded European identity.

I’m of the Baby Boom generation, born in England in 1954. It was an excellent time and place to choose to be born. Like many other members of my generation, I can’t remember when my family did not have a car, telephone, central heating, washing machine or telephone. Sometime in the mid-sixties, we started going on camping holidays in Europe, to France, the Bavarian Alps, Switzerland and the Spanish Costa Brava. Previous generations of my family had only visited Europe to fight in wars. Continue reading →