Conserving water and fuel isn't a vote-winner, but politicians can't afford to be coy about our reckless guzzling
There are few more risky places to stand in modern politics, so legend has it, than between a suburban voter and a longed-for conservatory. The dream of an extra room that's too hot in summer and too cold in winter supposedly runs so deep in middle England's psyche that the shadow cabinet minister Douglas Alexander once said Labour should only be led by someone who understands it. What, then, to make of the fact that the coalition proposes making them more expensive?
Short of a windfall tax on golf clubs, there seems no quicker way to inflame suburban wrath than making people fit compulsory energy-saving measures as the price of being allowed a conservatory – unless it's enforcing a hosepipe ban that makes it harder to wash the car at weekends. (Not for nothing did Tony Blair say he knew the 1992 election was lost when he "met a man polishing his Sierra" in the suburbs, who no longer voted Labour: the emotional tie between man and shiny paintwork defies rational analysis.)
But unfortunately for the coalition and its successors, this is only the start of a very awkward conversation.
Politicians of all parties fall over themselves now to swear there's no money left in the kitty, yet remain oddly coy about suggesting that within a generation there may not be enough water left either – or enough affordable oil, or cheap food – to maintain the cheerily wasteful lives that many of us take for granted.
Our dank and soggy nation is slowly drying out, with half of England and Wales deemed "water-stressed". Oil isn't running out as fast as once feared, as new fields beneath the melting Arctic ice or buried in Texan shale are exploited – but they're harder and riskier to drill, pushing up the price per barrel. Demand for meat is soaring as emerging nations get a taste for protein-heavy westernised diets.
Yet it may take the environmental equivalent of a run on the banks – some short, sharp, urgent shock – before British politicians start discussing that other kind of austerity, one involving cuts not to spending but to the reckless guzzling of natural resources.
The reason the coalition's husky-hugging tendency has been in retreat is that the hair-shirt stuff – drive and fly less, eat fewer burgers, shower faster – is traditionally a vote-loser. But so, until very recently, was the case for spending less. What would it take for the stigma now attached to rampant consumerism and cheap credit to spread to conspicuous overconsumption of petrol or water?
The mysterious affair of Richard Benyon's hosepipe suggests one answer. When photographs surfaced in the People of a gushing tap in the grounds of the environment minister's country pile, he furiously insisted the hose must have been turned on deliberately by reporters: the paper, meanwhile, insists its team merely popped round for a chat and spotted it. (Ironically, it turns out the Benyons aren't even subject to the hosepipe ban, having their own private borehole. As one does.)
But whatever the truth, it's now clearly risky for anyone in public life to possess a suspiciously green lawn while their constituents – or customers in the case of the Southern Water chairman Colin Hood, attacked by another tabloid for having a river running conveniently through his own garden – face scorched earth. In times of plenty, we're relatively relaxed about what others have or do: but lean times change everything, as any beleaguered banker could confirm.
Water envy hasn't quite taken up where bonus envy left off, of course. But the prospect of drought across much of southern England, together with lingering threats of a fuel strike (or of a painful oil price spike driven by tensions in the Middle East), does expose our resource-hungry lifestyle for the precarious thing it is. And that may just change the terms of debate.
When panic buyers recently sucked garages dry, much was made of the flaws exposed in a "just in time" delivery system for petrol: but the deeper message was what it said about our dependence on the car. Warning signs should flash when people would rather fill jam jars with lethally flammable petrol than be without wheels even for a day – or indeed would risk a £1,000 fine, as some undoubtedly will, just to stick the sprinklers on.
Nothing will change overnight, despite the "Proud to be Dirty" car bumper stickers optimistically issued by Thames Water, encouraging customers to leave their Sierras unpolished for the nation. But painstakingly purifying water, via more than half a dozen complex and expensive processes, just to slosh it over your hatchback or pour it into the lawn from whence it came? Are we really going to do that for ever? For the first time last weekend, I wondered.
There's always a reason to do nothing in politics. It's always possible that rain will suddenly fall in biblical proportions, kicking all this into the long (and suddenly lush) grass. Or perhaps the climate-change deniers will, against all the odds, somehow be proved right. More plausibly, maybe human ingenuity will triumph, and we'll learn to make synthetic oil from algae or distil seawater cheaply – or grow meat in test tubes, sidestepping the planet's inability to support enough grazing animals to satisfy future demand. Nature tends to exact revenge for such wheezes, of course, but perhaps we're clever enough to override all that.
But if not, then a hard conversation looms about the viability of everyday habits to which we feel blithely entitled. Just as we have with public spending, we'll have to debate where scarcer natural resources should be targeted and why: who deserves extra protection, which lifestyle choices it is reasonable to support.
We'll have to examine things politicians prefer to shove under the carpet, from compulsory water metering and road pricing to the idea floated at different times by both Miliband brothers (but never adopted) of carbon rationing, under which everyone gets a basic annual allowance for everything from driving to heating to long-haul flights, and those wishing to exceed their carbon ration would pay through the nose to do so.
So while there is indeed nothing wrong with wanting a conservatory, there is something not quite right about assuming life can go on just as it always has. Stand by your wicker furniture: this is only the beginning.
• Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfree