Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the socio-ecological dimensions of the everyday life, experiences, and practices of British households living in “fuel poverty” and locates their daily lives within the broader framework of environmental consciousness formation in the 1970s.

Paper long abstract:

Under the impression of two energy crises and a deep recession, a new public awareness of the social costs of energy consumption emerged in Western industrialised societies in the 1970s. In Britain and other parts of Western Europe, the massive, albeit temporary, increase in energy prices meant that an increasing number of British households could no longer afford the energy needed to satisfy their basic needs (like warmth). Driven by voluntary organisations, politicians, and social scientists in Britain, the term "fuel poverty" was coined for this phenomenon during the same period. This development was parallel by forming a new environmental consciousness in the 1970s, most notably seen in the emergence of a global environmental movement.

The paper examines the everyday experiences, practices, and perceptions of those dealing with "fuel poverty" in Britain, contextualising their lives within the broader framework of environmental consciousness formation in the 1970s. It highlights how the coping strategies employed by households in "fuel poverty", often unwittingly, either supported or opposed the prevailing environmental policies and regulations of the time. These strategies, ranging from the potentially harmful, such as the excessive use of paraffin stoves, to resource-conserving behaviours, became embedded in contemporary discourses on energy conservation. The latter phenomenon, the "environmentalism of the poor", is still largely unexplored in environmental history (esp. for the Global North). Examining the ecological dimension of the everyday life of households in “fuel poverty” makes it possible to examine hitherto underexposed aspects of the "ecological revolution" of the 1970s.