The money that has been thieved and squandered is in such large amounts that it has transcended reality, and to the ordinary person appears an abstraction.

Were I to read that such-and-such costs $70, I would think in my head ‘That’s about a tank full of petrol for my aged wheels.’ I can relate that amount to something concrete that has meaning to me. I have experienced what it means to both have and NOT have the money for that tank of petrol, and how the absence of that product affects the remainder of my life. i.e. No petrol in the car means I cannot attend my workplace, which is not accessible (in a timely manner) via public transport. Without that job, I have no income, etc, etc.

Even though the quarterly domestic electrickery bills have skyrocketed in recent years, it is not obvious to many why this is so.

If my ‘Intermittent, Unreliable Energy’ bill categorised the charges and labelled them according to the source of the energy, i.e. ‘96% of your electrickery for the period was provided by coal at $X; 4% of your electrickery was provided by Intermittent and Unreliable Energy at $Y, perhaps that would make a small difference. I don’t know if that is practical, and if we want to talk about ‘truth in pricing’?

Or how about ‘An average of 43 endangered avian species were killed by your choice of energy source during this period.’ We could go further and provide photos of bird carcasses, all of which had names, families, friends, etc. That might read as ridiculous, but this is A COMPETITION FOR INFLUENCE.