In 2017, the snarled-up roads of just six years earlier are a fading memory for many. A huge road and bridge building programme has left the nation with hundreds of miles of fresh tarmac, but the free passage motorists enjoy owes more to record petrol prices and falling incomes keeping people off the roads.

Air pollution eases on the motorways, but the stubborn hotspots in cities remain in flagrant breach of European law. The latest austerity measures have slashed funding for clean-up projects, despite the costs to health and the certainty of heavy fines for the UK. Air pollution also crops up as the latest obstacle to the planned "Boris island" airport in the Thames estuary, where weak demand for holiday flights has also undercut the economic rationale.

Further up the Thames, the giant flood barrier has seen an unprecedented level of use as climate change causes increasingly heavy winter storms. In the north, central Leeds still remains all but abandoned after the overwhelming of the flood defences, whose upgrade was cancelled for cost reasons.

Those made homeless are housed in some of the estates built outside the city after planning rules had been radically relaxed but across the country many remain vacant as would-be buyers find mortgages impossible to get. A flashpoint is the Norfolk Broads, where the relaxing of rules protecting wildlife and places of natural beauty permits new building, to the horror of environmentalists. Another rural battle is fought in the west country, where the culling of badgers to control bovine TB is halted after an activist is shot.

Global warming has had a different effect in the south-east, where the drought conditions persist for the second year running, forcing compulsory metering and sharp rises in water bills. The same effect drives up food prices, as supermarkets are forced to stock more expensive alternatives to the fruit and vegetables no longer coming from the parched Mediterranean nations. British farmers try to fill the gap, but plummeting subsidies from the debt-stricken European Union means prices still rise.

Adding to the challenge of balancing household budgets are record energy prices. With the government having failed to convince investors to fund nuclear power - plans for new stations are now abandoned - or the vast offshore wind farms hoped for, there is a new dash for gas. But with the international gas supply dominated by Russia and its new Arctic finds, costs soar.

The development of the UK's shale gas fields remains uncertain, as geological problems are compounded by persistent protests that stop drilling. Protest have also blocked onshore windfarms in Wales, which is struggling to meet its carbon targets. One bright spot is Birmingham, where a huge energy-efficiency programme, has transformed the city's homes, cutting bills and making it almost the only part of the nation where property prices have remained stable.

Thanks to the dash for gas, and the failure to get carbon capture and storage technology off the ground, the UK's carbon emissions are rising. With the International Energy Agency declaring that the world has now built all the fossil-fuel-burning infrastructure it can without tipping into runaway global warming, a newly-emerged "clean bloc", led by Germany and Japan, threatens imminent carbon penalties on imports from "dirty" nations. One glimmer of hope remains on the horizon, with successful full-scale trials of tidal and wave power technology