After years of talk about the green revolution as a far-off eventuality, it has finally collided with the real world, and everyone is running for cover. --Danny Fortson,
The Sunday Times, 16 October 2011
Tomorrow, Chris Huhne will co-chair an energy summit with the Prime Minister. Huhne faces a major fight to preserve his green agenda in the face of mounting opposition from Chancellor George Osborne, who increasingly views it as an impediment to growth. One senior Tory tells me: ‘There is a Huhne-Osborne war going on, which Osborne is not going to lose.’ --James Forsyth,
Daily Mail on Sunday, 16 October 2011
Chris Huhne in particular is renowned for his uninhibited antagonism towards natural gas. At the Liberal Democrat party conference in Birmingham last week he promised to halt a new "dash for gas" because it would undermine the UK's unilateral climate targets. His real apprehension is that if a significant amount of cheap shale gas were to enter the UK market, it would almost certainly deter investment in expensive renewables. In order to stifle the emergence of a cheap energy market and to shield expensive renewables, DECC's energy bill would force UK families and businesses to subsidise renewable energy by approximately £120bn in the next 20 years. Electricity prices would likely double as a result. David Cameron would be well advised not to allow his green minister to squander Britain's golden shale gas opportunity. --Benny Peiser,
Public Service Europe, 27 September 2011
Rising bills and increasing levels of ‘fuel poverty’ have embarrassed the UK government. And perhaps for the first time, the UK public is finding itself exposed to the realities of climate change policies. In other words, climate change policies just got political. They are now part of people’s daily lives, exactly as the green NGOs wanted. As a consequence, Quangos, NGOs, government departments, and their ministers past and present are trying to distance themselves from those consequences, by pretending to champion the interests of the consumer. “It wasn’t us”, they scream. –Ben Pile,
Climate Resistance, 16 October 2011
The BBC, in determining its policy towards the coverage of global warming, which is of course not simply a scientific issue but an economic and a political issue, too, ought to shred that section of the Jones review and revert to the impartiality laid down in its charter. No doubt it is influenced by the fact that all three political parties at present cleave to the conventional wisdom, and that there is thus no problem of achieving party political balance. However, some might reasonably contend that the unanimity of the three main parties makes it all the more important that, in the public interest, adequate airtime is given to informed dissent. --Nigel Lawson,
The Sunday Times, 16 October 2011
Millions of homeowners who were forced by John Prescott to buy expensive energy-saving boilers are now facing bills of £150 to stop them from breaking down in the cold this winter. Mr Prescott made them compulsory as a way of getting Britain to reach its CO2 targets under the Kyoto Protocol.-- Tom McGhie and Abul Maher,
Daily Mail on Sunday 16 October 2011
