Christopher Booker over Barones Worthington en de Britse klimaatwet

Onder de titel, 'MPs have no idea what the Climate Change Act means', schreef Christopher Booker in de Britse 'Telegraph' hoe een jeugdige groene lobbyiste erin slaagde om nagenoeg het gehele Britse Parlement over te halen om steun te geven aan een wetsvoorstel dat neerkomt op economische zelfmoord. Daar staat geen enkel aantoonbaar klimaateffect tegenover. Als beloning daarvoor werd zij in de adelstand verheven. Gewoonlijk ben ik een groot liefhebber van Britse humor. Maar er zijn grenzen.

Booker had zijn lezers opgeroepen om parlementariërs aan te schrijven met de vraag waarom zij vóór dit wetsvoorstel hadden gestemd. Zestig van hen beantwoordden deze vraag. Het peil van de antwoorden was bedroevend.

Ik pik een aantal citaten uit zijn artikel.

I read the MPs’ replies with dismay. Not one showed any sign of understanding the question put to them. Most of the later replies merely passed on a form letter from Ed Davey, Chris Huhne’s successor at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which makes no attempt to answer the question and is pure departmental gobbledygook.

It recommends reading the Government’s Carbon Plan, with the astonishing claim that this shows how “the impact of low-carbon policies on growth over the next decade or so is likely to be almost zero”.
 
Clearly none of the MPs had noted the recent study carried out for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which shows how soaring green-energy charges “will make British industry uncompetitive compared with other leading countries by the end of the decade”. A combination of renewable energy subsidies and new emissions charges, this report predicts, will double the costs for energy-intensive industries, such as steel, by 2020, forcing many firms either to relocate abroad or to close altogether (as our aluminium industry has already done). George Osborne’s new “carbon tax” will add £3 billion – a sixth – to our electricity bills next year, and will almost double them by 2020. Meanwhile, the price paid for “carbon credits” by our competitors has collapsed to a fraction of what UK firms face.
 
One of the most bizarre features of the Climate Change Act – put through by Ed Miliband when he was our first climate change secretary and passed almost unanimously by MPs – is that it was largely drafted by a young green lobbyist, Bryony Worthington, seconded to the Civil Service from Friends of the Earth, where she had been in charge of their global warming campaign. On YouTube you can see a talk she gave last year to another campaigning body, funded by the Department for International Development, in which she tells the extraordinary story of how the Act that commits the UK to these pie-in-the-sky targets came about.

First she sold the idea of a Climate Change Bill to David Cameron, when he became leader of the opposition. This prompted David Miliband to follow suit and it was he who put her in charge of drafting the Bill that was finally put through the Commons by brother Ed. For this, the Act’s prime architect was made Baroness Worthington in 2010.
 
The point about the Climate Change Act – which, according to the Government’s own figures, will cost us up to £18 billion every year until 2050 – is that it sets a target which cannot be achieved without our country committing economic suicide. One cannot expect a young climate zealot to understand that. But what is terrifying is not just that such a person should have in effect been put in charge of our country’s energy policy, but that there appears to be scarcely a single MP who can see why this is utterly insane. If these zombies were replaced by 650 men and women chosen at random off the street, the silliest and most destructive law ever passed by Parliament would be repealed within days.

Lees verder hier.

Tja, het is dan ook niet verwonderlijk dat Engeland de bakermat van Monty Python is.