Lord Lawson was right to condemn costly green taxes
LORD Lawson has been strongly criticised for his attack on An Inconvenient Sequel, the latest scaremongering climate change film by Al Gore, but he is right to say our energy bills could be reduced if we cut out bogus green fuel taxes.
Following Lord Lawson’s Radio 4 interview on the Today programme, the Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley condemned the BBC for giving any airtime to the former chancellor, who now heads the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The Green Party claimed it was “false balance” even though Lawson was given half the time allowed to former US vice-president Al Gore to plug the sequel to his climate change propaganda movie An Inconvenient Truth.
Scientist and broadcaster Jim al-Khalili went further, saying: “There should be no debate any more about climate change.” No debate at all? That sounds a very extreme response to Lawson’s reasonable comments.
There should always be debate about policies that are costing every one of us hundreds of pounds every year in extra taxes on our fuel bills to subsidise a renewable energy industry that may well have no effect on climate change over the next century. That is the real Inconvenient Truth.
“We tax fossil fuel energy, we subsidise renewable energy,” said Lawson. “Conventional energy is more reliable and cheaper.”
THAT is a fact. Even David Cameron, as environmentally friendly a Conservative leader as you could ever get, reportedly told his government ministers in 2013 to cut the “green c***” that was driving up energy bills for households and businesses.
It has been estimated that 13 per cent of our electricity and gas bills go towards environmental and social costs. Said one energy supplier recently: “We’ve been trying to explain to our customers for years that most of the extra costs on their bills is from levies we have to pay the government but we still get blamed for price hikes.”
That’s bad enough for hardpressed families but the extra energy costs plus carbon taxes are making our industries uncompetitive in the world market, which means fewer jobs for our workers. Lord