David Handley Where did all the common sense go?

I HAVE come to the conclusion that a few years ago they stopped giving out common sense. Because that can be the only explanation for the complete muddle we appear to have got ourselves into over energy supplies.

Take, for instance, the furore about the new coal mine at Whitehaven, plans for which were recently approved by Cumbria County Council and nodded through by the Government.

The protests reached a deafening, almost hysterical pitch. What were we doing, the campaigners demanded, giving a new lease of life to an industry producing that most polluting of fuel sources, coal?

Well, I can tell them what we were doing. We were tapping into a good, strong supply of the cleanest-burning coal that’s available. Coal we are going to continue needing certainly as long as we are making steel – and which is greatly superior to and less polluting than the dirty-burning coal we currently import from South Africa.

Then there’s the matter of wood, the fuel so many of us rely on to keep the flames flickering in the log burners we have all been encouraged to buy and install for the last 40 years.

Suddenly wood has become a polluting menace despite the fact that burning it only releases the carbon the tree originally absorbed from the atmosphere – carbon which will be reabsorbed by still-growing trees.

But it’s the harmful particulates that are given off as a result of burning wet wood that Government is getting really worked up about, which is behind the decree that wood used for fuel will have to be kiln-dried.

Another common sense vacuum. The only people who burn wet wood are families whose woodburners have been installed as fashion accessories in urban homes where the only source of fuel comes in the form of a net of six or eight damp logs bought at an eye-watering price from the garage down the road. Those of us who burn wood properly know you have to buy it a year or so in advance and season it, preferably under cover.

As for kiln-drying, how do ministers propose that operation should be carried out? By storing the wood in a giant warehouse and standing on the roof with a huge magnifying glass to focus the sun’s rays on the roof? Or by burning some kind of fuel (wood seems the most obvious choice) thus contributing to the emissions tally and adding to the cost of an otherwise economic commodity?

See what I mean about common sense? Whichever direction you look in it is in chronic short supply. It’s the same common sense deficit that lies behind the ludicrous plans to expensively ‘rewild’ areas of farmland that only three or four generations back farmers were expensively reclaiming from the wild to cultivate – with, naturally, the taxpayer footing both bills.

It’s the same common sense deficit which drives our obsession with wind and solar power when research exists showing that once the massive subsidies are removed for both they represent the costliest and least efficient methods of producing electricity.

Of course that research remains unpublished: once you start letting common sense influence the reckoning behind government policies there’s no knowing what other huge and costly follies it might uncover.

Those who burn wood properly know you have to buy it a year or so in advance and season it