Left out in the cold

BORIS Johnson once said wind farms ‘couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding’.

Yesterday, with a convert’s zeal, he took to the UN pulpit in New York to lecture world leaders about climate change. The Prime Minister’s words would have packed more punch, however, if back home we weren’t on the brink of an energy crisis.

This paper has warned successive governments about the lunacy of having no long-term strategy to avoid 1970s-style power shortages. But rather than assemble a robust, diverse energy supply, politicians have slavishly prostrated themselves before scaremongering climate activists.

By aggressively replacing nuclear and fossil fuels with renewables, such as wind, we have become dangerously dependent on unreliable weather and imports.

Now, with skyrocketing global gas prices, the chickens are coming home to roost.

This winter, households face paying £400 more for their energy – some, distressingly forced to choose between heating and eating. Food and goods prices will inevitably soar – hammering family budgets. Industry, too, is under the cosh. Alarmingly, ministers warn the problem is here to stay.

Is it now time to look at fracking or small modular nuclear reactors to shield us from energy shortfalls? Mr Johnson must urgently grasp this problem – or risk leaving families poorer and in the cold and dark.