PM not delivering on his own climate claims
LAST year, Rishi Sunak said his daughters wanted him to do more on climate change.
However, those entreaties clearly fell on deaf ears, because the topic didn’t feature in his speech on entering Downing Street as Prime Minister or in his priorities for 2023.
Tory MP Chris Skidmore’s recent review concluded that the Conservatives have failed on nearly every aspect of net zero policy.
Schemes for insulating our housing stock and boiler replacements have been lamentable failures.
Despite their horrifying carbon emissions, Sunak slashed the aviation tax on domestic flights and the government waived more than £300 million in charges due from airlines under the Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme.
The fossil fuel industry can evade much of the windfall tax on excessive profits by investing in further, disastrous exploration and, since 2015, the UK government has given £20 billion more in support to fossil fuel producers than those of renewables.
Last year, the UK’s net zero strategy was found to have breached the Climate Change Act.
Forced to respond, the government has produced aspirations but few concrete plans.
Although proven to be highly cost-effective, onshore wind projects are almost impossible to get off the ground and money is being risked on unproven carbon capture – effectively a get out of jail card for fossil fuels. No surprise then that oil and gas companies are huge donors to the Tory Party.
Sunak’s personal actions are revealing. He frequently travels by private jet and his new swimming pool uses so much electricity that the local grid connection had to be upgraded.
Not only is he disastrously failing on carbon emissions, he also clearly can’t understand the importance to ordinary people of energy efficiency schemes and cheaper renewables.
For someone so well briefed, there are no excuses for this.
Terry Riordan, Derby
I THOUGHT readers might be interested in my quirky hobby.
I have collected every single copy of Dragon magazine, all 359 copies, including #1, which was printed in 1976.
It is to my belief the only collection in the UK (it was a US magazine initially which later joined the UK market) and although some people claim in the US to have a full collection, nobody can actually provide photos of the full collection like I can.
Copy #1 cost me £1,440, plus postage from America, and often sells for more.
Most of issues one to 50 actually came from America as it took several years before the mag became popular enough to actually start shipping to the UK and then finally printing UK copies.
However, the US versions were superior as they did not put a huge name banner over the cover artwork.
I believe there are a maximum of 20 copies of #1 in existence, and only mine in the UK.
The actual amount is probably 15 but owners are quiet about having them as they often sell for £2,000.
The Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, probably has a full collection but has not confirmed this to me yet and no one else in the world has provided proof that they have a full set of 359 like me, so I’m claiming it’s totally unique till proven otherwise.
I have a TSR dragon #1 owner’s group on Facebook. Marcus Hickman, Barwell