Green fundamentalists
Sir,
When all political parties – and even the Royal family – agree on something, you can be pretty sure they are wrong. It is therefore particularly useful that some of the follies of green fundamentalism are being exposed just before the great Glasgow self-righteousness fest which is COP26.
Consider, the green decision to rein-in gas and oil exploration in the North Sea, and to oppose commissioning of the new fields which have (even so) been discovered. The result: a shortage of oil and gas, meaning that Britain’s fuel security is now in the hands of Putin’s Russia, and coal-fired electricity generation was restarted last month. A big win for ‘green-ness’?
Even a formerly positive local authority in England has been bullied into opposing development of a coking-coal mine. This would produce coal as an essential ingredient in steel. The alternative would be to import the coal from Australia or the steel from China. Very green.
Meanwhile, the relentless drive for expensive, unreliable energy in Britain, whether wind or nuclear, makes British manufacturing less competitive, driving more of it to China, which continues to build coal-fired electricity generation capacity at pace.
More than half of Chinese energy production is from coal, and it is adding coal-fired capacity at three times the rest of the world combined. The green extremists are making matters worse, by their own measures.
The most beautiful example of green nonsense is the fact that the UK government currently subsidises attempts to reduce the production of carbon dioxide – and the production of carbon dioxide.
More than 25,000 people are expected for the great hypocrisy-gathering next month, and not all of them will have travelled here on foot. Of course, it is billed as the ‘last chance to save the planet’ – just like COP15 in 2009, and plenty more gatherings of the great, the good, and the plain expensive, before and since.
It will, directly and indirectly, cost us all a great deal of money, in so many different ways. But don’t count on it to do the planet any good. Yours,
Richard S Henderson
Lochranza