Press Release (via email)
Conditional Climate Targets Are A Step Back From Blind Unilateralism
LONDON, 18 May – The Global Warming Policy Foundation regards the UK’s conditional adoption of post-2020 carbon targets as a first step back from blind and grandiloquent unilateralism.
“Nobody should fall for Chris Huhne’s green spin. It is now absolutely clear that the government’s proposed carbon targets are conditional on international agreements and developments,” said Dr Benny Peiser, the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
“The conditionality of UK targets on future EU targets is a step in the right direction,” Dr Peiser added.
Chris Huhne’s acknowledgement that “it is important that we move at the same speed as the EU” effectively means that the UK no longer aims to go it alone.
The ‘early 2014’ review of the government’s provisional targets are welcome, as is its assurance that UK targets will from now on be “aligned with EU targets.”
The government statement is an uneasy compromise between Vince Cable and Chris Huhne which, although a move in the right direction, does not go far enough. The Global Warming Policy Foundation is calling for the entire Climate Change Act to be suspended pending a binding global agreement.
The effective rejection of the Climate Change Committee insistence that the carbon budget be met entirely by domestic decarbonistion and not by carbon trading is also a welcome relaxation.
However, the promise to help energy-intensive industries, if carried out, would mean higher taxes as well as the higher energy prices implied by decarbonisation.
“The government’s claim that no other country has such targets is correct, as no other country wishes to inflict such damage on its business sector and economy,” said Lord Lawson, the chairman of the Global Warning Policy Foundation.
“We trust that, in the national interest, no serious attempt will be made by the government to attain these overly aggressive targets,” Lord Lawson added.
Contact:
Dr Benny Peiser
The Global Warming Policy Foundation – 1 Carlton House Terrace – London SW1Y 5DB
tel: 020 7930 6856 – mob: 07553 361717
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Well guys what did I say from day one? Just don’t trust a word the UK Government says. Learn to read between the lines.
There is a reason why the art of debating is so developed in British universities. It’s to help the ruling classes to argue their way into anything, and to say something whilst meaning something else without risking any accusation of lying.
All very “Yes Minister” – but hopefully a good interpretation of things. Lawson certainly knows how these things work.
I get the feeling things are starting to fracture round the world, but what we need is a giant obvious crack that we can point at without having to set up a projector and give everyone a science lesson.
Good sense from Peiser and Lawson.
But the problem for us in the UK is that the emission policy is being imposed by politicians, and UK politicians are not noted for their having or applying good sense.
Richard
I’ll save a step:
[comment removed because there were just far too many four letter words]
Anthony.
At GWPF, a brilliant paper by Lord Andrew Turnbull on AGW, the IPCC and energy options etc. ” The Really Inconvenient Truth”.
Should be required reading for every politician in the world!
http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/lord-turnbull.pdf
There’s a chance that “Buff” Huhne is on the way out anyway. He’s currently under suspicion of getting his ex-wife to take penalty points for a traffic offence he is alleged to have committed on her driving licence. If true, that’s an imprisonable offence.
Hell hath no fury …
It is becoming a common political stand now –we will not do anything or move forward until other countries do it or there is some “international agreement”. Is it a case of who blinks first or is this the “hand brake” that will help stop the nonsense ?
For example ,in NZ the Govt. has said it will not expand its ETS if other countries do not make further advances. Some Australian politians seem to be doubting the need to “lead the world”
C’mon, folks, they can’t just come out and SAY it, ferchrissake. /sarc?
For those unfamiliar with the minutiae of UK domestic politics, it is worth noting that the Energy Minister, Chris Huhne, is damaged goods at the moment and his political star is waning fast.
He is involved in a bitter dispute with his discarded ex-wife who has evidence of some ‘errors of judgement’ in the past. And these are being eagerly devoured by his many enemies.
Making yesterday’s announcement in the Commons may be seen to have been the zenith of his career. Should he soon be forced to leave office, these targets may never be implemented. Should he stay, few will take his directives very seriously.
Huhne the Loon, absolutely barking mad. [snip] No idea what Scottish Sceptic said but I’ll back it! As the good Dr Courtney said, good sense from Pieser & Lawson, as usual! Fuuny how it is the well heeled (Cameron, Huhne, Blair, Gore, et al) that seem to want to impose oppressive practices upon the rest of us? For me, they are all of dubious parentage!
The Climate Change act is enshrined in law making it mandatory for us in the UK to drive down carbon emissions. Huhnes announcement concerned a ‘green’ budget which effectively considers what should be done AFTER 2020. In that respect nothing at all has changed. The 2011 green budget will be debated and passed by Parliament at the end of June.
The ‘early 2014 review’ will merely reflect what other countries are doing at the time. There would not have to be an actual agreement in place by the EU-negotiations towards an agreed objective would be sufficient.
For Britain to change its position in 2014 and not continue its zeal to set further targets from 2020 would require a change in the Law. That would require a drastic change of opinion in Govt as only one MP out of over 600 voted against the recent climate change bill.
I do agree that Huhne is ‘damaged goods’ and if he went the drive would go out of the programme, but nothwithstanding that the carbon reductions are enshrined in LAW with all that implies.
As Richard Courtney remarks above, British Politicians are not known for their good sense. Unfortunatey we are into an ideology here and that trumps any attempts at reasoned logicality.
tonyb
I think this apparent boost to longterm commitment to renewables by Prime Minister Cameron is just a bone thrown to the Coalition allies (Liberal Democrats of which Huhne is a leading light) as a consolation prize for the beating they took in the recent elections. It permits the Lib Dems to claim to their disgusted former supporters who abandoned them in droves that, yes, we REALLY are making an important input into the Coalition government’s policies!
Despite the fragile economic situation Cameron will still wish to direct taxpayer’s largesse into the subsidy of investors in renewables and he will be able to do this because of the cutting of public services.
BUT, of all the parties, the Tories probably have the greatest proportion of independent thinkers on climate matters.
We’ll see. It’s easy and convenient to make promises about the future which may never come to fruition. The commitment to 80% cuts in the UK’s CO2 emissions by 2050 has to be in the realms of fantasy!
As Lord Tunbull recently said, this means in 2050 producing every unit of GDP with only 5% of the emissions currently generated. Bah Humbug!
Seriously, though, on wonders in astonishment how we ever arrived at this debacle where climatechangeism is the planet’s biggest growth industry! I can only see it as the deliberate generation of another financial bubble to line the pockets of plutocrats, in other words, business as usual.
‘Someone had blundered’….The Charge of the Light Brigade to continue…BBC reports…
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/
Mike Bromley says: May 18, 2011 at 1:19 am
“C’mon, folks, they can’t just come out and SAY it, ferchrissake. ”
I think that the Canadian position on all this is clear enough:
“Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.”
Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada.
Leader of a recently elected Conservative Majority government in Canada.
If any government is waiting for the world or even all the G8 countries to sign up for economic suicide, they have at least 4 years to wait.
Those of you in the un-developing world (UK, Aus, NZ, USA, etc), keep banging the rocks together.
/gloat
Politicians in the UK have watched too many re-runs of ‘Yes, Minister’, a briliantly funny, clever and lightly-disguised expose of Westminster politics and the main players of the long-gone days in which it was made. Sadly, this crop of politicians are completely unaware that they themselves do not posess a fraction of the wit and sheer intelligence of the original’s real politicians and civil servants who were so lightly disguised and so cleverly satirised.
The elephant that has crept into the political room and is standing quietly in a corner waiting for someone to notice he is there is the twelve nuclear-powered electricity generators Huhne has delayed acceptance of until 2012 by insisting that these must be guaranteed to withstand the 7.8 earthquake which the UK will never experience.
In the interim, he continues to pretend that the windmills he promotes will satisfy current and future demads for electricity.
I have seen children and the mildly psychotic delay the inevitable denouement that follows the telling of a monstrous lie, but Huhne’s behaviour is that of a man who knows that he will be long gone and that a successor will have to face the public when the coalition government is forced phase out clapped-out coal-fired plants to introduce nuclear generation of electricity.
The noose is tightening around Huhne’s neck. If the police prove his poor attempts to pervert the course of justice then he end up in jail.
Apart from that little problem Huhne’s doctrine will be seen as an attempt to cripple British Industry. It is a vote for UK to become a third world country.
“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.”
“Carbon dioxide which is a naturally occurring gas vital to the life cycles of this planet”
“No, what I am supportive of is, frankly, not ratifying the Kyoto agreement and not implementing it”
“This may be a lot of fun for a few scientific and environmental elites in Ottawa, but ordinary Canadians from coast to coast will not put up with what this will do to their economy and lifestyle”
“We can debate whether or not… CO₂ does or does not contribute to global warming. I think the jury is out.”
“My party’s position on the Kyoto Protocol is clear and has been for a long time. We will oppose ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and its targets. We will work with the provinces and others to discourage the implementation of those targets. And we will rescind the targets when we have the opportunity to do so”
“As economic policy, the Kyoto Accord is a disaster. As environmental policy it is a fraud”
Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada.
Leader of a recently elected Conservative Majority government in Canada.
There’s a lot more, but I stop now, it’s not fair to tease the rest of you in the un-developing world.
/gloat
As a millionaire owner of seven houses, Chris Huhne is in the same comfortable position as many other proponents of climate legislation, in that he won’t suffer from the consequencies of them. If he had to spend a while making choices between paying for heating or paying for food it might change his outlook on life.
Couldn’t agree more with Alan the Brit. The liberal democrat party has made a profession of ambiguous politics. Now they are part of government it’s proving more difficult. My bet is that liberal democrat “green/fair”policies will go out of the window when the lights go out and their unpopularity reaches stratospheric levels. Meanwhile we all suffer the cost of subsidising lunatic views of energy production
To elaborate on what other commenters have said about the “Bufhuhnes” indiscretions, it has been reported in the papers that the reason this alleged offence is so serious and punishable by imprisonment is that Huhne needed someone else to take the penalty points to avoid a driving ban. i.e. He may already have had three previous convictions for the same offence.
It seems that Mr Huhne has rather a heavy right foot and probably not as a consequence of tootling around in a battery powered milk float. Yet another case of our politicians and celebrities telling us to “Do as I say and not as I do.”
There are 2 targets. One for co2 reduction. The other for the migration of industry out of the UK and into other countries with less stringent targets.
@tonyb
Tony is worried that the CCA is enhrined in law and cannot be ignored.
But there are many laws (far too many!) in UK. Not all of them are enforced. AFAIK it is still technically illegal to serve a pint of beer shandy or a bowlful of bananas, but the local trading standards aren’t prosecuting anybody since the public mockery and huhnmiliation they got whne last they tried.
Ditto climate change crap. Unless you can find somebody to enforce it (which government is going to be seen to close down a power station and impose a blackout in mid-winter??), this will just be ignored. We have many targets that are missed without turning a hair..this will be another.
The only real sadness is that we will have to give work to yet more otherwise unemployables as impotent ‘climate change adviser’ and other such non-jobs to provide the fictional fig-leaf that anyone actually gives a t**s about trying.
Follow the money and my guess is the politico’s here in blighty aren’t going to be seeing the £££ they thought they would.
Ross says: ‘…Some Australian politians seem to be doubting the need to “lead the world”…’
This is just another example of the current government’s (left-of-center ALP) adoption of Orwellian ‘doublethink’.
On the one hand they try to appeal to the vanity of the electorate, to “lead the world” (ridiculous), yet simultaneously claim that if their CO2 tax is not meekly accepted the country will “be left behind” (also ridiculous).
Of course Australians can see through this B.S. and the government is now exploring the depths of disapproval ratings unseen for some generations — they’re lost.
Good old Omnologos – keeping the Class War healthy. Whilst subliminally reminding us of the usual leftist envy of the rich and powerful, he ignores the fact that those most keen on killing off the UK are the ultra-left, with their dreams of a New World Order. Check out Caroline Lucas’ contribution to the Huhne statement yesterday. Whilst most MPs were happy to say nice things about the plans, she was alone in demanding he does much more. Give me strength!