Environmental policy: not so much enviro as mental

Guest opinion by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

The Environmentalist Committee of the House of Commons, chaired by the ghastly “Tim” Yeo, who has profited to the tune of approaching $1 million from chairmanships of numerous shady windmill subsidy-farming corporations during his undistinguished and soon-to-be-terminated time in office, held a mutually sycophantic hearing last May with Sir David King, the ever-fatuous “climate-change ambassador” to the Children’s Coalition that has made amateur and costly attempts to govern Britain for the past five years.

In that time of supposed “austerity”, the national debt has doubled.

No small fraction of the rapid growth in debt arises from the vast sums the kids have been flinging at heroically stupid measures such as converting Drax, the world’s largest, cleanest and most thermally efficient coal-fired power station, from burning coal to gobbling wood-chips imported from America.

The tiny tots had not understood that the energy density of coal is many times that of timber. Even if Birnam Wood should come to Dunsinane, there are not enough trees in the whole of Europe to keep Drax going.

Then there was the London rent-a-bike scheme that came in at a mere $26,000 per bike, and no one blinked because this was Saving The Planet.

Then there were the recent decisions both by the Scottish Executive and by the UK Government that fracking would not be allowed. For more than a decade, Russia and other vested interests have been pouring money into “green” groups that have protested against fracking on the specious ground that it causes earthquakes, contaminates the water supply and will visit the Ten Plagues of Egypt on anyone who indulges in it.

Yet at the same time – one couldn’t make this up – Scottish and British Ministers have been subsidizing schemes to push CO2 from power stations deep underground through pipes under very high pressure. Er, hello, is there anyone at home?

Then there were the useless windmills. These bat-blatting, bird-blending eyesores now grimly overshadow close to two-thirds of Scotland’s once-beautiful land mass. Tourist numbers in formerly beautiful areas of the countryside now scarred by this pointless industrialization of the landscape are nosediving.

The vast sums once spent by various taxpayer-funded busybody agencies to protect Scotland’s rare raptors and game birds – the hen harrier, the golden eagle, the osprey, the capercailzie, the black grouse, to name but a few – have all gone to waste. The subsidy farms are mincing the birds daily. Soon they will have wiped out all of these noble but fragile constituents in Scotland’s environment, in the name of – er – preserving the environment.

Don’t get me started on the cost. Let me just point out that if in the recent referendum Scotland had separated herself from her nearest and dearest neighbor so as to become a more cringingly abject satrapy of the European tyranny-by-clerk (independence was not on offer), a situation unprecedented in the history of economics would have arisen.

Before long, as the last eagles flutter to their bloody deaths at the foot of these cruel towers of steel, more than 100% of Scotland’s electricity will come from wind on those rare occasions when it is blowing neither too little nor too much.

For geographical reasons the only grid interconnect with another nation is with England. So England will be the monopsony customer for Scotland’s intermittent surplus of electrical power, and can pay as little as she likes for it.

Yet most of the time the turbines are not turning – or, if they are, they are powered by the grid to stop their bearings seizing. At those times, Scotland will have to import most – and eventually all – of her electricity from England, which at these times will become Scotland’s monopoly supplier of power, and can charge as much as she likes for it.

Never before in economic history has any nation been so crass as to place itself at the wrong end of a monopoly and a monopsony simultaneously. This is a world first for economic stupidity.

Idiocies such as these are the policy context in which the Environmentalist Committee of the Commons operates. The Climate Change Act 2008, justly described as the costliest and most pointless law ever enacted by the Mother of Parliaments, was pushed through while inches of global warming were falling in Parliament Square, the first October snow to settle there for 74 years.

“Tim”, who sneers ignorantly at the very few skeptics allowed to appear before him and fawns upon the true-believers whose fraud has made him rich, asked King how many countries would back the dismal, world-government Treaty of Paris, due to be signed by most nations this December. King’s answer was as alarming as it was revealing. All but two nations would sign without hesitation, he said.

The first of the two standouts was Canada, whose Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has dismantled most of the enviro-boondoggle quangoes that once infested his nation. However, said King with his signature smirk, there is an election due in Canada this Spring. One got the impression that the U.N. would see to it – at all costs – that Harper was not allowed to win under any circumstances.

The second standout was Australia, whose freshly-elected non-Left government was also bent on dismantling many of its Socialist predecessors’ costly absurdities of environmental policy (hereinafter simply “’mental policy”). The CO2 tax was already on its way out as King spoke.

However, the electorate will not be able to remove Tony Abbott, Australia’s current Prime Minister, until long after December’s climate conference in Paris. And it is particularly necessary, from the U.N.’s point of view, to ensure that not a single nation dissents from the world-government treaty.

The reason is that, whatever the bureaucrats and “scientists” are saying publicly, in private they are terrified that they have gotten the science so grievously wrong that they will be publicly humiliated when it becomes apparent to all – as it is already apparent to all who read our WUWT monthly temperature updates – that the rate of global warming is a small and ever-dwindling fraction of the alarming rates that were once predicted with such “substantial confidence”.

Those soi-disant “world leaders” who once told us how sure They were that They were right cannot now be seen to admit that They were wrong. That would be a humiliation that the governing class has collectively decided it is unwilling to endure. Therefore, to these creatures, unanimous assent to the world-government treaty is essential.

For it is only if CO2 emissions are cut to almost nothing that They will be able to pretend that the real reason for the embarrassing and continuing failure of global temperatures to rise at anything like the predicted rate is that They have taken the tough decisions that led to the near-total suppression of CO2 emissions.

Indeed, I was on Russia Today not so long ago with some forgettable Minister or another (it did not seem at all clear even to her what she was Minister of), and she was already claiming credit for the pause in global warming, notwithstanding the continuing increases in CO2 concentration.

No more striking example of the Left-driven, hate-filled insanity of ’mental policy can be found than in an agonized email just in from Anne Easby, a doughty campaigner for common sense in Australia.

The Socialists and their friends in the governing Liberal-National coalition are attempting to unseat Australia’s non-Left Prime Minister Tony Abbott, so as to make sure he is not in office at the time of the new Versailles disaster this December:

“No doubt you have been watching the news unfold about the imploding Liberal Government and the unprecedented attack by the media, Labor and the Left on Tony Abbott. Now a leadership spill is planned for Tuesday by some very disloyal and very stupid Western Australian nobody MPs who are full of their own self-importance and full of vengeance for being overlooked.

“I have no doubt that this whole campaign of hatred against Tony has been aided and abetted by GetUP! (Soros) but I just don’t know how they’ve managed to be so successful. Social media, aided by the news services, report hourly on the failings of Abbott. Even Alan Jones’ 2GB has news reports that could have been written by the hateful ABC.

“At the Press Club address this week [live on TV every Wednesday lunchtime], during the question time afterwards, the Canberra press gallery (hyenas) were positively dripping venom with every question they asked Tony. They didn’t want to know the answer: they just wanted to stick their journalistic knives into his heart. It made me sad and ashamed that my fellow Australians could treat our Prime Minister in this way.

“The polls are always down for Tony, which makes me think the polls are being manipulated. Maybe that’s my conspiracy theory side taking over, but when you speak to people, it’s never as bad as the polls indicate.

“Tony has been PM with his hands tied behind his back. He’s done as much as he could with a hostile Senate full of unelectable bogans. Labor has been courting the Queen Bogan, Jacqui Lambie, and she hates Tony Abbott with a passion. What has the poor man done to her, except exist?

“All the while, Malcolm Turnbull [a global-warming profiteer whom Abbott ousted for the leadership of the Liberal-National coalition some years ago] and Julie Bishop (who is friends with Kevin Rudd [former Labor Prime Minister who signed Australia up to the Kyoto Protocol at Bali in 2007 immediately after being elected, and was subsequently deposed by Julia Gillard, authoress of the CO2 tax], no I’m not joking) are sitting quietly in the wings, waiting for Tony to be taken down so one or both can assume power. We all know what that means. Signing the UN’s climate agreement in Paris will become a priority and a certainty.

“There is a dark power behind what is happening in Australia and, Christopher, it scares the hell out of me. I can see my gregarious and proud country slipping into a dark, UN-controlled place where free speech is banned and we all worship at the altar of Gaia.

“I spoke to my MP and friend, Craig Kelly tonight and he is shocked and saddened by what is unfolding in Canberra. He stood up for Tony on Facebook and the Guardian attacked him (as did their readers). Craig is a decent man and even he was surprised at the hatred expressed on his Facebook page by savage people.

“Craig stood up for Tony because our Liberal branches demanded he did. There is much support on the ground for Tony, because more than anything, people still like to give someone a fair go and Tony has done what he promised as far as he could.

“This is what has me puzzled … are we all wrong with what we see in Abbott the man? No, we’re not. He’s a good man and one the Left has been after since the day after the election.”

“Next Tuesday is the day of the leadership spill and I and others like me will be hammering the airways, social media, politicians to try and knock some sense into their pickled brains.

“What sickens and saddens me is that Tony Abbott is a good man, a good family man, who has done nothing really wrong. He’s made a few mistakes but nothing major, and the press and Labor have dissected his every move.

“God, the poor man can’t even wink without it causing an uproar in the press. How must his family feel, seeing their husband and father being crucified on a daily basis when he’s doing his best?

“I saw a word called AGITPROP last week and that appears to be the tactic the Left and media are using to destroy Abbott. Agitation and propaganda. It’s an old Russian Marxist tactic and it seems to be working. Unfortunately, the stupid, traitorous Libs can’t see they’re being played.

“On Tuesday, my greatest fears for our nation will probably become reality and Turnbull or, worse, Bishop will be installed as PM. That will be the day the dark UN cloud will cover Australia because I can’t see how we can stop her signing that damned treaty in Paris.

“I’m sorry to rant and rave but my heart is heavy, watching what’s unfolding here. Our Liberal Party till be torn down the middle after Tuesday if Abbott is deposed, and we can all sit back and watch Shorten, that disgusting Oompa-Loompa freak-show of a man, drive in the Prime Ministerial limo to the Lodge.

“We may need you, Christopher, to help us start an Australian UKIP because the majority of us will not vote Liberal with Turnbull or Bishop in charge.

“The Left have been brilliant in their attack on Abbott – and the losers will be the Australian people. We won’t realise what a good man we’ve had in power until we’ve lost him. And until it’s too late.”