Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Lord Deben, Chairman of the UK government’s “independent” Committee on Climate Change, thinks the imminent likely exit of Britain from the European Union poses a risk to the Paris Climate Treaty.
A British vote to exit the European Union in June would represent a blow to the 2015 Paris climate deal, the country’s top climate advisor has warned.
Former Conservative environment minister Lord Deben, who now chairs the UK Committee on Climate Change, made the comments during a talk hosted by the IPPR think tank in London.
“Brexit is a threat to Paris,” said Deben, who is a vocal campaigner for Britain to maintain its links with Brussels.
“I’m optimistic about the European Union because I think the British people aren’t so stupid to go out – but there’s a long way to go and a great deal to do and we must not leave any stone unturned,” he added.
The referendum is slated for 23 June and has already caused significant splits within the ruling Tory party.
Read more: http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/03/18/brexit-a-threat-to-paris-deal-says-uk-climate-advisor/
Lord Deben’s tenure as an independent climate advisor to the UK government has attracted accusations of conflict of interest, due to Lord Deben’s substantial personal investments in green businesses.
It seems likely Lord Deben’s concerns about the Paris Climate Treaty are shared by other prominent green politicians. For example, President Obama is strongly in favour of Britain remaining a member of the European Union.
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Bexit threatens the Paris climate accord? Sounds like a ringing endorsement to me.
Britain should leave the EU, because:
The EU is a ridiculously bureaucratic organization that drains the life out of its economies through its many dysfunctional policies, of which global warming alarmism and green energy nonsense are major components. Many EU countries are quietly retreating from green energy schemes as fast as their masters can politically do so, without admitting that they have been utterly fooled by green energy scams that are not green and produce little useful energy.
Cheap, abundant reliable energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple.
A humble suggestion:
Establish an international trade organization to include those countries that follow British Law, descended from Magna Carta, now 801 years of age. This would include Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand, India, and some others.
I suggest we could feed Britain much better and less expensively that Europe can, without all the ridiculous bureaucracy that typifies the EU. I suggest the British people would fare much better under this organization, and would avoid the eccentric policies that the EU frequently imposes on its citizens.
The EU is a failed experiment, the result of decades of policy-making by scoundrels and imbeciles. Britain should leave the EU before íts people suffer further harm, in terms of rising costs and reduced energy security.
Right – on!
Excess Winter Deaths total about 100.000 people per year in the USA, up to 50,000 per year in the United Kingdom and several million worldwide.
Why does the United Kingdom, with universal medical care and a population about 1/5th that of the USA, have an Excess Winter Mortality Rate up to 2.5 times that of the USA? I suggest the primary cause is poor adaptation to cold weather – and excessively high energy costs, thanks in large part to eco-loon hysteria and green energy nonsense.
References:
The Lancet study:
“Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study”
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/abstract
“Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather”
September 4, 2015
By Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
[excerpts]
Cold weather kills. Throughout history and in modern times, many more people succumb to cold exposure than to hot weather, as evidenced in a wide range of cold and warm climates.
Evidence is provided from a study of 74 million deaths in thirteen cold and warm countries including Thailand and Brazil, and studies of the United Kingdom, Europe, the USA, Australia and Canada.
Contrary to popular belief, Earth is colder-than-optimum for human survival. A warmer world, such as was experienced during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, is expected to lower winter deaths and a colder world like the Little Ice Age will increase winter mortality, absent adaptive measures. These conclusions have been known for many decades, based on national mortality statistics.
…
Canada has lower Excess Winter Mortality Rates than the USA (~100,000 Excess Winter Deaths per year) and much lower than the UK (up to ~50,000 Excess Winter Deaths per year). This is attributed to our better adaptation to cold weather, including better home insulation and home heating systems, and much lower energy costs than the UK, as a result of low-cost natural gas due to shale fracking and our lower implementation of inefficient and costly green energy schemes.
…
When misinformed politicians fool with energy systems, innocent people suffer and die.
****************
Best regards to all, and especially my friends and family in the UK.
Allan MacRae of the Clan MacRae
Isn’t that The Commonwealth plus the USA?
Works for me…
I was thinking of calling it the British Empire, but then the Americans might object…
🙂
Notice how he couldn’t hold back and had to call somebody stupid? I did!
He called all the undecided people with doubts “stupid”, also those too assed to bother to vote. He is the gift that keeps on giving. He really believes that his profitable “renewable” sinecures are expressions of altruism. He is the epitome of genteel corruption and his title of “Lord” well deserved.
By the way, his daughter is named Cordelia, but King Lear he ain’t,
Pablo @ur momisugly 6.49am; Leon Brittain being dead has improved him a lot
Peter Miller @ur momisugly 8.13; Boris Johnson (Mayor of London) is a venial, opportunist clown who just wants to be next leader. The bard has already marked him…
“How ill white hairs become a fool and jester”
(Henry IV Part 2 Act 5 Scene 5)
He should mark well the end of that speech
“know the grave doth gape thrice wide for thee than for other men”
The man is a liar. Leaving has no bearing on the Paris deal.
“Leaving has no bearing on the Paris deal.”
Charlie – it bloody does. The environmental policy and response to “climate change” is entirely within the competence of the European Union as is Energy Policy. It is in response to the “Renewables Directive” that the UK electricity supply is completely f***** up (as is that of Germany, Denmark, Ireland and Spain). The beauty is though, leaving will mean that the UK has no
“intended nationally determined contribution” so we can do what we choose, like China, India, Brazil and even bloody Zimbabwe!
One of the most ridiculous part of the European energy regulation is that some countries can flood with electricity market with subsidized energy at any time, even when prices are negative, eating the margins of non-subsidized producers, but Austria can even attack the EDF/UK Hinkley Point nuclear deal with the pretext that it has an impact on the market!
The European commission supports the deal, and it’s a deal where investissement is done by France (and others?) and paid back by UK consumers. The analysis of such deal is delicate because of lack of detailed information. The price is very high but that’s what happens when an industry is stopped for several years and restarted with even more regulatory burden. And agreeing on a high but fixed price might be necessary in order to avoid even higher prices if few production units remain available and demand grows.
Why would France and UK waste time in European courts with a remote country who does exactly nothing to secure energy production in Europe?
That Austria has ruled out nukes, in it’s constitution no less (!), is their problem.
If you apply the market impact argument consistently, you can oppose any project anywhere:
– where the State has any role
– which is either a consumer or producer of energy
Want to built a high speed line? It will consume energy. Might slightly raise energy prices elsewhere… where does it stop?
At the same time, the ethanol craziness has destabilized the agricultural markets; and now, biogaz!
Europe = free market principles applied strictly with no room for common sense + random state intervention and choosing the winners!
Lord Debden is more than an idiot. He will be remembered as the MP who fixed his Parliamentary expenses to claim money to have his moat cleaned. Anyway, what on earth does he know about the climate?
Gummer is a curious choice for the post. Not only did he feed his daughter mad cow burgers, “Norwegian environment minister Thorbjoern Berntsen, angry because Gummer was “insolent to Norway” during a discussion on acid rain, called him the biggest drittsekk (shitbag) he’d ever met.”
Berntsen pulled his punch
“Not only did he feed his daughter mad cow burgers,”
That was the only time I ever wished harm on a child
Why, do we ask, is Barack Obama so interested in keeping Britain in the EU?
Think Agenda 21/30. The progressives/ socialists/ democrats/communists/liberals believe they can control the EU agenda. It would be easier to control the British if they are members of the EU.
Clear?
Also, who said Turkey belongs to Europe?
Who wants to paralyse and destroy Europe?
Why, do we ask, is Barack Obama so interested in keeping Britain in the EU?
Think Agenda 21/30. The progressives/ socialists/ democrats/communists/liberals believe they can control the EU agenda. It would be easier to control the British if they are members of the EU.
Clear?
Might as well say that flushing toilets is a threat to Paris.
Ha ha
Never mind – Brexit an Frexit as well
Deben or gumball is a first class example of that very difficult to describe cunning skunk but stupid.
I’ve seen concern over the risk of leaving the EU in the minds of some Brit commenters when the subject is raised. This, folks, is the result of the success of the fear campaigns that socialists always employ to make people scared to make changes. It’s built into education, TV programs and documentaries, hyped new books and the ever present media servants of the campaign.
For goodness sake, how can the former ruler of the waves, the head of an empire upon which the sun could never set, inventor of the industrial revolution…. get to be scared? Scared of what? Scared that they won’t have to support the wards of the perpetual welfare nations that make up the EU? If UK, Nederlands and Germany left, the rest of them would begin to slide below many third world nations.
Britain would be able to forge multilateral deals with the English-Speaking world that was put together by forbears who didn’t know what fear was! I believe in freedom and this includes freedom of the rest of the EU to build wall to wall windmills and solar panels, freedom to print and give away as much money as they like, freedom to adopt the UN to outsource their decisionmaking and governance to. Freedom to ban asparagus not grown in the gallic way…
Don’t go telling me any of you Brits are afraid!! Maybe ask Ireland to come back and lead you if fear is holding you back. Oh and Deben is free to emigrate to the remains of the EU. We could also invite Germany and Nederlands to join us as honorary English-speaking nations.
PS I’ve been also admonishing my American neighbors to not be afraid of Trump. He’s the only one for which nothing constructed by the Dems is too big to fail. Yeah, he is a blunt and sometime vulgar fellow, but the party will ultimately provide Trump with advise on the details he needs to take care of. Presidents just need to bring a ‘can do’ attitude, an upbeat view of America’s greatness, and the apparatus will supply what he needs.
When he rebuilt the ice rink in Central Park that kept failing under the care of the City of New York. He upbraided city officials and bragged he could make a wonderful rink that wouldn’t fail. He didn’t bring a hose and scraper to the job. He went to the New York Rangers club and asked who makes the best rink in the world. They replied that it was a fellow from Toronto who made the Toronto Maple Leafs (sic) rink. He engaged the guy, who ripped out all the old pipes and put in a modern rink that New Yorkers have finally been skating on for years and years. Trump will have the best advice on foreign affairs and other things.
Jimmy Carter tried his best for years to get American diplomatic hostages back from Iran without success. When Ronald Reagan (Ray Gun as he was known for his Star Wars initiative) not only scared the Ruskies into folding up but Iran surrendered the hostages, too. Hey, Trump will put that kind of discipline back into the world and things he does will be in the national interest – remember that old idea? Just don’t be afraid. We say to people to not be afraid after terrorist attacks because that would only be a win for the terrorists. It is also true of the ideologues. Don’t let them know you are afraid.
I gave up on expecting politicians doing either anything good, or what they promised.
Now I vote for who will be most entertaining.
I’m certain Trump is not the best candidate to be President and that he believes all sorts of crap; HOWEVER, watching him piss in the Group Think PC Punchbowl that is both parties in Washington D.C. will certainly be the most entertaining show in decades…
Bad Things happen when the voters realize The Government no longer listens to them and they start lubing up their pitchforks. Count me as one of the People With Pitchforks. PWP Party. .. I want a PWP T shirt 🙂
Dear Brexit Members: Welcome to the universal PWP Party!
O.K. let’s do a reality check here.
Let’s imagine that I may wish to install several kilowatt of solar panels on my roof, next year.
If we remain in the E.U. then the cheapest panels from China receive a hefty import duty of (up to) 70%.
Hence, the cost of the panels will be 70% higher than if we in the U.K. could trade directly with China and remove this unfair E.U. tariff.
Meanwhile, the U.K. may be relieved of it’s obligation to provide a percentage of its electrical generation from massive off-shore wind turbines.
Since the consumer contributes towards the funding of this absurdly expensive form of energy generation, we should expect that energy bills would be lower than if we remained committed to E.U. targets.
Hence, solar electricity would certainly be cheaper for me, without the E.U. tariffs.
And regular electricity would be cheaper for everyone else, without the renewables commitments.
I can see why Lord Deben may want electricity (and solar panels) to be more expensive for consumers, but it is hard to grasp why anyone else would vote to let him continue to turn his nightmares into a reality.
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2986598/eunbsprenews_70_solar_tax_on_chinese_pv.html
Not forgetting that in spite of the EU’s obsession with green bollox, in their infinite wisdom the Kommissars in Brussels have just ruled that it is unlawful for the UK to charge a lower rate of VAT on energy-saving equipment, heat pumps, solar panels etc.
https://next.ft.com/content/d0a675e6-0adb-11e5-98d3-00144feabdc0
Further, currently the egregious Cameron – the supposed leader of the fifth largest economy and fourth most powerful military on Earth is having to go cap in hand and beg the drunken Juncker for permission to reduce the Value Added Tax on – of all things – tampons.
THAT is how far the once-powerful Great Britain has sunk, we can’t even set the price of female hygiene accessories without permission from a load of trough-snouting unelected bureaucrats heading up a kleptocracy that hasn’t managed to find an accountant bent enough to sign off its books for two decades – even Goldman Sachs won’t stoop as low as that.
You couldn’t make it up!
In the name of the free market!
France has been attacked because its VAT in half of the price of DSL was too low (France used to have a special rule allowing two different VAT on virtual parts of one DSL monthly tariff).
The European VAT rules are more bizarre than you can imagine:
– you can have reduced VAT on television distribution
– you can NOT have reduced VAT on digital networks
I am not making this up. Apparently these clown don’t understand that TV distribution is digital.
The crazier aspect is that taxes are not uniform or converging in Europe, but each country cannot freely set or change its VAT levels – even if no neighbor has the same VAT level in the first place.
td; dr: It’s anti-commercial “dumping” if you lower VAT on tampons. People would organise a tampon trafic. That would create a black market and the end of the world, probably.
No, Catweazle666, this is more insane than if it were intentional scripted as a sketch in Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
So daft that at times I forget that it is reality and find myself laughing about it all.
Someday soon, they’ll have to come and take me away.
I’ll be screaming, “can’t you fools see – it’s all a massive joke that their playing at our expense!!”
And the paramedics will just eye each other knowingly and load a syringe with a strong benzo.
I had, previously, no idea that one of the added benefits of Brexit was that it was a threat to the Paris Treaty! As we know Lord Deben is a genuine village idiot however.
Don’t you think that’s a bit hard on village idiots?
Now, if Deben had said that a pro-Brexit vote would mean that he would feel obliged to go to the library with a tot of whisky and the old service revolver, then the Vote Out campaign would have it in the bag!
I wish….
Do the right thing for the survival of your nation and leave the EU. Your future depends on it.
It’s great that the problems that the Brits (i am one) are having with the EU is being aired in a US forum.
Remember that TTIP is going to entangle you “Yankes” in this unholy mess!
View from the ex-colonies:
About 250 years ago, we not only left Europe, we left behind the quaint custom of pretending to listen/value speech at face value from guys with silly aristocratic titles (lord, duke, et al etc), so congratulations on catching up.
We (us colonials) are now having to lear the same discipline regarding president, senator, congressman.
Cant wait for OUR Independence Day which will hopefully lead to a change at the top of the Govt
The beginning of the end of the climate troughers will be icing on the cake
It’s a win/win then – what’s not to like?
Proof positive, then, that the “Paris Climate Treaty” was 100% political.
As many before have said sounds like another sound reason to leave.
Was talking to someone who was telling me about the planned merger of the UK and German stock exchanges into one partnership the odd thing was that the Germans would get a 54% stake and the UK a 45% strange equality?
James Bull
Heath should be turning in his grave now to hear that most of the people in the UK want the UK out of the EU (Common market then – 1973). One thing you can thank politicians for, they did not ditch Stirling for the Euro.
I’ll be voting Leave because I passionately want my country to regain its freedom and independence.
If it endangers the Paris agreement then so much the better.
Chris
All the regulars are in good form to-day. Martin Durkin’s film ‘BREXIT’ will be out soon, which will make you all feel really good.