Essay by Eric Worrall
For 18 months, and British PM Rishi Sunak has failed to appoint a new Climate Change Committee chairman. Now the Chief Executive of the committee just resigned.
Sunak ‘dodging scrutiny’ by failing to appoint chair of Climate Change Committee
No successor has been named for Lord Deben – and now the independent watchdog’s chief executive has resigned
Toby Helm Political Editor
Sun 14 Jan 2024 18.00 AEDTRishi Sunak has been accused of trying to avoid scrutiny of his green policies after details surfaced about his government’s failure, over more than 18 months, to appoint a new chair of the independent climate change committee.
Senior environmentalists said they believed Sunak may be deliberately trying to avoid appointing a successor to Lord Deben – who first announced that he was stepping down in July 2022 – until after a general election, so he does not face criticism for his U-turns on green issues.
The Observer can reveal that peer and former Tory minister David Willetts, who had been seen as the clear favourite, was interviewed for the post last summer but has since had no further contact at all from the government about the job and no indication as to whether he is still being considered.
…
A Whitehall source who knows several people who applied for the post said: “No one seems to know what is going on. There could be a number of reasons. Either Sunak does not want anyone in the job because he wants to avoid being criticised in the run-up to a general election or there is a blockage, a disagreement at high level over who it should be. Whatever it is, it is scandalous that a job like this has not been filled when climate change is supposed to be the most urgent question facing humanity.”
…
The committee suffered another blow last week, when its chief executive, Chris Stark, announced he was standing down after six years. Stark is to join net zero advisory group the Carbon Trust as chief executive.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/14/sunak-dodging-scrutiny-by-failing-to-appoint-chair-of-climate-change-committee
This is strange even by the standards of British politics. We’re familiar with fake British Government committees, where people pretend to be part of a committee, so the government can pretend they are doing something about an issue. The famous British sitcom “Yes Minister” several times referenced fake committees. But an empty chair committee, on such a high profile issue, is next level weird.
The alleged motive seems obvious – the last thing Rishi Sunak needs heading into an election is a newly appointed climate committee chair who turns out to be a closet activist, or trades their position for a bunch of lucrative green directorships, who then uses their new appointment to criticise the government which appointed them.
There is an obvious solution – appoint a member of the climate skeptic Global Warming Policy Foundation as climate committee chair. Frenzied greens would direct so much energy and effort attacking the new committee chair, they might forget to criticise the government.
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The best decision would be to abolish the climate change committee. Every single statement from the committee has been deranged science denying alarmist nonsense.
The law on the statute books has to be repealed.
No party is going to do that. This is the problem, it’s a legal millstone around our necks.
We’re doomed.
For my money, it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Personally, I’m going to take a punt on something different
“Our energy plan will use our own energy treasure under our feet, and create thousands of British jobs, by making our industries competitive again.”
https://assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/303/attachments/original/1696527070/Reform_is_Essential_-_5Oct23.pdf?1696527070
The other plus is they don’t do identitarianism and division.
Trouble is Reform want to subsidise energy prices and pay out untold ?hundreds of billions on nationalising the energy industry. They need to drop those plans to have a viable way ahead: they are unaffordable. They must rely on freeing up markets to do the job of lowering energy costs. That means starting by getting rid of all the existing regulators – OFGEM, NGESO (de facto a key decider of policy), NSTA, ONR… and replacing with ones whose mandate is to act in consumer interest rather than pursuing green policy. A declaration that the net zero target is no longer required is compatible with legislation, but will need work to show that the CCC projections are fraudulent nonsense.
Their policy needs to be informed by people with a greater understanding.
I also see their proposed nationalisation as a stupid idea and suggests Tice lacks an understanding that government interference is the problem not privatisation. Deputy leader Habbib is usually good but then drivelled on about not needing trading agreements to trade. World trade disagrees but he has a valid point when it comes to these massive trade deals that take decades to negotiate. But I guess we have to start somewhere in creating a conservative party.
I think you have misunderstood. They do not want to pay 100’s of billions, it is not necessary. You just change the trading arrangements to suit the consumer, ditch the pricing policy and all the green ones will go to the wall. Subsidies of one kind and another are the problem, and not any solution to anything. We do not need to Nationalise anything, and make the regulator regulate the market properly. Job done!
Their manifesto clearly talks about nationalisation. Indeed, given the poison pill terms in the subsidy contracts where there is entitlement to compensation in the event of a “qualifying change in law” that upsets the subsidy it would probably be necessary to evade the poison pills. The process of getting renewables off our necks requires a bit more subtlety than Reform have realised, which is probably why they have opted for the nationalisation route as a costly failsafe.
Bureaucracies always expand. When a workload expands to, say, 48 hours, overtime is not enough, you have to hire a new full time worker, who now has 32 hours of slack time, which must be filled with make work to avoid looking like a goof-off. Or if the workload falls from 40 hours to 8 hours, you don’t dare fire the least productive worker for fear the workload will increase again.
The only thing which saves private companies is the ability for lay off excess workers and the fear of bankruptcy, which do not apply t governments. Of course, governments making layoffs and firing as difficult and expensive as possible for private companies in the name of protecting workers.
That solution creates its own problems, as the government must be seen to be doing something to placate the green blob. The better solution is to use the `Yes Minister’ routine of appointing someone who will do what Sunak presumably wants- keep the committee quiet, defer implementation of the worst Net Zero policies, review the ultimate goals and report after the next election.
Unfortunately, the next government is almost certain to appoint a rabid Green who actually believes that there is a climate crisis. This might actually be an improvement on appointing someone who doesn’t believe any of the alarmist drivel but is out to feather his own nest. The madder the appointee, the more likely the public is to wonder about the credibility of these alarmist morons.
If you are right, Bill, about appointing a true believer, then maybe John Kerry is in the running. Go for it. Sorry.
Heh, let’s hope Starmer picks Diane Abbott – she’d kill the credibility of the committee within a few months, the slow-motion train-wreck would be hilarious.
I think you need to appoint an Engineer, who actually understands energy. Any coversation which is thermodynamically or technically impossible goes in the bin.
I think you are under the impression that this committee is meant to a technical one with a firm eye on reality. It isn’t, it exists to drive forward the green agenda. Hence the dreadful Deben was chairman for so long; and observe that the out-going Chief Exec is off to the lunatic Carbon Trust. Only rabid green morons get to be members.
The Climate Change Act can be changed (i.e. the climate change committee can be abolished) if the science behind the climate changes (which it undoubtedly has). But the paid-for climate scientists will never admit to their corrupt science.
Doesn’t the 2008 Climate Change Act mandate a Climate Change Committee? If so, we’d first need to recind the 2008 Act. They would never do that.
Yes it does, yes we do and no, they probably won’t.
It’s an “independent climate change committee” and the prime minister appoints its head?
About as “independent” as the German Democratic Republic was democratic…
Recently Chris Skidmore, MP for some poor sods somewhere, had planned to step down at the next election as the seat he holds will be abolished by electoral boundary changes.
Then, suddenly out of nowhere, he threw a real fit resigning early and forcing a completely pointless by-election
“Skidmore, a leading voice within the Tory party on green issues, said on Friday he would resign from parliament as soon as it returns next week over Rishi Sunak’s bill to allow new oil and gas licences to be issued. Skidmore called the bill a “tragedy”, accusing the prime minister of being committed to a course of action that is “wrong and will cause future harm”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/05/chris-skidmore-resigns-conservative-whip-over-sunaks-oil-and-gas-licence-plan
Did his ambitions for the chair of the CCC have anything to do with it?
“At least 60 people apply to head UK government climate crisis advisory body
Chris Skidmore, the government’s former net zero tsar, is understood to have applied but is thought unlikely to be considered as the government is unwilling to face more byelections. “
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/02/at-least-60-people-apply-to-head-uk-government-climate-crisis-advisory-body
Gut instinct says yes. This man and most of his Conservative colleagues are what Margaret Thatcher described as ‘wet’.
I agree with you, all the major parties in the UK have ignorantly supported the UN/EU climate plan to demonize poor harmless CO2, the basic gas supporting all life on Earth. If this isn’t the epitome of post-normal science nonsense, I don’t know what is. The UN’s climate mitigation policies leading to Net Zero are fraudulent, illogical, immoral and horrendously expensive. If the public understood what was involved in their implementation there would be riots, that’s why discussion of the science is virtually banned in polite society, but they cannot stop the internet educating the masses.
Here in Australia, the political situation is almost as dire as the UK and Europe, the virtue signalers in the Labor and Greens parties are joined by the Teals-Liberal wets in promoting the climate scare campaign to save the planet from dirty fossil fuels, we have in abundance. Don’t fool yourselves, we are not the clever country we thought we were any more. We slavishly follow the UN dictates without considering the global trend of developing nations, mainly Asian who now dominate fossil fuel industrialization growth and are outperforming western democracies. Australia has a major role to play here, in supporting their growth, but it will never happen if we continue to undermine our economy with false climate dictates and stupid renewable policies.
“I agree with you, all the major parties in the UK have ignorantly supported the UN/EU climate plan to demonize poor harmless CO2, the basic gas supporting all life on Earth.”
How did a once great nation get so stupid?
At the elite level it has gone from Empire to poodle bit player – the UK Robin to the US Batman. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that the little people only get to vote on the rotation of the deckchairs. The EU referendum was both an exception and an horrible lesson; reminding the elites that the little people might have ideas of their own.
But they are all – save for Trump? – wedded to the same philosophy. I think the question now is becoming one of how long has the US Empire got left? Biden is no geopolitical chess master and the establishment believes Biden is the man for the job.
Forward to the past
Hunh!? “…the establishment believes Biden is the man for the job.”
I would venture that they see him as an easily manipulated puppet or a convenient face to put on the “Great and Powerful Wizard!”
Bribe’m Joe doesn’t know where he IS half of the time, and he makes a real hash of any speaking he has to do unless he has received a recent injection; presumably a mix of electrolytes, vitamins and uppers; but who knows what the Intelligence Community does with their MKUltra data these days!
At least they don’t have him hanging out with some of their former subjects, like the LSD guru of young girls they created in the late 1960s! That sort of thing is left to the Clintons!
The American Empire will last for a very long time- regardless of whatever idiot is in charge for a period of time. It has a great deal of resilience. It has people from everywhere and every way of thinking and doing things. It has the greatest coastlines of any nation by far. It has great resources- fossil fuels, timber, vast agricultural production. It has the best universities- ignoring that they’re often led by woke idiots. The most advanced technology. As Churchill said, it’ll always do the right thing after trying everything else.
As the UK was an island off the coast of Europe- and Japan was an island off the coast of Asia- America is a huge island to the world. A vast land with a huge diverse population, resources, a military with a great deal of experience fighting in jungles, islands, and across Europe. The best navy by far. And, it’s quite possible that it has gotten technology from UAPs.
I saw this on Australia and it’s no different to the insanity that is everywhere we look these days
“Last year, the New South Wales Lesbian Action Group found out what this [changed Sex Discrimination Act] meant for same-sex attracted people. It was told by the Australian Human Rights Commission that a biologically defined female-only meeting of lesbians amounted to gender-identity discrimination and was thus unlawful.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/01/16/gays-against-starmer/
I never thought I’d see the day when a mother’s meeting could be declared illegal.
Hah! You ain’t seen anything yet.
Check out what the American Association of Pediatrics has to say about breastfeeding.
If I twist my brain into the right shape I can get how some people fetishise “natural” to the point of doing harm to themselves and their children by shunning modern medicine. But ethically problematic? That’s the trans-lobby talking.
This is the first live test of the IPCC’s climate models.
All the other tests were tests of predicting the past which is much easier than trying to predict the future.
The Grand Solar Minimum has just started and it may completely invalidate their models.
If you go and look up at the Parliamentary Register of Members Interests it becomes clear that Skidmore is earning £100ks a year from green companies. He doesn’t work for his constituents.
John Selwyn Gummer (Lord Deben – he of feeding his young daughter a burger at the height of the CJD panic) for president of the Climate Change Committee also has significant holdings and interests in green companies. Absolutely no conflict of interest whatsoever you understand.
Defending Gummer doesn’t seem right somehow – but the risk from eating a burger was miniscule so he was making a valid point but in a stupid way.
I agree that Skidmore is now a front runner. Half a brain Willetts is far too lily-livered to dish out the kind of arrogant nonsense required to try to keep Net Zero going. His main claim is probably that he is a friend of Gummer.
I beg to differ. The empty chair is, by far, the front runner, Skidmark and Willetts are distant also-rans. If Sunak can deflect attention from an empty chair for a while he has a free hand to do what he wants with energy.
Skidmore would probably be fine by Starmer. Sunak is not looking as though he will hang on much longer.
I think many these days would describe him as a ‘tosser’ who will waste £250,000 of taxpayers money on holding an unnecessary by-election because he had a hissy fit.
I’m one of the many 😀
“or there is a blockage”
There most certainly is, between the part of the political brains that is responsible for logical decisions.
Aw, c’mon, bob, the part of the political brain responsible for logical decisions suffered a catastrophic stroke and stopped functioning a long time ago.
Sadly, you are very right 😊
Soros is represented on the Climate Change Committee by a guy called Stephen Fries from the Institute for New Economic Thinking, (INET), set up by Soros in 2009 with $50 million. Fries is actually from its subsidiary at Oxford Martin School, set up in 2010. https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/news/institute-economic-modelling/ 03 April 2010
“Dr James Martin’s US$50 million matched funding challenge has helped to inspire a commitment by global financier, George Soros, to create a new institute for economics as part of the James Martin 21st Century School.”
Fries was group chief economist at Shell (2006–11; 2016–21) and chief economist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change from 2011–16, when he went back to Shell, but is now at Oxford INET.
The first CCC chairman Adair Turner, left in 2013 to become Chairman of Soros INET and he is still a senior fellow.
It’s good to see the interconnections between Sor@ur momisugly$$, BigOil, and the Green Blob! If the public ever wakes up to the KrazyKlimateKult scam, it should make prosecution of all the players for fraud and conspiracy ever so much easier!
Stark gone – made my day.
Well it’s a start anyway.
All I can say is good riddance Selwyn Gummer. If only this committee was abolished
Can’t abolish the committee without first getting rid of the 2008 climate change act. An empty chair is the next best thing though.
There was a danger that a stood down Skidmark was a shoe in for the chair job, in spite of his incomes from the climate rackets, as with the disgraceful trougher Gummer.
It appears he melted down so badly in his resignation pique, and/or that he and the departed CEO were so blatantly corrupt, probably both, that he is out of the frame for CCC chair. The best candidates like government advisor Prof Mike Kelly, who understands generation and energy use and supports what works best to meet the claimed political objectives affordably, which is not renewables, were eliminated early on.
Good news about Stark, an insufferable and self-important little tw4t and the main protagonist for The Hydrogen Economy
Electric cars and Lithium batteries are more than sufficient for blowing us up and burning our houses down, thank you very much.
Oh, Peta, you just don’t understand how the eco-zealots mind works!
Of course, “electric cars and Lithium batteries are more than sufficient for blowing us up;” but how much better will it be when there is a leaky hydrogen pipe available to provide that extra bit of combustion for total immolation! It’s one-stop-shopping for ALL your death and funeral needs; the only thing missing is the shovels or backhoe for the burial, and a handy container or urn!
Actually, nobody want Climate Change Committee Politics.
It’s for your own good…
There is the appointment of Prof Piers Forster of Leeds as interim Chair. He pretends to be a climate scientist.
https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/see/staff/1267/professor-piers-forster
Interesting plan!
I dunno what’s happening in the smoke filled corridors of power, but out in PR land they are paying lip service to renewables and going hell for leather nuclear all over Europe.
If Rishi had any sense he would close the whole department down as energy is now under the ministry for business I think. Yep…
The Department of [Energy and] Climate change is now an infected appendix in the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.
Oh Noze! its all change again
“Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy was replaced by Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and Department for Business and Trade”
Net Zero and Energy Security is an effin’ oxymoron.
Gosh those Big Words make me feel so well governed!
Not…
People drag their feet – politicians, company executives and employees.
Then when pressed by circumstance or revolt they lurch.
Sears department store chain for example, lept into stocking clothing for the mall crowd instead of shifting its merchandise – failed to attract the mall crowd, ticked off its formerly loyal customer base.
Sears managers and employees did not see the benefit in an Internet cafe in the appliances department, where customers could have refreshment while pondering their decision – if they left many would not come back to buy as they’d check another store or decide to live with what they had.
Lurching tends to be badly done – not thought through.
In governance, both the Tzar of Russia and the Shah of Iran were slow to adopt reforms, Marxists succeeded in replacing them (except in Iran religionists took over from Marxists).
I lived in Iran in the 1960s. One of the Shah’s problems was adopting reforms way too fast for the liking of many of his subjects.
Teheran was quite cosmopolitan back then. British, Americans, Russians, Pakistanis, and a large fraction of the Iranian population spoke very good English and we mixed freely. The Shah was making a determined effort to bring women into civil society and the workplace. I still have family photos showing street scenes with every style of dress. A fair number of black shadors but an equal number of pastel-coloured mini-skirts and behive hair was on show. The city was peaceful and very agreeable if you weren’t trafficking drugs or fomenting revolution.
The Shah was heavy-handed dealing with the rural drug trade and was hand-in-glove with US and British oil companies, but I bet half the population of Iran today would be delighted to make that bargain now, given the chance.
Even better solution – recognize that no committee appointed by humans will ever have any impact on the changing climate, stop funding this misadventure and reassign all committee members to a critical thinking re-education camp.
The only solution is to appoint a skeptic. Not just any skeptic but an articulate, knowledgeable and cool headed skeptic.