The Great Green Con: Labour's climate measures mainly hot air
After last week's eco-car initiative, Wednesday's Budget will have a green spin. But the Government's low-carbon strategy could be making matters worse, says environment editor Geoffrey Lean
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Reddit
Google
Stumble Upon
Fark
Newsvine
YahooBuzz
Bebo
Twitter
Independent Minds
Britain's economic stimulus measures, promoted by Gordon Brown as part of a "global green new deal", will accelerate global warming instead of curbing it, an investigation by The Independent on Sunday has established.
The investigation also shows that most of the Prime Minister's vaunted green initiatives have not materialised and, in some cases, are likely to set back his professed strategy for "the creation of a low-carbon economy". It has found that, over the past four years, ministers have launched a staggering 91 consultations relating to the issue, while actually doing little.
The revelations come as the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, prepares to unveil what ministers insist will be a groundbreaking green Budget. Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, told the IoS that it would represent "a massive greening of the Government".
Last year's Budget, however, was similarly trailed in advance as "the greenest ever", but actually led to a slight fall in the revenue coming from green taxes. And though Gordon Brown promised in 1997 to put "the environment at the core of the Government's objectives for the tax system", income from such taxes fell by 22 per cent during his 10 years as Chancellor.
As the IoS exclusively reported last month, green measures form only 6 per cent of the Government's stimulus package, compared to 13 per cent in Germany, 21 per cent in France, 38 per cent in China and 81 per cent in South Korea. And now a new study shows that the British package will increase rather than reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.
Carried out for WWF and E3G – a respected environmental group – it found that the harmful effects of new spending on roads, which will increase traffic, far outweighed the contribution of extra expenditure on energy saving and rail infrastructure. And it points out that Britain has "yet to include any investments at all dedicated to renewable energy".
Examination of Mr Brown's hyped green initiatives since becoming Prime minister reveals a similarly sorry picture, as the panel (right) shows.
He has repeatedly promised that Britain will increase the proportion of its energy coming from renewable sources to 15 per cent by 2020. But a new study to be published on Tuesday by Cambridge Econometrics is expected to show that, if current policies continue, it will grow from 1 per cent to only 1.5 per cent by then.
The Government has consistently failed to provide incentives that are routine in other countries. Four years ago, it promised to provide £50m to help develop wave and tidal power, an area where Britain has a potential world lead. But the resulting Marine Renewables Deployment Fund has yet to give a penny to support this. Installation of rooftop windmills has been held up through bureaucratic delays over planning issues at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Gordon Brown wrote to one manufacturer last August saying the issue had been resolved, but the hold-up continues.
Homeowners have also been discouraged from installing other renewable energy systems, such as solar electric panels. Just as they were beginning to take off, ministers slashed the level of grants available. They will end such funding for commercial buildings and charities altogether in June.
The Government has promised to introduce "feed-in tariffs", which would pay people for excess energy they produce. But these are not due to come in for a year for electricity and for two years for heat – causing a funding gap that threatens to drive some installers out of business.
There is a similar failure to honour an undertaking by Mr Brown last September properly to insulate six million houses over the next three years. In practice, this would involve providing cavity wall insulation to a million homes. The official Cavity Insulation Guarantee Agency told the IoS last week that filling cavity walls was running at just 500,000 homes a year.
Mr Brown promised to augment a scheme called the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target, under which the big energy companies have to help households save fuel and electricity. But the Government is now threatening to gut the scheme by allowing the companies to get away with simply offering people advice.
He also undertook to tackle fuel poverty. But ministers accept they will fail to meet a legal obligation to end it among vulnerable groups next year, and have cut funds, even as the number of households affected has risen from 4.3 to 5.4 million last year.
Last week's heavily publicised promotion of electric cars follows the same pattern, since the cars for which grants will be available will not be on the market for at least two years.
Meanwhile a study by a consulting firm, JDS Associates, has counted 91 separate consultations concerning sustainable energy launched by the governments in Westminster, Edinburgh and Cardiff between May 2005 and January 2009.
Last night Greg Barker, the Conservatives' energy spokesman, said the investigation showed ministers and civil servants were locked in "mid-20th-century attitudes to producing energy". Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat environment spokesman, said the Prime Minister was content to "paint a green picture" without taking practical action.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited
Reduce your global impact.
Comments
No surprise there then: it's typical of bullies, which is what this government are, to be pathetically cowardly when it comes to facing up to a genuinely scary situation and the need to tell people something they don't want to hear. Good strong leadership could lead us out of the climate mess, because plenty of solutions exist and all that is needed is to work together; but where is that leadership?
how do you know when Mr Brown is lying?
Answer
when his mouth is open
Monbiot summed it up in his book HEAT. "Politicians know we want them to set tough targets, and they know we want them to miss them."
We need this wider public agreement, because in the end, to achieve the levels of cuts needed to get our emissions down by 2050, it is going to need a major change in all our lifstyles, way beyond anything imagined of so far.
Power stations take years to build. Renewable projects, particularly those understaken by homeowners, come on line almost immediately. Incentivise this and it would go a considerable way to solving the impending power cuts and our carbon emission obligations.
So why aren't we doing it?.. Oh yeah, it means less tax revenue, freeing people from energy dependence and is altogether and too easy!
There's a thing.
Speaking of goats, maybe a new sacrificial quango requires setting up to take the blame? They are pretty good at that, so it might not be a total foul up.
Didn't over 31,000 scientists recently sign a petition rebutting the theory of man made global warming?
Personally, I haven't the time or inclination to plough through thousands of hours of scientific research, possible written by someone waiting for his next tax payer funded cheque to drop through his letterbox so he can trot off and conduct yet more 'essential research'. How much 'reading from the biosphere' have you done?
I don't doubt that climate changes; why shouldn't it? What I do doubt is that there is any actual knowledge of how much the climate has changed over a defined period, let alone whether human activity can be held responsible. Every time I hear or read of another alarmist claim such as the one's published in yesterday's Telegraph from Lord Stern (what scientific qualifications in this field does he actually hold?) predicting that climate change is "....causing a rise in sea levels, greater frequency of storms and a "high chance that the rainforests will collapse" and likening sceptics to holocaust or AIDs 'deniers', it reinforces my view that the lunatics really are running the asylum.
The only fear that climate change (nee Global Warming) causes me is the huge amounts of tax payers money that will be wasted in this country alone chasing vanity projects such as electric cars and an 80% reduction in CO2 output that can never succeed and will never see the light of day.
As a professional research scientist in ecology I have done a lot of reading (and writing) about the biosphere. However, since I am not a climate specialist I do not pretend to have any greater expertise in that subject than any other scientist. I do, however, know a lot about how research funding works and about the ethos of scientists working for the public good. If you want to ensure objectivity in scientific research the best approach is for it to be funded from the public purse, rather than from commercial sources.
One problem I will concede is that the popoular press tend to over-dramatise and simplify the issue. There is obviously some uncertainty involved - there is very little absolute certainty in life, but that doesn't stop important decisions being made. But the impression that scientists are saying that everything is cut and dried and neatly sewn up of course tends to encourage suspicion. This is why it is important to read up the science if possible. The same probably applies to teaching in schools, but here, particularly at junior levels, you are dealing with pupils who will not be able to appreciate the nuances of probability etc - even most adults (including teachers)have little concept of how probability testing is applied in science.
I also fail to understand how the connection is made between climate change and human activity. Undoubtably climate changes, it always has, yet to blame modern living is simplistic in the extreme. I can not believe that human activity can complete with the power of the sun which ultimately is surely the prime influence on our climate.
It is also worth pointing out that human beings are extremely resourceful creatures which is how they exist in the hottest and coldest clmiates on earth. It is well within our capabilites to adapt to varying climate and money would in my opinion be far better spent managing future changes in climate and adapting to live with them rather than trying to hold back the seas and setting lucicrous targets such as a reduction of 80% in CO2 output which is nowhere near achievable and yet will ruin modern industry in a vain attempt to meet it.
You say "I also fail to understand how the connection is made between climate change and human activity". This is not surprising as, on your own admission, you can't be bothered to read the scientific background to the issue. Climate science has a long history dating back to the early 19th century and for almost all this time the greenhouse effect has been a recognised phenomenon. I really recommend you do some background reading.
Instead you seem to rely on a very strange idea of what scientists are all about. The image you portrayed before of a climate scientists idly waiting for his grant cheque to drop through the letterbox has no relationship with reality - you must be thinking of undergraduate or postgraduate students. Scientists working on important subjects like climatology are typically employees of prestigious universities or academic research institutes that depend upon a reputation for integrity and academic excellence. Their work is extensively reviewed by others with appropriate expertise and there is great emphasis on scientific rigour and objectivity in the whole process. People engage in scientific research because they are exercised by the challenge of finding out the truth about how things work and increasing the fund of knowledge for the benefit of mankind, not just as a means of earning an easy meal ticket (which it is not!).
If you are still skeptical about the scientific community I suggest that you show our correspondence to any experienced academic research scientist you happen to know and allow him to comment. If you don't know any, try to find some other means of leaning about the ethos behind scientific research.
Except that you probably won't be bothered, just as you can't be bothered to find out anything about climate science before dismissing the whole thing as rubbish. This is not an argument that either you or I will win because arguments about science have to be based upon facts and data. And you can't be bothered to find out any. You prefer to rely on ridiculously inaccurate stereotypes and uninformed chitter-chatter on the net that allow you to dismiss an important issue that can only be addressed if we are all prepared to take responsibility and make some effort.
I don't intend to contribute further to this thread, but wish you well.
I simply don't have the time to plough through thousands of pages of research, however accurate or skewed it may be. As I have already said, climate changes. Human contribution to current variations is a theory still under debate both within and outside the scientific community and may never be settled. I still maintain that adapting to future climate variations makes far more sense to me than attempting to fight the impossible fight.
I'm not sure whether you are in the US, the UK or elsewhere but I can assure you that it would help the climate change lobby enormously if a sensible debate could be presented to the largly non-scientific community rather than ludicrous schemes such as launching mirrors in to space. It would also help if the likes of Al Gore would stop screaming about Global Warming whilst leaving his lights on 24/7 in his huge mansion and making a fortune from carbon trading.
Government obviously has a role but until the people as a whole start to change their view of the world, government will flounder because they fear not being re-elected by implementing unpopular policies. That is the nature of democracy.
If we as a people start to really believe we are damaging the environment (which we really don't, do we?) then government will follow and start to implement substantial meaningful change.
Stop blaming government, stop using them as a scapegoat to carry on the old ways, cut your carbon emissions and lead a greener life through personal responsibility.
Personal responsibility does not require an act of parliament.
You are expecting 6 milllion British individuals to make their own minds up and, furthermore, to actually agree on something!?? I severely doubt that will ever happen.
New Labour are finished. If Brown and his buddies wish to create any kind of legacy for themselves, then they must go out in a blaze of glory. After all, the current government is nothing if not unpopular....
I am sure you have a very good point but in the end the people have to make a personal decision to protect our environment. The welfare of our planet goes way above intercine politics and the blame game.
The wisdom of the crowd needs to change and be heart felt, not imposed, if any real change is to occur.
There is now no excuse, the evidence of planetary damage is compelling, most people know what is happening but are unwilling to change.
Government can only do so much if the will of the people is ambivalent. :-)
You are right on this point, of course.
I cannot help but think our efforts are wasted when all we do is sit and point the finger at each other. You drive when you could walk. You take the plane when you could go by train. You leave the television on standby when you could switch it off at the wall.... The list goes on and on. We are all sinners.
Instead of fighting a war on 6 million fronts, we must focus our efforts on one enemy. Urge the government to force us into action.
Based on my sons education, our school children are being force fed government policy on this subject with no discussion tolerated. As for the press, I don't know which papers you read but all the ones I take (The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independant & The Times) positively overdose on pro climate change articles.
Maybe the reason that the masses don't believe the hysteria is that it is they that end up paying for the Governments global warming folly and that it is all a load of bo77ocks anyway.
Nuclear is the ONLY known way forward and we have allowed the French and German to get 20 years ahead....dear Oh dear.
PS: Can you not harness hot air to drive trains or something?
Of course governments continue to go on about CO2 and global warming because they know it's a vote winner and a chance to raise more taxes. They know full well that it is the big green con. It's demonstrably untrue, as the Earth has been cooling for the last 10 years, despite a 5% increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
It seems that no politician has the guts to tell us the real truth, but when do they ever? The real truth is that we need to take urgent action now to cut our reliance on fossil fuels and change to renewables, because those fuels are going to run out, probably in the life time of our current school children. But it seems that is a boring message, and they prefer to rely on sensational rubbish like Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/image
See what a wind farm is doing to the city where we live.
www.palmerston-north.info
The Science and Public Policy Institute, who wrote this rebuttal, is apparently funded by ExxonMobil.
"The Science and Public Policy Institute, who wrote this rebuttal, is apparently funded by ExxonMobil."
You don't offer proof, not that that matters, it's the facts that matter and the facts presented by Monckton can't be rebutted. You raise the question of funding. Who funds the billions of dollars spent on climate research skewed to catastrophic warmism? - well let me tell you, it's you, if you are a taxpayer, and the "rent seekers" are more than happy to grab your dough.
I am not impressed by the nimby argument. Power generators have to go somewhere, and most of those whingers are only complainig because the profit on their property investment will be reduced, but not wiped out. Maybe their property values will drop to a level where local people will once again be able to live in the village where they were born.
the yummy mummy lecturing others about being green despite being a greedy selfish wasteful sanctimonious spoilt hypocrite;
the scam of ripping people off by charging them for plastic bags in supermarkets;
the lie that buying 'green' will save the planet - usually believed in by wasteful people whose belief in consumer society and waste knows no bounds; the lack of awareness that climate change has always been happening because the climate is never fixed;
the deliberate lack of focus on the real issue - overpopulation - and lack of action (when will we start taxing those with children more for their utter selfishness and greed?).
Still, maybe it's better if humanity becomes exctinct anyway, so breed away people!
I agree that population growth needs to be - gently, by encouragement and not by force - halted, but it seems, from this comment and those you have made in other threads, that your logic is not that it needs to be done, but that you simply hate people in general and would like them all to die! You particularly hate parents with children, yet you must have been a child yourself once, and probably had parents. Do you perhaps have some unresolved issues going on that would be more appropriately addressed with a therapist than by attempting to derail constructive discussion by people who, quite understandably and naturally, wish to plan for a secure future?