Bill Carmichael: Burning money on green folly

The initial cost of this bout of self-flagellation is a mere £13.4bn a year – one per cent of our GDP or £500 for every household in the country. But in the longer term this figure will be dwarfed by the costs of damage to industry, unemployment and soaring energy bills. And the reasons we are voluntarily making ourselves destitute? To save the planet, of course.

The Government announced that the UK is now committed to a swingeing 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gasses by 2025 – the highest target for emissions cuts of any country in the world.

To put this into some kind of perspective, the US, the world’s richest country and a far bigger polluter than the UK, is aiming for a 17 per cent cut. China, the world’s biggest polluter, is not planning any cuts at all and will massively increase emissions in a way that will render the UK’s comparatively puny cuts entirely futile.

The European Union meanwhile, has emphatically ruled out any reductions above the current 20 per cent target. Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger declared that a 25 per cent cut would lead to the “de-industrialisation” of Europe.

Makes you wonder doesn’t it; if a 25 per cent cut would destroy an industrial powerhouse like Germany, what will a 50 per cent cut do to a struggling economy like Britain’s?

Still there must be an upside mustn’t there? All this sacrifice and suffering – mainly borne let’s not forget by the very poorest in society – should produce some discernable benefit?

The question is never asked, because we already know the answer. The UK’s cuts will make absolutely no difference to global warming at all.

The new coal-fired power station being opened every week in China – with India not far behind – will see to that. This is gesture politics at its very worst – a destructive but ultimately pointless sacrifice.

What we do know is that green taxes and increased energy bills hit the poorest hardest. And firms will throw people out of work in the UK as they relocate to less masochistic countries such as the US, China or mainland Europe. We are heading for a future where pensioners will freeze to death for want of proper heating – all so smug, self-righteous, well heeled environmentalists can pat themselves on the back.

Utterly disgusting and a betrayal of the poor.

Novel idea

Research released this week suggests that teachers are giving up trying to make boys read long books because they can’t get past 100 pages. Educational psychologist Professor Colin Terrell suggested that the sports section of a tabloid newspaper may be more suitable for teaching boys to read than great literature.

I learned to read using my father’s newspaper, so I’ve a lot of sympathy with this view. It doesn’t much matter what youngsters read as long as they develop the habit. But it would be a pity to give up big books entirely. I well remember my first encounter with a “proper novel” – it was A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – and being completely bowled over by it. It would be a great shame if boys were denied the thrilling intensity that only a brilliantly written, long and complex narrative can offer. Yet Dickens, along with Shakespeare and Jane Austen, are the authors that boys apparently find particularly difficult.

Difficult perhaps – but sometimes the more effort you put into something, the more rewarding it is.

And that’s a good lesson to learn at any stage of life.