Dither and delay is dangerous in the fight against climate change - Andy Brown

At its silliest this involves simply denying that anything humans could do would have an impact on the climate of the entire planet. The evidence that this is wrong is incredibly straightforward. Before the industrial revolution there were around 230 parts per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. It has now reached 427 parts and is still rising fast.

Repeatable entirely dependable scientific tests prove that CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere and much of this then transfers to the ocean. All that extra energy then powers storms.

Instead of looking at that evidence and thinking about the consequences there are people who prefer to ignore the science and choose to believe some very bizarre theories. There is even a conspiracy theory circulating on Twitter that the US Democrats deliberately created the latest hurricane in the hope it would win them the election. To state the bleeding obvious, no technology that would enable them to do this exists.

The next daft theory is that the climate has always changed so we really shouldn’t worry too much. It is true that over geological time the planet’s climate has gone through enormous changes. It is not true that human civilisation has thrived during major climatic change. Relatively minor climatic changes ended several prehistoric civilisations.

Look back far enough and it is possible to find evidence of the world being almost entirely covered in ice. When that happened over half the life forms on this planet died out. There have also been eras when the temperature was much higher than it is today. So were the sea levels. No sensible person would wish to risk a similar experience.

When it comes to the more minor changes that have taken place during human evolution there is clear evidence that whenever uncontrollable events like volcanic eruptions have destabilised the climate it has destroyed crops, hit economic stability and triggered major political problems for the civilisations that were in the firing line. If we can control events and avoid anything similar it is wise to do so.

Fortunately, most people in Britain take the evidence from scientists a lot more seriously than those sounding off on social media without any reliable scientific research to back up their claims that nothing unusual or risky is happening. Unfortunately, the political consensus seems to be that it would be nice to do something, but we can’t afford to do much.

Such dither and delay is a very dangerous strategy when we are facing challenges to our security. All too often politicians have talked a good game and made commitments that sound impressive but have done little or made poor choices about how to allocate scarce resources.

Decisions are being made that involve squandering truly alarming amounts of money on unreliable and expensive technology. One of these is carbon capture. The government has just committed to spend £22bn on installing this in power plants in the hope that it will enable us to carry on using gas. At the same time it has scaled back plans to help residents to insulate homes and install solar panels.

This year the roof of my house has already generated over 4,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. It only takes 1,000 homes to provide 4 million kwh. There are millions of roofs on schools, warehouses, hospitals and homes that could bring down energy costs whilst reducing carbon emissions.

Batteries are well capable of being charged up at night using wind power that currently goes to waste so power can be fed back into the grid when it is at peak use. We could manage with many fewer power stations if we could even out energy use. That £22bn on carbon capture could have been used more intelligently to produce quicker and more reliable results.

As could the truly alarming quantities of cash we are pouring into the sink of nuclear power. According to the Financial Times the eventual cost of Hinkley Point C is likely to be £46bn. Sizewell is currently planned to cost £20bn. Costs which could easily spiral.

Governments tend to prefer large vanity projects to small scale ones and are subject to constant lobbying pressure from those who want big contracts. They would be much wiser to focus on helping us to cut consumption than to increase production.

Imagine where we would be if that £88bn of misplaced spending had been focused on reducing peak demand rather than increasing future production at horrifically high market prices?

The problem isn’t that there is a shortage of money. It is that there is a shortage of vision. That is a very costly thing to get wrong.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.