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Oh no! Not Gummer! What have we come to?

Politics is at its worst when all the political parties start agreeing like this.

What?! Is it really so awful that our politicians are agreeing about the greatest threat our world faces?

How ridiculous to compare this to the ERM! Yes the ERM turned out to be bad and yes the leadership of the major parties supported it. But it is quite a leap to extrapolate from this that anything which unites the parties must be bad! Does Mr Montgomery believe that if all major parties agreed with him about the "more pressing questions of international justice or nuclear proliferation" then politics would be at its worst?!

The days of opposition for opposition's sake are over. Where there is a common interest the parties should come together. We all have a common interest in the future of our planet, don't we?

PS Since you are standing against a consensus view in the world's scientific community, would you mind telling me where you got your science degree Mr Montgomery?!

It was Diane Abbott who said it.

Wait, this is an even better response.

"PS Since you are standing against a consensus view in the world's scientific community, would you mind telling me where you got your science degree Mr Montgomery?!"

Tim never said anything about disputing the "consensus". He merely spoke out about the methods of tackling it. Classic knee-jerk reaction from an eco-alarmist. Anyone who dares to dispute the need for sweeping socialism in the face of global warming is a "climate change denier".

I'm slightly disappointed by conservativehome's recent change of emphasis against the green agenda. Previously, as I recall, this had been endorsed as a legitimate issue in the 'politics of and'.

I would point the conservativehome team and other sceptics towards Michael Heseltine's excellent response to Peter Hitchens on Question Time last week. He argued that going green was a win-win situation - if the scientists are right, then we end up saving the planet in the most extreme situation; if the scentists are wrong, but we have still converted in a large degree to renewable energies, it will mean our resources of coal/oil/gas will last us a lot longer in the future, and we will be less dependent on importing non-renewable energies from Russia and the Middle East.

Above all, I would have thought the conservativehome team would very much welcome higher green taxes in return for reduced taxes on families and business. If such a rebalancing were to occur, and if as a result of this people's behaviour did change to become more green, we would see the tax burden decrease over time to a significant extent. This can surely only be a good thing.

"Is it really so awful that our politicians are agreeing about the greatest threat our world faces"

It's that kind of hyperbole that fuels scepticism towards environmentalists.

I am sure that CH would be entirely in favour of green taxes from Mr. Brown if it was felt that said Brown would pay genuine attention to the green issues, and not just hand whatever is involved over to a crony who would be paid handsomely from the taxpot, while he - Brown pocketed all the extra green taxes. I somehow can't see it happening any other way!

1) It could theoretically, but it also has the capacity to cause great harm if the government balls it up. And we know it is well within their capacity to do so. Proper cost-benefit must be considered. I recommend the works of Tim Worstall.

2) No mention of nuclear?

BTW, for a laugh on a Tory website, the Stern report used the most extreme economic scenario as the basis for their assumptions. This one has limited spread of technology, limited globalisation, limited free trade, basically everything Greenpeace and Michael Meacher want.

The competing scenario, A1, has wide ranging global interaction and free trade, compete with the spreading of technology and rapid globalisation. The result is a far quicker spread of wealth (of course by no means uniform) and quicker arresting of population growth. Energy productivity increases such that we require less than a third of the energy we consume now per unit of GDP. That's the capitalist model.

Since Stern is a bit of socialist at heart it might be understandable he would use the socialist model. However, if we use the capitalist model, things don't look so dire.

The lesson? Dave is right after all. Vote blue, go green. And the bluer, the better the environment will be in the long term.

BTW, my post @ 1632 was a response to Henry Cook @ 1602.

"It's that kind of hyperbole that fuels scepticism towards environmentalists."

I think you're right. The louder they scream, the more shrill they sound, the less credible they are. I've noticed whenever a politician et al wants to talk about global warming, they always start by, drone-like, reiterating the urgency of the threat. It seems as though they need to keep saying it in order to believe it themselves.

Keeping more subtle is better. Look at El Gordo, he kept quiet about tax increases and now we are one of the most heavily taxed nations in Europe. And people are worried Dave might change that. I'll give some credit to El Gordo there for knowing how to work an electorate.

"Does Mr Montgomery believe that if all major parties agreed with him about the "more pressing questions of international justice or nuclear proliferation" then politics would be at its worst?!"

Not if that consensus had been reached reasonably, changetowin, but as Nigel Lawson has argued - the climate change herdlike behaviour is anything but reasonable.

I support environmental action from a conservative perspective. As John Gummer said on TWIW, Conservatives have a proud record with such legislation as the Clean Air Act. Where we can be sure we can protect scarce natural habitats we should be in the vanguard of doing so. My worry is that we are gambling too much on trying to combat climate change when the whole Kyoto process should have taught us that there is not the international will (even amongst developed nations) to make first step sacrifices that, even if made in full, would have made negligible difference to global warming.

There is a tendency amongst politicians to be ever so heart-on-sleeves bold and sincere about long-term issues like climate change but duck immediate problems like N Korea and Iran getting nuclear weapons.

I really don't like the tone of several recent editorials which seem to sneer at those who believe in trying to combat climate change. Peter Hitchens adopted a similar peremptory tone on this weeks Question Time and questioned the sanity of the entire scientific world who disagree with Lomborg. The vast majority in the audience ended up laughing at him.

Those laughing in the audience were like a cult in the grip of a new religion. Let us be thankful for those offering some scepticism - Hitchens and Lawson were doing good work.

"Peter Hitchens adopted a similar peremptory tone on this weeks Question Time and questioned the sanity of the entire scientific world who disagree with Lomborg. "

Lomborg believe in global warming. He just doesn't believe that socialism is the way to deal with it (as I pointed out, socialism is going to make it worse). For that, he is vilified.

The Editor is right about consensus. The worst example in recent stance being the party's unthinking stance on iraq under IDS.

We have never recovered from that terrible legacy. See Quentin Davies' comments. The country has suffered most as a result.

Anything that politicians rush to agree on should be viewed with scepticism if it leads to a bidding war. The facts may be indesputable by most (eg. 9/11 happened, it was an Al Qaeda operation) but the actions proposed need to be examined (invade Afghanistan? I agreed, intoduce unlimited detention without trial? I disagree).
Mr Monbiot suggested 10 things to do imediately in the Guardian - Agree/Disagree?:
1 Target greater than 3% p.a cut in emissions
2 Annual Carbon allowance per citizen by Jan 2009
3 Building regs: a) by June 2007 all building extensions over £3k to be high efficiency b)by Jan 2008 all leasesed building brought up to high efficiency standard c) 2012 all new buildings to be passivhaus standard - no heating.
4 Ban the sale of incandescent lightbulbs, patio heaters, garden floodlights and other wasteful and unnecessary technologies by Nov 2007
5 Stop Trident replacement and invest in new hydrogen pipeines and very large offshore windfarms to replace gas supply & increase green electicity - start 2007 end 2018.
6 National coach network on reserved motorway lanes based at edge city stations to replace inter city car journeys. 2008 to 2020
7 Electric car battery supply at all filling stations by law (arrive exchange batteries, leave) by 2011
8 Abandon the road-building and road-widening programme immediately
9 Freeze and then reduce UK airport capacity - reduce landing slots by 90% by 2030
10 closure of all out-of-town superstores, and their replacement with a warehouse and delivery system - by 2012

See that EU is starting on number 4 already. At a guess I'd say that No 3 would destroy the rental housing market, bankcrupt most small builders as extensions wouldn't be built, put a new build home beyond the dreams of most . No 8 would immediately cause a huge rise in unemployment, bankruptcy for many construction companies and probably a a recession. No 10 would immediately destroy the balance sheets of Tesco, Sainsbury, Kingfisher etc as their asset values would be made worthless - as no 3 had wiped out housebuilding for a generation the land would have no value.

Economies can't take huge shocks - successful green initiatives (California's car emission law, removal of leaded petrol) were phased and industry challenged to find technological solutions. It shouldn't be about "being greener" but about the effective levers to support change

Don't believe all the figures either without challenge - the "air travel will account for x% of all CO2 by 2050" assumes all the other reductions have happened - whereas CO2 emissions have been rising recently having fallen through the 90's as industry was exported to China.

There is of course one increasingly mainstream party that opposes the consensus you mention.
It is sadto report that he only party that supports the line taken by Nigel Lawson, though of course it got its point in before the former Chancellor, and the interests of both rational science and British industry is the UK Independence Party.
So it seems their is still some hope out there.

"Mr Monbiot suggested 10 things to do imediately in the Guardian - Agree/Disagree?:"

Monbiot is an, authoritarian, elitist crackpot. He's rich. Why should he worry if the country is driven to bankruptcy? He'll be able to survive and afford the luxuries he so blithely denies to others.

Tim's comment about agreeing being bad is a good point. If everyones agreeing and theres a serious flaw in the logic, then the proposed action is bad without anyone noticing. Disagreement can be a very good thing in ensuring that all avenues are looked at.

Monbiot the Moron. Christ what a bunch of terrible ideas... On point 1, Monbiot doesnt recognise the fact that we produce just 2% of the worlds carbon emissions, so our changes will make a negligible difference. We could literally produce not one microgram of carbon emissions and it wont matter because theres another 98 per cent to account for.

Is Monbiot even a conservative? A lot of those ideas are state intervention of the worst kind. I have a terrible feeling that Monbiots ten ideas might get a mention on Wednesday...you know itll hurt bad.

James

Don't think Monbiot Jnr claims to be conservative. What's scary is that this is the type of stuff that we are going to hear. Good article on BBCi (!)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6115644.stm

"Climate change is a reality, and science confirms that human activities are heavily implicated in this change. But over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed in this country - the phenomenon of "catastrophic" climate change. It seems that mere "climate change" was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be "catastrophic" to be worthy of attention."

The rest is a good counter balance from a climate change believer ending

"I believe climate change is real, must be faced and action taken. But the discourse of catastrophe is in danger of tipping society onto a negative, depressive and reactionary trajectory."

Mr Cameron has shown great courage in going to see the glaciers melt.

He has seen the 100% proof that man made co2 is causing this and there realises the people have to accept tough decisons, including green taxes and restrictions on their lifestyles. I am glad Mr Cameron has sparked the the LAbour part and the Lib Dems into implementing these vital policies for our planet.

Only together as one big European and then world family can the be tackled. The days of public accountability and national democracy is at an end!

"...The biggest change in any party's views, or any party of any kind, that we have ever had. We [Conservatives] are going to show people that you only deal with climate change by a very major shift in the whole system of taxation away from taxes on families and on businesses towards replacement taxes on polluters."

Yippee! We are going to be taxed less. Would you just believe it. I cant wait for the new cut in taxes on the family; so bring on climate change. If business is taxed more so what. Serve those damned capitalised right. They would n't dare increase their prices would they, or would they, or would they rather go out of business. Anyway it would not affect us cos we could still get cheap gear from China and India. They signed up to Kyoto.

Quote from Green Party MEP complaining about the world's largest container ship arriving at Felixstowe loaded with goodies like iPods for Christmas (I'd have thought one large ship much "greener" than air frieight or inefficient small ships but...)

""We must manage international trade in a way which is socially and environmentally sustainable, working towards global agreement on a raft of measures such as taxation on fuel and import tariffs designed to support home-grown businesses."

So global trade must go - no iPods for you lot! back to home industries, oh sorry, we can't do that we'd have to start iron & coal mining again and our CO2 would go up, oh well perhaps we can keep recycling what we've got already while we plough up ...what am I thinking! plough means tractors = CO2, even oxen = methane ....while we gather the fruit & nuts nature has provided.

I wonder, has this MEP benefited from free markets at all? I would guess he has and that he would never wish to be or appear to be hypocritical... Tariffs?! I thought this was the 21st century, not the 19th?

James

Its OK the 19th Century is alive and well - out in the free trade world China keeps buying up mining & oil companies across Asia & Africa - buys raw materials from developing world, sells back cheap manufactured goods and the numbers of Chinese colonising, sorry, helping to run the mines, factories and even retail shops increase. While China repeats the British industrialisation & empire building - it'll be a Chinese Free Trade area not an empire obvously - the EU will achieve its carbon reduction targets as population decreases and having build trade barriers it finds itself frozen out from the new economic order (much as China did in the 19th).

Those that are now proclaiming climate change concensus are drawn fom the same elite intellectual pool who took and keep us in the EU,destroyed selective education,imposed the multi-cultural nightmare and even now would seek to take us into the Euro.
A poxy windmill on all of their houses!

Why do we allow Michael Mcgough on our fine website. He is a UKIP troll, who clearly doesn't understand modern consensus politics. He should be banned so that his mad ravings aren't mistaken for Conservative ones.

I think that if we can be more energy inefficient this has to be good regardless of our views on the causes of the slight global warming we are seeing at present. Clearly we all want to see a cleaner, less polluted planet. That said I share some of the concerns the Editor expresses. The impact the UK can make on cutting CO2 emissions is extremely marginal at best BUT maybe if we think afresh we could comer up with other ways of benefitting the planet. In that sense I do feel that there are some who are becoming too hysterical about green issues. Socialists are terrible at solving green issues, Russia was the worst polluter whereas capitalist countries were excellent at coming up with more efficient technologies. Conservatives actually offer the best chance of real sensible green ideas so long as we use our philosophy creatively and don't succumb to negative anti-business state intereference models.

Matt

The end is nigh!!!!!!!
Like all religions, climate change has the same premise. Our political masters are just reinventing the wheel and throwing taxation in for good measure.
And dear editor as you well know, Nigel Farage has come out on the sceptical side of this issue.

Malcolm: "I really don't like the tone of several recent editorials which seem to sneer at those who believe in trying to combat climate change."

I think that's an unfair charge, Malcolm, and it does nothing to deal with the questions I keep raising but to which I receive no (persuasive) answers:

1. Why do we believe that developing nations will make sacrifices for the environment when many developed nations have failed to make the modest sacrifices required by Kyoto?

2. What happens to the UK economy - burdened by higher levels of green taxation - when other competitors economies choose not to levy them on their industries?

3. Would human welfare - particularly for the world's poorest people - be advanced more by attempting to combat climate change or by using scarce resources to tackle disease and hunger etc?

4. If climate change is already in advanced form (either through natural or human action) shouldn't we investing in adaptation rather than avoidance?

5. Why is the whole political class devoting so much attention to climate change and so little attention to the much more immediate challenge of nuclear proliferation?

I hate to say it but climate change is just an end of the world domesday scenario based on poor science and puffed up by the left wing PR and lobby experts of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace who see this as another way to ensure that socialism prevails. Any way you can knock capitalism and prosperity these Luddites will use it.
What has our Party come to when we follow such failures as these hug a tree idiots.

Slaughter all the cows, sheep and goats. That will cut down on emissions.

Let the environmentalists slog it out with the animal rights loonies.

"I hate to say it but climate change is just an end of the world domesday scenario based on poor science and puffed up by the left wing PR and lobby experts of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace who see this as another way to ensure that socialism prevails. Any way you can knock capitalism and prosperity these Luddites will use it."

That doesn't seem very logical. According to the IPCC economic scenarios, the more socialistic ones (less globalisation, elss free trade, less market etc) lead to a much higher population growth rate and slower dissemination of technology resulting in much higher emissions and hence more allegedly damaging climate change.

The more neo-liberal ones (rapid globalisation, free trade, market based solutions to problems etc) lead to a more comfortable population peak and a massive increase in energy productivity such that we would spend just over a quarter of the energy per unit of GDP than we do today by the end of the century.

Clearly, capitalism will in the long term be better for the environment according to these scenarios (and evidenced by the complete disregard for the environment exhibited by the communist powers when compared to the evil capitalist ones) so why would it make sense to enforce dirty old socialism on us?

Oh wait! You were talking about Greenpeace. Logic doesn't apply. Please forgive me.

The "man-made climate change" lobby have managed to get bad conclusions from falsified data raised to the status of a religion. We would all do well to read Christopher Moncktons' article (first part in yesterdays Sunday Telegraph - second part next weekend).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/05/nosplit/nwarm05.xml

The real and pressing problem is actually energy sufficiency - safeguarding the countries energy supply, and developing new technologies for the future are what's really needed.

Blimey - I had to read all the way down to the end of this before someone mentioned Monckton's blindingly commonsense Telegraph article. Climate change happens. In both directions. Nothing the UK does, short of detonating a sizeable nuclear device, makes a bit of difference to the world's climate. The 'scientific consensus' is that of a (large) cabal of academics with a vested interest in... ta-da! ... green politics. Politicans dare not face them down because the population have already swallowed the new 'founding myth', whole. Sigh.

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