In a recent column, Paul Krugman bemoans
the consensus view among Republican politicians that we should do
nothing about climate change, and that many
of the Republican nominees for president actually deny the science.
He also complains about how the conventions of political journalism
mean that public perceptions about the science become
distorted as a result. He says that this situation - where parties on
the right deny the need to take action on climate change - is unique
to the US and Australia.
What about the UK? While everyone remembers Cameron promising to make
his 2010 government the ‘greenest ever’, three and a half years
later the Sun reported
him as ordering aides to "get rid of all the green crap"
from energy bills. Of course actions speak larger than words. The
Conservative’s hostility
to onshore wind farms is well known, and subsidies are due to be
phased
out soon. Subsidies for solar also face
severe cuts. The government has passed
legislation ‘to maximise economic recovery of UK oil’. A scheme
to encourage home owners to improve
energy efficiency is to end, the aim to make all new homes ‘zero
carbon’ is to be scrapped, the Green Investment Bank is to largely
sold off, tax breaks for buyers of ‘green cars’ ended.
Now all this might be understandable if the UK was well ahead in the
amount of power produced by renewables. In fact, among EU members,
only
3 have a smaller proportion. The government expects
its EU target of 15% by 2020 will be missed by a wide margin.
Does all this reflect climate change denial of the kind we see in the
US, with the only difference being that the Conservatives are acting
duplicity in still paying lip service to the aims of the Paris
summit? Duplicity may be understandable given Cameron’s 2010
‘greenest ever’ commitment. However the UK government have just
signed a deal for a Chinese state-controlled company to help build a
new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point. Ministers have undertaken
to guarantee for 35 years an index-linked price of £92.50 per
megawatt hour. That is more than twice the current market rate, and
it is also higher than for every renewable source except offshore
wind. Yet unlike renewables those subsidies will be paid by consumers when the
plant starts producing around 2025.
Put alongside virtually abandoning measures to encourage renewables,
and this seems more like economic incompetence than ideology. In a
classic piece of irony, a wind farm application near to Hinkley was
turned
down by the government. It is not as if the UK is currently awash
with energy capacity. Last month an unexpected surge in demand led
the national electricity grid to ask heavy users to reduce
consumption.
So it is difficult to tell whether this is about ideology masked with
duplicity, or politically driven economic incompetence. Ideology,
duplicity and incompetence: have I combined those words together
before?
