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Nigel Lawson writing in the Telegraph.
Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement has dealt a hammer blow to an elite consensus which has built up around the issue of climate change. That consensus has placed cutting carbon dioxide emissions above people’s jobs and protecting the environment.
With US industry already enjoying a substantial competitive advantage over European firms, this decision will make European climate policies all the more unsustainable. If Britain is to keep up with the rest of the world, it is essential that the next government rethinks energy policy to prioritise competitiveness and affordability.
The 2017 Conservative manifesto has promised to do just that, and sets a target for Britain to have the lowest energy prices in Europe. This is a striking change of tone compared with previous manifestos, but this objective will only be achieved through extensive reforms to existing policies, alongside the political will to fight powerful vested interests.
The next government will first need to acknowledge what has gone wrong. Britain’s obsession with unilateral decarbonisation has taken precedence over relieving fuel poverty and keeping prices competitive. It is inconceivable how political parties can reconcile being on the side of working people while at the same time driving up their cost of living. The Climate Change Act is set to cost the UK economy approximately £320 billion by 2030 – equivalent to funding the NHS in England for three years.
Existing energy policies that claim to be “environmental” are nothing of the sort. Bjorn Lomborg, the head of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, has estimated that even if every nation meets its pledges under the Paris climate change agreement, the total reduction in the planet’s temperature will only be 0.17C by 2100. With America’s exit, even this paltry figure may not be achieved.
By contrast, the bad environmental consequences of energy policies have been tangible and significant. Commitments to bioenergy are damaging biodiversity and have distorted international food markets. The rare earth metals used in wind turbines come from poorly regulated mines in China which leak toxic and radioactive waste into nearby lakes on an industrial scale, perfectly illustrating the vacuity of the “out of sight, out of mind” attitude of virtue-signalling “clean” energy advocates.
But the harmful consequences of low-carbon policies are harder to ignore when they are right on your doorstep, or even inside your home. Britain’s air pollution crisis is the result of misguided low-carbon policies that incentivised diesel cars. People have died because politicians couldn’t resist the desire to “save the planet”. Recent research also suggests that biomass power stations may not have lower CO2 emissions than coal and gas. What will it take for politicians to question the wisdom of spending hundreds of billions on failing policies instead of putting the needs of ordinary families first?
