eat lead eco loons - the game's up - serious repositioning going on - Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown

Source: James Delingpole

'Climate Change': even Porritt knows the game's up

By James Delingpole
September 23rd, 2010

Eat lead, eco loons!

A mournful post from my old sparring partner the Hon Sir Jonathon Porritt. The badger-reared sustainability guru and population reduction enthusiast was eagerly following the speeches at the Lib Dem conference, taking notes – as you do – and was most disturbed to notice how little of the party leader’s keynote speech had anything to do with “Climate Change.” (H/T Bishop Hill)

I’ve just spent some time reading through Nick Clegg’s speech to his Party Conference.And I found myself asking whether this might be the first speech by a Party Leader in the 21st Century that doesn’t even mention climate change? Indeed, could it be the worst speech ever, from a sustainability point of view, from a Lib Dem Leader in modern times?I know it’s a bit geeky, but here are the relevant extracts from the speech:“We promised a re-balanced green economy. There will be a Green Investment Bank to channel money into renewable energy”.“Imagine how it will feel to visit home after home that our Green Deal has made warm and affordable to heat”. And, er that’s it

As Porritt goes on more or less to observe – though not so amusingly because he can’t write and has no sense of humour – this is the equivalent of a BNP party conference in which no one mentions immigration, or a Nazi rally in which everyone politely agrees not to discuss Lebensraum, the Jewish Question or the prospects of a Thousand Year Reich. Apart from the Greens, no party in British politics has ever been more obsessed with “green issues” than the Liberal Democrats. So for Nick Clegg to have dropped the matter like a hot potato is indicative of some serious repositioning going on in the Eton Grocer’s terrifyingly schizoid Coalition.

There is even talk – if you believe the Guardian – of Chris “Chicken Little” Huhne’s Department of Energy and Climate Change now being so ill-valued by the Coalition that it may have to be absorbed by the Treasury.

Climate change secretary Chris Huhne is fighting to defend his department’s funding and independence, fending off a suggestion that his civil servants should be moved to the Treasury to cut costs.

Huhne is having to resist the Treasury on numerous policy fronts. He has rejected the relocation idea, fearing his department’s civil servants would “go native” if they moved into offices in the Treasury.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) was created in 2008 by combining responsibilities which had been part of the previous business and environment departments. The move was praised at the time as an attempt to connect two areas of policy that had sometimes acted in competition.

But when all government departments were asked to model the effect of 40% cuts over the summer, officials at Decc told ministers that cuts of that level to its £3.2bn budget would make it unable to stand alone as a viable entity. At that time it was suggested it merge with the business department, but that was never formally suggested to the Treasury. Instead the Treasury renewed a push to get Decc relocated.

The suggestion has been severely opposed by both Green MP Caroline Lucas and some bloke from Greenpeace called John Sauven. Which in my book is equivalent to a double thumbs up from Siskel and Ebert.