Government guilty of greenwash tosh

blackmorevaleMarch 31, 20231 Comment0

Risky business, listening to the latest Chancellor’s Budget speech while having a drink. There were a couple of occasions when my radio nearly got spattered with coffee. Like when the Chancellor attempted to take the credit for 90% of the UK’s solar power having been installed in the last 13 years, boasting that ‘it’s this Government who fix the roof while the sun is shining’ to loud cheers from the Tory backbenches. Total greenwash tosh, as can be seen when we look at what they’ve actually done.
Their actions include giving £20 billion more in support since 2015 to fossil fuel producers than those of renewables. Pulling the rug out from under the expanding domestic solar panel installation industry just as it was really taking off. Trashing the zero-carbon house building regulations in 2015 before they could come into effect. Blocking onshore wind projects. Failing to reduce the UK’s energy demand by, for example, insulating our notoriously leaky housing stock, which is the oldest in Europe with 38% of homes dating from before 1946. Announcing more than 100 new oil and gas licences. Approving the opening of a new coal mine in Cumbria, claiming that the coal will be used by the UK’s steel industry when, in fact, it’s too high in sulphur and 90% of it will have to be exported. Failing to properly tax the massive record windfall profits of energy companies like Shell and BP. The list goes on and on, and could hardly be less like ‘fixing the roof’.
The Government tries to blame the present cost of energy on the Ukraine war, and the energy minister Graham Stuart has even tried to blame soaring household bills on the last Labour government. In reality the problem is 13 years of Tory government failure to insulate the UK from our disastrous dependency on fossil fuel.
In 2000 North Sea gas provided 98% of our gas supply, so we were protected from rising world price shocks. However, national production has since tumbled by over two-thirds, and imports have risen to meet our demand, so we are now extremely vulnerable to spikes in gas prices.
In case anyone is thinking that just means we need to increase our production of fossil gas, the fact is, we have a climate crisis spiralling out of control, and continuing to kick the can down the road is simply making it ever more difficult to do something about it.
To genuinely ‘fix the roof’ the Government needs to act urgently and make it a top priority to reduce our dependency on fossil gas. It’s a huge task, but constantly putting it off is simply adding to the problem. We need action, not greenwash.

One Comment

Malcolm Paul March 31, 2023 at 8:12 pm Reply

I struggle with Mr Hughins’ diatribe. He is a typical left wing buffoon. Full of wind with no explanation of what the Green Party would do. Although I guess because they will never get into power, it doesn’t matter that, like Labour, they have no constructive or sensible policy to worry about.