Terwijl Donald Trump druk bezig is volbloed klimaatsceptici te plaatsen op sleutelposten in zijn team om het klimaatbeleid van president Obama te ontmantelen, gaan er ook in het Verenigd Koninkrijk stemmen op om het klimaatbeleid te herzien.

Opvallend was daarbij een artikel van de hand van Lord Donoughue (‘Labour’) in ‘Politics Home’ onder de titel: ‘Labour Must Ditch Its Climate Change Obsession’.

Aangezien de kosten van het klimaatbeleid vooral terecht komen op de schouders van lagere inkomenscategorieën – hetgeen er door politici nooit wordt bijverteld, als ze het al weten – waarschuwt Donoughue voor een verhuizing van kiezers van ‘Labour’ naar UKIP.

Ik pik enkele krenten uit zijn artikel.

The cost of tackling climate change is falling most heavily on Britain’s working families. If Labour does not speak out it is UKIP who will benefit, writes former minister Lord Donoughue.

In 2008, I was one of the many members of both houses who unquestioningly voted for Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act, with its legal commitments to rapidly decarbonise the British economy. The measure was not properly costed (now forecast at upwards of £360bn by 2050). I had not studied the Bill. This seemed a noble, if eye-wateringly ambitious, project: to ‘save the planet’. Who could object to that?

Ik blijf mij verbazen dat intelligente, goed-opgeleide en integere politici zich en masse hebben laten meeslepen door de klimaathysterie. Het was (en is) een ernstig geval van collectieve verstandsverbijstering. (Een kolfje naar de hand van sociaal-psychologen, zou men denken.) Maar sommigen begonnen zich –  zij het te laat – in de materie te verdiepen. Dat hadden ze eerder moeten doen.

I decided to study climate change. The more I explored it, the more I began to question what was being claimed by the evangelical climate change movement, and especially how the Labour party was responding. I was also intrigued by the growth of the ‘save the planet’ movement, in a period when Marxism and Christianity were falling further into discredit.

People on the liberal left of politics often now lacked a motivating belief. Climate change offered to fill that faith void.

Lord Lawson (‘Tory’) heeft dat al vele jaren geleden gesignaleerd. Waarom duurde het zo lang voordat Lord Donoughue tot dezelfde conclusie kwam?

It was an easy political ‘good’, providing policy objectives linked to fashionable green environmentalism around which ‘well intentioned’ people, reading the Guardian and listening to the BBC, can unite.

It also appealed to what is now helpfully termed ‘virtue signalling’, whereby declared support for some good cause by the well intentioned is a clear signal of moral righteousness, even superiority. The trouble is, as Anthony Crosland once said, “good intentions often lead to bad policies”.

My initial conclusions are simple: that the climate is indeed changing – it always has; that the planet is in an upward warming cycle – as it has been several times, before cooling again; and that carbon emissions do have a relationship with global warming – though the degree of this sensitivity has not been conclusively established. So I am certainly not a ‘denier’, like some nasty neo-Nazi denying the clearly proven Holocaust.

Daar is die nare kwalificatie ‘denier’ weer!

But those are not the real questions which should concern policymakers. They are whether the globe is warming at an unprecedented rate, which will accelerate and seriously damage our planet. And whether carbon emissions, if responsible, can be controlled by political action to limit or reverse those alleged new trends.

Voorts stelt hij vast dat de voorspellingen/projecties van de klimaatarmisten geen van alle zijn uitgekomen.

Further influencing me in this debate has been the aggressive and ad hominem style shown by many climate change arguers. Anyone questioning their case on factual or financial grounds risks abuse. Being radical Labour (63 years’ membership), I resist bullying orthodoxies.

I also ask who pays for this expensive policy of precipitately decarbonising our energy economy – and is it working? The current programme is paid for disproportionately by our poorer working people through their inflated energy bills. These green taxes are punitively regressive. 47% of the recent large increase in domestic energy costs is due to green taxes – and those levies are scheduled to rocket by 2020. …

Labour needs to reposition on climate change. It should not ignore it; if evidence shows dangerous warming developing, we should make proportionate responses. We have time for that. But the ‘insurance’ case is not convincing. The price currently being imposed is not justified by the evidential risk. …

We should retreat from the punitive 2008 legal emissions targets and accept that an energy efficient economy is crucial to the wellbeing of the British people. The costs of sensible climate adaption should rest on progressive direct taxation.

Labour should make a realistic appraisal of the climate situation and get back in touch with its natural support among working people.

Aldus Lord Donoughue.

Lees verder hier.

We moeten dankbaar zijn voor het advies van elderly statesmen. Zij hebben op hun hoge leeftijd niets te winnen of te verliezen en hoeven geen rekening te houden met actuele politieke gevoeligheden. Zij hebben bovendien geen verborgen politieke agenda. Bij hen telt alleen de waarheid.

Tot op heden hebben we zulke geluiden helaas nog niet van Nederlandse elderly statesmen mogen horen. Maar misschien zijn die er wel en verschijnen ze niet, omdat de mainstream media in ons land weigeren om ook maar iets te publiceren dat afbreuk zou kunnen doen aan de klimaathype, omdat dat niet politiek correct is. Ik blijf nochtans hopen.

Voor mijn eerdere bijdragen over klimaat en aanverwante zaken zie hierhier, hier, hier en hier.