"The cross-party green dogma that has been so costly was imposed on taxpayers without a vote. The Tories should row back on it now"
Telegraph: 14th March 2025: Charles Moore pens a piece arguing that there are now three parties contesting for the Right
"...We live with the consequences. These include the highest energy prices in the developed world, the decline and sometimes collapse of our remaining heavy industries (eg, aluminium), the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery, a nervous breakdown in the car market, heat pumps that don’t work, a shareholder revolt against green BP, risk to continuous electricity supply and a sentence of death upon our remaining fossil fuel extraction, mainly North Sea oil and gas. Mr Miliband – for it is, again, he – is trying to build 5-6,000 pylons by 2030 to facilitate the march of progress by wind power.
Mrs Badenoch has always been sceptical about wilder green claims, and now the mood among both voters and the party is with her, so I would be amazed if the Conservatives do not quite soon come out against the current date and stages towards net zero...
...The unaccountable Climate Change Committee created by the 2008 Act is no longer, I am glad to say, the force it was...but you can be sure that almost 100 per cent of the public-sector/professorial classes paid to have opinions on the matter will denounce the Tories with “risking the future of the planet”.
The best answer is not to contest “the science”, nor deny the existence of climate change, but to weigh the costs of current policy against the benefits. The first are extremely high, the second, speculative...
...Our incredibly expensive effort to prevent climate change – which Britain, being responsible for only 1 per cent of global emissions, cannot materially affect – would be better replaced by spending, probably lower and slower, on the necessary adaptations required by global warming, in which free enterprise can lead..."