A couple of years ago I did a green week event at the University of Strathclyde on which I was, as is normal at these kinds of things, the only attendee not fully signed up to the green agenda. My report of the event is here. The "environmental officer from business" mentioned in the report was from Ineos, the huge chemical company that operates the Grangemouth oil refinery. At the time I had held out vague hopes that the Ineos chap might be on my side, but he was just as green as the rest of the panel, if not quite so rabid about it.
I was reminded of this by the FT article (reproduced here), which reveals that Ineos is considering shutting down Grangemouth entirely:
Ineos, the chemicals group, is considering shutting down its plant in Grangemouth, Scotland, due to rising costs and the decline in production of gas from the North Sea. Its chairman singles out energy costs, which he says has been driven up by high environmental taxes on consumers.
I wonder if things might have turned out a bit differently if big business had stood up to environmentalists rather than being co-opted by them. The funds of the big companies in the UK flow almost exclusively to the greens, so it's hard to be very sympathetic to their managements.
(As an aside, wouldn't it be great if there was a new source of gas to replace the declining North Sea production? Maybe even one located right next door to Grangemouth.)