Yesterday, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee took evidence from Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, who has shown himself keen to use his position to promote his environmentalist ideology.
A review of the transcript shows Carney be a consummate politician, able to waffle at any length necessary in order to have to answer a question. I'm therefore going to paraphrase one particular exchange that I think is revealing.
Nigel Lawson: You have said that insurance companies are at risk of having their fossil fuel investments becoming stranded because carbon policies will eliminate demand. But the IEA say that demand for fossil fuels is going to go up. Explain.
Mark Carney: It is important for us to warn the insurance market. There might be a risk.
If you have a strong stomach for bureaucratic verbiage, do take a look at the original. Carney seems almost completely unable to defend his original comments, flannelling furiously about "risks" in the "tails". It seems that what he was telling the insurance industry had nothing to do with serious risks to their companies and everything to do with promoting an extreme environmentalist position.
Someone who is willing to play games with the markets in this way is not someone you'd want to have at the helm of the Bank of England I would say.