Bishop Hill Cameron's ruddy duck
May 11, 2015 Climate: Parliament Conservatives So David Cameron won himself a majority and the chance to return some sanity to the UK's energy policy after the disastrous tenures of Ed Davey and, before him, Ed Milliband. All it was going to take was the gumption to face down the green blob and put the consumer interest ahead of the vested interest.
Unfortunately, Mr Cameron may well have ducked this particular challenge, as it has now emerged that the DECC portfolio is being handed to Amber Rudd, formerly a junior minister in the department, who is seen as a green friendly appointment. In an interview last year she had this to say:
The main purpose for me [here] is to get up to speed with the relationships and the issues to do with delivering one of the most important things we're ever going to do, which is limiting global warming to under 2°C.
I don't think you could get a cigarette paper between me and Labour on our commitment to getting a deal in Paris.
Lucky old vested interests.
Bishop Hill
Interestingly, the Culture portfolio has gone to John Whittingdale, a man who has described the BBC licence fee as "worse than the poll tax". Fair to say though, that with a wafer thin majority, the chances of Cameron getting a bill to abolish the licence fee are close to zero.
Bishop Hill
Rudd is apparently pro-shale gas too. Is it paying lip-service to greenery on the one hand and going hell for leather for gas on the other? It doesn't seem very sensible if so, given that the subsidies that go with the greenery make burning gas unprofitable.
Reader Comments (58)
It could have been worse, version 2: it could have been Caroline Flint.
Telegraph says;
Andrea Leadsom will become Minister of State at Department for Energy and Climate Change.
Ex Treasury.
My beloved spouse has been environmentally active for over 30 years; she practically foams at the mouth over many environmental issues.
She also maintains that the mainstream environmental groups in the US are completely wrong-headed on fracking and nuclear power. Her position is that the negative impacts of fracking and of nuclear power (even assuming totally unrealistic worse-than-worst-case scenarios) are SO much better than the problems associated with coal that any responsible environmentalist should be demonstrating IN FAVOR of MORE FRACKING and MORE NUCLEAR POWER!
It must be that engineering education, or something. Minor stuff like considering how to do the best job reasonably possible within the constraints imposed by not only by available resources (time, money, technology, etc.) but also by external reality (solutions powered by Unicorn Farts need not apply).
“Green Amber Rudd”.
Very Gudd, you would be a New Zulander.
Shieldsman
Elsewhere I've been beating my head against the we know that wind is unreliable but it is always blowing somewhere and we can use other sources when it isn't so it must be good to have wind turbines. This seems to be a commonly held belief. No amount of evidence that
1 The wind doesn't always blow across all of Northern Europe
2 Once a Gas Power Station becomes uneconomic electricity generators will switch it off permanently
3 Permanently means forever.
4 When electricity is switched off nothing in their house will work apart from candles and an open fire burning solid wood furniture
The only way this group, probably the majority of people and including Amber Rudd, will be convinced that wind generated electricity is a big mistake is when the lights go out as they did during the Three Day Week.
Amber? That's between red and green isn't it?
What irony...
I think Ms Rudd should be given Transmission planning: wind and solar to read and then given a test to see if she has understood it all.
Im pretty sure that people who voted for the Tories were not voting for a green energy minister yet in todays muddled up world that is what the majority get