Subscribe to this blog's feedThe government is never slow to claim how serious the administration is about tackling climate change. Well, ministers certainly talk the talk. What’s not so clear is whether they are walking the walk. Do all the promises about leadership add up to a hill of beans?
Disconnector noted that Hillary Benn himself was a little hesitant when challenged on the issue in the Commons last week.
Geoffrey Barker, a prominent Tory backbencher, claimed the global leadership that the British government once exerted abroad was “being undermined by the slow rate of genuine change and economic transformation at home”.
Barker asked Benn if he could “list any low carbon sectors or renewable technologies where the UK is now leading the world – not in their discovery or research, but in their commercialisation and market share”.
Benn responded by saying the government had just given the go-ahead “to what will be the world’s largest offshore windfarm, the London Array”. This news was greeted with some parliamentary derision. MPs are well aware that it is by no means certain that the full London Array will be developed. Offshore wind development at present is not a comfortable place to be.
Benn insisted: “Well, we are getting on with it. When it is completed it will generate enough electricity to power one in four homes in greater London. That is what I call world leadership.”
He mentioned some other examples. “We are undertaking a feasibility study of the Severn barrage… renewable electricity is set to increase threefold between now and 2015… and Ernst & Young, which does a renewable energy attractiveness survey, now ranks the UK equal second in the world behind the United States… I would call that leadership.”
Hmm. Disconnector thinks the man doth protest too much.
