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Climate sceptic Lord Ridley – Britain’s biggest carbon footprint? Updated for 2026

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Lord Ridley is a powerhouse of climate denial in Britain – and a leading contender for the title of Britain’s biggest individual carbon polluter.

The self-styled Rational Optimist is an advisor to Lord Lawson’s secretly funded charity, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), and acts as a one-man think tank to his brother-in-law, the sacked environment secretary Owen Paterson.

At the same time, the landed aristocrat will mine more than 10 million tonnes of coal from open cast mines scattered around his expansive Blagdon Estate in Northumberland during the next five years.

Miles King, a conservationist with almost 30 years of professional experience, has used publicly available information to estimate that the coal mined from Ridley’s estate will produce 28.6 million tonnes of CO2.

The government has estimated that the UK emitted a total of 570 million tonnes of CO2 or equivalent greenhouse gasses during 2013. This means Ridley’s mines will contribute an estimated 1% of the total annual emissions of a country of 60 million people.

Massive profit, in praise of coal

“I don’t know how much profit Ridley is making from his coal but it must be massive”, King writes on A New Nature Blog. “As the modern day King Coal, one might suggest Matt Ridley has an extremely large vested interest in stoking climate denial.”

Ridley declares an interest in coal when speaking in the House of Lords. He denies being a climate denier, and denies the charge of promoting the coal industry. He claims his arguments support gas rather than coal interests.

However, as King points out, Ridley has been known to defend coal. “It’s the fashion these days to vilify coal as the root of all environmental evil, but I think that’s mistaken”, Ridley writes on his own blog.

“Coal and the technologies it spawned made it possible to double human lifespan, end famine, provide electric light and spare forests for nature.

“Because we get coal out of the ground, we do not have to cut down forests; because we use petroleum we don’t have to kill whales for their oil; because we use gas to make fertilizer we don’t have to cultivate so much land to feed the world.

“This country can compete with China on the basis of either cheap labour or cheap energy. I know which I’d prefer.”

Matt Ridley was also the chairman of the Northern Rock bank from 2004 until its collapse in 2007, after which it was nationalised. In 2013 he was elected as hereditary peer in the House of Lords as a member of the Conservative Party.

Financial benefit unknown – estimated at £13m / year

King’s investigation into Ridley’s carbon footprint was inspired by reports launched by DeSmog UK just before the New Year where we claimed that the mines around the aristocrat’s estate would yield a further £13m a year due to recent planning approvals.

Ridley has so far refused to confirm the exact amount of money he is making from the coal under his family’s land, citing commercial confidentiality. “I receive no financial benefit other than a wayleave in exchange for providing access to the land”, he told DeSmog UK.

The Ridley mines are operated by family firm Banks Mining. The coal under the ground is still owned by the British government following nationalisation in 1947, although the Coal Authority charges very little for the extraction and sale of our most valuable and dangerous resource.

Yet, soon Ridley, his miners and the government could be mandated to reveal exactly how much in profits is being made by the Blagdon mines, how much is paid in taxation, and the amount in fees going to the Coal Authority.

The controversial Infrastructure Bill currently going through Parliament will, if passed, make the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) legally binding.

According to the government, “EITI is a global standard ensuring openness and accountability in the management of revenue from natural resources including coal, oil, natural gas, quarrying and mining.”

Unburnable coal

The transparency initiative was launched by campaigners concerned about the relationship between major oil companies and corrupt governments around the world.

They believe transparency will allow citizens to fully appreciate how national resources are being sold cheaply by their political elites.

But Britain’s support for this initiative could have serious implications for Ridley, when local residents find out exactly how much is being made in profits from the coal on his estate and can test the veracity of his claim to only receive a negligible amount in fees.

A study by academics at University College London (UCL) published in Nature confirms that 80% of the world’s coal is ‘unburnable’ if there is to be any hope of keeping climate change to less than two degrees – and averting catastrophe.

Dr Christophe McGlade, from the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, said: “Policymakers must realise that their instincts to completely use the fossil fuels within their countries are wholly incompatible with their commitments to the 2C goal.”

 

 

Brendan Montague writes for DeSmogUK. Follow him on Twitter @Brendanmontague.

This article was originally published on DeSmogUK.

 




388952

Reclaim the power! It’s time to deprivatise Britain’s energy Updated for 2026

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What must it be like to manage an oil company? To become the chief executive of an energy corporation and to earn millions a year doing so?

Iain Conn, ex-managing director at BP, knows. He is about to take up the position of CEO at Centrica (which owns one of the ‘Big Six’ energy suppliers, British Gas) in January.

The aptly named Conn will be paid in the region of £2m with added extras expected to raise this to around £3.7 million. One thing’s for sure; he won’t have trouble paying his fuel bill this winter.

The rest of us, however, might struggle. With fuel prices that have risen eight times faster than average incomes, more than one in ten households in England are now living in fuel poverty. Last month the Office for National Statistics released the number of people who died of cold last winter as 18,200.

The World Health Organisation attributes 30% to 50% of these deaths to cold homes. The energy companies would have us believe that there’s nothing they can do about prices but the reality is that they’re pocketing huge profits while failing to pass on lower wholesale prices.

Vast profits on the backs of people, and planet

Collectively, the Big Six made £2.8 billion in 2013, with profits from domestic customers a staggering five times higher than in 2009.

Companies such as Centrica are also reinforcing our addiction to dirty energy, which we still rely on for the vast majority our electricity generation. Centrica owns a 25% stake in Cuadrilla – the first – and one of the largest – companies’ fracking in the UK.

There is something clearly wrong with our current energy system. A utility which used to be publicly owned in this country is making millions keeping people in fuel poverty and deepening our addiction to carbon intensive fuels.

All over the world the story is similar. From the tar sands in Canada and Madagascar, to coal mines in Colombia and Mongolia, fossil fuel extraction is scarring the landscape, displacing communities and contributing to catastrophic climate change.

Yet this is doing nothing to get energy to the people who need it. One in five people globally live without electricity because they are unable to access it and many more go without because they can’t afford it. In Africa only 10% of those living in rural areas have access to electricity.

Although it is the model that is pushed throughout the world by institutions like the World Bank, privatised energy is not helping extend grids to people who lack access to energy or making energy affordable to the poor. The problem is corporate control – energy resources being used to make huge profits while steamrolling over people’s needs.

If we want more communities to be able to access and afford energy within the confines of a carbon constrained world, our current corporate-controlled privatised energy system is failing us. It’s painfully obvious that we need to look at the alternatives. The good news is that there are plenty!

Nationalised

Before Thatcher, the UK had a state run energy system and there are plenty of examples of countries around the world which still have them, such as Uruguay. In other places, privatisation has been such a disaster that energy systems have been taken back into public ownership.

The advantages of publicly owned energy systems are that they tend to have more public accountability and aren’t obliged to siphon off juicy profits for their shareholders.

Municipalised

In Germany there has been a huge move towards local authority run energy schemes as part of the country’s Energiewende, or energy transition.

In Germany this shift, known as municipalisation, has often come as a result of local referenda. In Hamburg, local people voted in September 2013 for their council to buy back the energy grid from multinational corporations E.ON and Vattenfall after campaigners successfully argued that the companies were not acting in the public interest and were delaying the transition to renewable energy.

The city of Boulder in America has also had success in municipalising its energy.

Co-operative

In parts of the world there is a long history of energy systems being run using co-operative models of control and ownership. For instance in Nepal and the Philippines micro-hydro co-operatives supply rural communities with reliable access to energy.

Here communities have collective control over a renewable energy source which could also make use of wind or biomass. A co-operative model more easily enables a project to be run by a community for the community.

Small scale co-operatives can provide an invaluable solution when prospects for grid connection are remote or would cause damage. In developed countries, small-scale cooperatives can also be a democratic way of communities gaining control over energy generation, even when they are connected to regional or national grids.

In Spain, Som Energia (‘We are Energy’ in Catalan) co-operative, was set up in 2011 in response to the lack of green energy options and the high bills of the large energy companies, of which the largest two account for 80% of the Spanish energy market.

Four years after being established, it has set up eight solar roof installations and a biogas plant and is in the process of building Spain’s first community wind turbine. It has 16,000 members who purchase electricity from the co-operative.

Scaled up

There are questions about the speed at which small scale projects can give communities the energy they need. Larger scale on-grid solutions have the potential to connect more households.

Large scale co-operatives have been very effective in America where they date back to the New Deal, and where 13% of the population use them – the co-ops are united by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA).

In Bolivia, the Cooperativa Rural de Electrificacion (CRE) is the biggest in the world with 276,000 users. Set up in the 1970s it was a small group of community leaders frustrated by the lack of municipal, state and private company willingness to provide services that got it off the ground.

Costa Rica also has large and long-established energy co-operatives that are run by the communities they serve and which function alongside the state energy company.

Gaining democratic control of energy resources is a fundamental part of ensuring our energy system provides for those that need it most and moves away from its destructive addiction to fossil fuels.

While there is no ‘one size fits all’ answer to these issues, approaches that give genuine control and ownership of those that they serve have a more likely chance of survival and of remaining truly democratic.

The solutions for reclaiming energy are here. Let’s take power out of private hands.

 

 

Petition: Re-nationalise the UK energy sector and end fuel poverty (38 Degrees).

Facebook: Fuel Poverty – Nationalise Gas, Electricity & Water Companies.

Sam Lund-Harket is an activist working with the World Development Movement (soon to be Global Justice Now) campaigning to end corporate control of the energy sector.

This article was originally published by openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.

Creative Commons License

 

 




388252

Britain’s ‘energy policy’ – carried out by Tories, made by UKIP? Updated for 2026

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The coalition government’s muddled approach to renewable energy is beginning to undermine climate change mitigation and technological innovation say industry leaders.

It’s also starting to hurt the viability of both UK businesses driving the development of alternatives to fossil fuels and of hard-pressed English farmers.

Panic over the rise of UKIP and policy u-turns aimed at placating the most ferociously conservative of Tory constituents are playing a role in the disarray.

This is combined with ministers looking for easy popularity points and a willingness to make blanket statements presented as facts, despite a complete lack of evidence.

This jostling for profile and power – both within the Tory ranks and as a response to voters switching party allegiance – is playing into the hands of Lord Lawson and Owen Paterson‘s anti-renewables crusade.

Since leaving his position as environment secretary, Paterson has called for the Climate Change Act to be dismantled and spoke at the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

In a Pickle – 17 of 19 wind farms shot down

RenewableUK‘s Rob Norris said: “The likes of Pickles and Paterson are using the vital issue of renewables to raise their own profiles and promote themselves within their own fiefdoms.

“Ministers are making statements espousing emotive, populist viewpoints that are based on no evidence whatsoever but rather on prejudice and a fetish for technologies such as nuclear and shale.”

Ministers – from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and the Department for Energy, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) – responsible for local and rural economies as well as the environment are not only actively working against these interests but are doing so with scant regard for economic or scientific fact.

DCLG’s secretary of state, Eric Pickles, for example, has now weighed in on 50 onshore windfarm applications, rejecting 17 of the 19 decided on so far.

This has led Ed Davey – the Lib Dem actually in charge of energy and climate change – to claim: “Mr Pickles doesn’t seem worried about climate or energy bills. Pickles, who claims to be a champion of localism, has been calling in every onshore wind planning application he can, interfering with the independent Planning Inspectorate process [and] over-riding decisions of elected councillors.

“Pickles is in danger of bringing the planning system into disrepute, of abusing ministerial power and so preventing Britain getting the green power revolution it needs.”

New Defra head Liz Truss has also announced changes to the Common Agricultural Policy aimed at thwarting solar farm developments as she “does not want to see the productive potential of English farmland is wasted and blighted by solar farms”.

Shortly after, however, it was shown in the Commons she had no evidence to suggest this is happening.

Amber Rudd, another Tory at DECC under Davey and in charge of solar, climate science and innovation, has also waded in saying: “Solar farms are not particularly welcome because we believe that solar should be on the roofs of buildings and homes, not in the beautiful green countryside. We are proud to stand on that record.”

Investment at risk

Not only do these ministers have real power to undermine the increase in renewable generation they’re tasked with supporting but their actions risk choking off investment, sinking start-ups and depriving the very farmers whose votes they’re after of much needed income.

“Pickles running riot has resulted in a pathetic amount of consents, chilling the blood of investors, who are likely to go elsewhere with their money, driving up cost and putting innovation at risk when we need to be encouraging developers and taking the technologies forward”, said Norris.

“UKIP has banged on about three ‘big issues’ – the EU, immigration and bizarrely onshore wind – which they say represent everything that’s wrong with modern Britain. Pickles is using his position to intervene as often as possible in an attempt to recapture lost ground.

“He now wants to take away the right of local government altogether to approve wind developments, a development that would be sinister as well as against his professed policy of localism.”

Climate-skeptic Owen Paterson a future Tory leader?

The rightwards drift of the Tory party is illustrated by the celebrity status of the sacked environment secretary Owen Paterson on the right-wing think tank circuit – notably the ‘free market’ Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which is fanatically opposed to renewable energy, most of all on-shore wind.

After a recent IEA ‘political economy supper‘ Paterson dodged questions on whether he’s organising a challenge to the Conservative Party leadership in the run-up to next May’s general election, answering only “it’s a private dinner, you better ask the organisers.”

Bankrolled by Big Oil and Big Tobacco, the IEA helped Thatcher’s rise to power. More recently, DeSmog UK revealed in September that Neil Record, IEA trustee and Lord Vinson, ‘Life Vice-President’ of the IEA are both funders of the GWPF.

Paterson, who gave the keynote speech at the GWPF last month arrived at the event with the head of his newly launched conservative think tank UK2020. Among its goals, UK2020 seeks to free Britain from climate change regulations and targets.

While Paterson mentioned UK2020 “several times” at the IEA event according to dinner guest Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, MP for the Cotswolds, the event was not connected to the new think tank, and the 20-30 male dinner guests mostly talked public policy.

“We didn’t talk much about climate, it was really free market stuff”, he explained. “It was a discussion about how we win the ideas of the centre-right of British politics … How are we going to promote those [free market ideas] and be able to make sure the electorate actually votes for a centre-right government?”

UKIP brothers under the skin

In addition to IEA staff, those in attendance included former conservative MP and current UKIP deputy chairman, Neil Hamilton, Alistair Hide of British American Tobacco, Allan Rankine of BP and Edgar Miller, a Texan-born venture capitalist and GWPF funder.

Several MPs were also there such as Julian Smith, MP for Skipton and Ripon, as well Lord Glentoran and academics Jeremy Jennings, head of department and professor of political theory at Kings College London and David Myddelton, professor at Cranfield School of Management.

Daniel Johnson, founding editor of Standpoint, and Sir John Craven, a director of Reuters and former director of Deutsche Bank, were also there. Christopher Chope, conservative MP for Christchurch said: “I think most of us are singing off of the same hymn sheet as one might say.”

Lord Howard Flight, deputy chair of the Conservative party and member of the IEA’s advisory board, described the evening’s conversation as “fundamentally [about] why the economic model that Russia and China used to employ was such a disaster and caused so much starving and death and why by contrast the model which the West has followed has been successful.”

None of which explains their enthusiasm at throwing vast public subsidies at nuclear power, fracking and other fossil fuel developments – in far larger volumes than ever granted to renewable energy generators.

 

 

This article was originally published on DeSmog UK. It also contains additional reporting from DeSmog UK.

 




386867

Britain’s ‘energy policy’ – carried out by Tories, made by UKIP? Updated for 2026

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The coalition government’s muddled approach to renewable energy is beginning to undermine climate change mitigation and technological innovation say industry leaders.

It’s also starting to hurt the viability of both UK businesses driving the development of alternatives to fossil fuels and of hard-pressed English farmers.

Panic over the rise of UKIP and policy u-turns aimed at placating the most ferociously conservative of Tory constituents are playing a role in the disarray.

This is combined with ministers looking for easy popularity points and a willingness to make blanket statements presented as facts, despite a complete lack of evidence.

This jostling for profile and power – both within the Tory ranks and as a response to voters switching party allegiance – is playing into the hands of Lord Lawson and Owen Paterson‘s anti-renewables crusade.

Since leaving his position as environment secretary, Paterson has called for the Climate Change Act to be dismantled and spoke at the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

In a Pickle – 17 of 19 wind farms shot down

RenewableUK‘s Rob Norris said: “The likes of Pickles and Paterson are using the vital issue of renewables to raise their own profiles and promote themselves within their own fiefdoms.

“Ministers are making statements espousing emotive, populist viewpoints that are based on no evidence whatsoever but rather on prejudice and a fetish for technologies such as nuclear and shale.”

Ministers – from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and the Department for Energy, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) – responsible for local and rural economies as well as the environment are not only actively working against these interests but are doing so with scant regard for economic or scientific fact.

DCLG’s secretary of state, Eric Pickles, for example, has now weighed in on 50 onshore windfarm applications, rejecting 17 of the 19 decided on so far.

This has led Ed Davey – the Lib Dem actually in charge of energy and climate change – to claim: “Mr Pickles doesn’t seem worried about climate or energy bills. Pickles, who claims to be a champion of localism, has been calling in every onshore wind planning application he can, interfering with the independent Planning Inspectorate process [and] over-riding decisions of elected councillors.

“Pickles is in danger of bringing the planning system into disrepute, of abusing ministerial power and so preventing Britain getting the green power revolution it needs.”

New Defra head Liz Truss has also announced changes to the Common Agricultural Policy aimed at thwarting solar farm developments as she “does not want to see the productive potential of English farmland is wasted and blighted by solar farms”.

Shortly after, however, it was shown in the Commons she had no evidence to suggest this is happening.

Amber Rudd, another Tory at DECC under Davey and in charge of solar, climate science and innovation, has also waded in saying: “Solar farms are not particularly welcome because we believe that solar should be on the roofs of buildings and homes, not in the beautiful green countryside. We are proud to stand on that record.”

Investment at risk

Not only do these ministers have real power to undermine the increase in renewable generation they’re tasked with supporting but their actions risk choking off investment, sinking start-ups and depriving the very farmers whose votes they’re after of much needed income.

“Pickles running riot has resulted in a pathetic amount of consents, chilling the blood of investors, who are likely to go elsewhere with their money, driving up cost and putting innovation at risk when we need to be encouraging developers and taking the technologies forward”, said Norris.

“UKIP has banged on about three ‘big issues’ – the EU, immigration and bizarrely onshore wind – which they say represent everything that’s wrong with modern Britain. Pickles is using his position to intervene as often as possible in an attempt to recapture lost ground.

“He now wants to take away the right of local government altogether to approve wind developments, a development that would be sinister as well as against his professed policy of localism.”

Climate-skeptic Owen Paterson a future Tory leader?

The rightwards drift of the Tory party is illustrated by the celebrity status of the sacked environment secretary Owen Paterson on the right-wing think tank circuit – notably the ‘free market’ Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which is fanatically opposed to renewable energy, most of all on-shore wind.

After a recent IEA ‘political economy supper‘ Paterson dodged questions on whether he’s organising a challenge to the Conservative Party leadership in the run-up to next May’s general election, answering only “it’s a private dinner, you better ask the organisers.”

Bankrolled by Big Oil and Big Tobacco, the IEA helped Thatcher’s rise to power. More recently, DeSmog UK revealed in September that Neil Record, IEA trustee and Lord Vinson, ‘Life Vice-President’ of the IEA are both funders of the GWPF.

Paterson, who gave the keynote speech at the GWPF last month arrived at the event with the head of his newly launched conservative think tank UK2020. Among its goals, UK2020 seeks to free Britain from climate change regulations and targets.

While Paterson mentioned UK2020 “several times” at the IEA event according to dinner guest Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, MP for the Cotswolds, the event was not connected to the new think tank, and the 20-30 male dinner guests mostly talked public policy.

“We didn’t talk much about climate, it was really free market stuff”, he explained. “It was a discussion about how we win the ideas of the centre-right of British politics … How are we going to promote those [free market ideas] and be able to make sure the electorate actually votes for a centre-right government?”

UKIP brothers under the skin

In addition to IEA staff, those in attendance included former conservative MP and current UKIP deputy chairman, Neil Hamilton, Alistair Hide of British American Tobacco, Allan Rankine of BP and Edgar Miller, a Texan-born venture capitalist and GWPF funder.

Several MPs were also there such as Julian Smith, MP for Skipton and Ripon, as well Lord Glentoran and academics Jeremy Jennings, head of department and professor of political theory at Kings College London and David Myddelton, professor at Cranfield School of Management.

Daniel Johnson, founding editor of Standpoint, and Sir John Craven, a director of Reuters and former director of Deutsche Bank, were also there. Christopher Chope, conservative MP for Christchurch said: “I think most of us are singing off of the same hymn sheet as one might say.”

Lord Howard Flight, deputy chair of the Conservative party and member of the IEA’s advisory board, described the evening’s conversation as “fundamentally [about] why the economic model that Russia and China used to employ was such a disaster and caused so much starving and death and why by contrast the model which the West has followed has been successful.”

None of which explains their enthusiasm at throwing vast public subsidies at nuclear power, fracking and other fossil fuel developments – in far larger volumes than ever granted to renewable energy generators.

 

 

This article was originally published on DeSmog UK. It also contains additional reporting from DeSmog UK.

 




386867

Britain’s ‘energy policy’ – carried out by Tories, made by UKIP? Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




The coalition government’s muddled approach to renewable energy is beginning to undermine climate change mitigation and technological innovation say industry leaders.

It’s also starting to hurt the viability of both UK businesses driving the development of alternatives to fossil fuels and of hard-pressed English farmers.

Panic over the rise of UKIP and policy u-turns aimed at placating the most ferociously conservative of Tory constituents are playing a role in the disarray.

This is combined with ministers looking for easy popularity points and a willingness to make blanket statements presented as facts, despite a complete lack of evidence.

This jostling for profile and power – both within the Tory ranks and as a response to voters switching party allegiance – is playing into the hands of Lord Lawson and Owen Paterson‘s anti-renewables crusade.

Since leaving his position as environment secretary, Paterson has called for the Climate Change Act to be dismantled and spoke at the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

In a Pickle – 17 of 19 wind farms shot down

RenewableUK‘s Rob Norris said: “The likes of Pickles and Paterson are using the vital issue of renewables to raise their own profiles and promote themselves within their own fiefdoms.

“Ministers are making statements espousing emotive, populist viewpoints that are based on no evidence whatsoever but rather on prejudice and a fetish for technologies such as nuclear and shale.”

Ministers – from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and the Department for Energy, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) – responsible for local and rural economies as well as the environment are not only actively working against these interests but are doing so with scant regard for economic or scientific fact.

DCLG’s secretary of state, Eric Pickles, for example, has now weighed in on 50 onshore windfarm applications, rejecting 17 of the 19 decided on so far.

This has led Ed Davey – the Lib Dem actually in charge of energy and climate change – to claim: “Mr Pickles doesn’t seem worried about climate or energy bills. Pickles, who claims to be a champion of localism, has been calling in every onshore wind planning application he can, interfering with the independent Planning Inspectorate process [and] over-riding decisions of elected councillors.

“Pickles is in danger of bringing the planning system into disrepute, of abusing ministerial power and so preventing Britain getting the green power revolution it needs.”

New Defra head Liz Truss has also announced changes to the Common Agricultural Policy aimed at thwarting solar farm developments as she “does not want to see the productive potential of English farmland is wasted and blighted by solar farms”.

Shortly after, however, it was shown in the Commons she had no evidence to suggest this is happening.

Amber Rudd, another Tory at DECC under Davey and in charge of solar, climate science and innovation, has also waded in saying: “Solar farms are not particularly welcome because we believe that solar should be on the roofs of buildings and homes, not in the beautiful green countryside. We are proud to stand on that record.”

Investment at risk

Not only do these ministers have real power to undermine the increase in renewable generation they’re tasked with supporting but their actions risk choking off investment, sinking start-ups and depriving the very farmers whose votes they’re after of much needed income.

“Pickles running riot has resulted in a pathetic amount of consents, chilling the blood of investors, who are likely to go elsewhere with their money, driving up cost and putting innovation at risk when we need to be encouraging developers and taking the technologies forward”, said Norris.

“UKIP has banged on about three ‘big issues’ – the EU, immigration and bizarrely onshore wind – which they say represent everything that’s wrong with modern Britain. Pickles is using his position to intervene as often as possible in an attempt to recapture lost ground.

“He now wants to take away the right of local government altogether to approve wind developments, a development that would be sinister as well as against his professed policy of localism.”

Climate-skeptic Owen Paterson a future Tory leader?

The rightwards drift of the Tory party is illustrated by the celebrity status of the sacked environment secretary Owen Paterson on the right-wing think tank circuit – notably the ‘free market’ Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which is fanatically opposed to renewable energy, most of all on-shore wind.

After a recent IEA ‘political economy supper‘ Paterson dodged questions on whether he’s organising a challenge to the Conservative Party leadership in the run-up to next May’s general election, answering only “it’s a private dinner, you better ask the organisers.”

Bankrolled by Big Oil and Big Tobacco, the IEA helped Thatcher’s rise to power. More recently, DeSmog UK revealed in September that Neil Record, IEA trustee and Lord Vinson, ‘Life Vice-President’ of the IEA are both funders of the GWPF.

Paterson, who gave the keynote speech at the GWPF last month arrived at the event with the head of his newly launched conservative think tank UK2020. Among its goals, UK2020 seeks to free Britain from climate change regulations and targets.

While Paterson mentioned UK2020 “several times” at the IEA event according to dinner guest Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, MP for the Cotswolds, the event was not connected to the new think tank, and the 20-30 male dinner guests mostly talked public policy.

“We didn’t talk much about climate, it was really free market stuff”, he explained. “It was a discussion about how we win the ideas of the centre-right of British politics … How are we going to promote those [free market ideas] and be able to make sure the electorate actually votes for a centre-right government?”

UKIP brothers under the skin

In addition to IEA staff, those in attendance included former conservative MP and current UKIP deputy chairman, Neil Hamilton, Alistair Hide of British American Tobacco, Allan Rankine of BP and Edgar Miller, a Texan-born venture capitalist and GWPF funder.

Several MPs were also there such as Julian Smith, MP for Skipton and Ripon, as well Lord Glentoran and academics Jeremy Jennings, head of department and professor of political theory at Kings College London and David Myddelton, professor at Cranfield School of Management.

Daniel Johnson, founding editor of Standpoint, and Sir John Craven, a director of Reuters and former director of Deutsche Bank, were also there. Christopher Chope, conservative MP for Christchurch said: “I think most of us are singing off of the same hymn sheet as one might say.”

Lord Howard Flight, deputy chair of the Conservative party and member of the IEA’s advisory board, described the evening’s conversation as “fundamentally [about] why the economic model that Russia and China used to employ was such a disaster and caused so much starving and death and why by contrast the model which the West has followed has been successful.”

None of which explains their enthusiasm at throwing vast public subsidies at nuclear power, fracking and other fossil fuel developments – in far larger volumes than ever granted to renewable energy generators.

 

 

This article was originally published on DeSmog UK. It also contains additional reporting from DeSmog UK.

 




386867

Britain’s ‘energy policy’ – carried out by Tories, made by UKIP? Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




The coalition government’s muddled approach to renewable energy is beginning to undermine climate change mitigation and technological innovation say industry leaders.

It’s also starting to hurt the viability of both UK businesses driving the development of alternatives to fossil fuels and of hard-pressed English farmers.

Panic over the rise of UKIP and policy u-turns aimed at placating the most ferociously conservative of Tory constituents are playing a role in the disarray.

This is combined with ministers looking for easy popularity points and a willingness to make blanket statements presented as facts, despite a complete lack of evidence.

This jostling for profile and power – both within the Tory ranks and as a response to voters switching party allegiance – is playing into the hands of Lord Lawson and Owen Paterson‘s anti-renewables crusade.

Since leaving his position as environment secretary, Paterson has called for the Climate Change Act to be dismantled and spoke at the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

In a Pickle – 17 of 19 wind farms shot down

RenewableUK‘s Rob Norris said: “The likes of Pickles and Paterson are using the vital issue of renewables to raise their own profiles and promote themselves within their own fiefdoms.

“Ministers are making statements espousing emotive, populist viewpoints that are based on no evidence whatsoever but rather on prejudice and a fetish for technologies such as nuclear and shale.”

Ministers – from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and the Department for Energy, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) – responsible for local and rural economies as well as the environment are not only actively working against these interests but are doing so with scant regard for economic or scientific fact.

DCLG’s secretary of state, Eric Pickles, for example, has now weighed in on 50 onshore windfarm applications, rejecting 17 of the 19 decided on so far.

This has led Ed Davey – the Lib Dem actually in charge of energy and climate change – to claim: “Mr Pickles doesn’t seem worried about climate or energy bills. Pickles, who claims to be a champion of localism, has been calling in every onshore wind planning application he can, interfering with the independent Planning Inspectorate process [and] over-riding decisions of elected councillors.

“Pickles is in danger of bringing the planning system into disrepute, of abusing ministerial power and so preventing Britain getting the green power revolution it needs.”

New Defra head Liz Truss has also announced changes to the Common Agricultural Policy aimed at thwarting solar farm developments as she “does not want to see the productive potential of English farmland is wasted and blighted by solar farms”.

Shortly after, however, it was shown in the Commons she had no evidence to suggest this is happening.

Amber Rudd, another Tory at DECC under Davey and in charge of solar, climate science and innovation, has also waded in saying: “Solar farms are not particularly welcome because we believe that solar should be on the roofs of buildings and homes, not in the beautiful green countryside. We are proud to stand on that record.”

Investment at risk

Not only do these ministers have real power to undermine the increase in renewable generation they’re tasked with supporting but their actions risk choking off investment, sinking start-ups and depriving the very farmers whose votes they’re after of much needed income.

“Pickles running riot has resulted in a pathetic amount of consents, chilling the blood of investors, who are likely to go elsewhere with their money, driving up cost and putting innovation at risk when we need to be encouraging developers and taking the technologies forward”, said Norris.

“UKIP has banged on about three ‘big issues’ – the EU, immigration and bizarrely onshore wind – which they say represent everything that’s wrong with modern Britain. Pickles is using his position to intervene as often as possible in an attempt to recapture lost ground.

“He now wants to take away the right of local government altogether to approve wind developments, a development that would be sinister as well as against his professed policy of localism.”

Climate-skeptic Owen Paterson a future Tory leader?

The rightwards drift of the Tory party is illustrated by the celebrity status of the sacked environment secretary Owen Paterson on the right-wing think tank circuit – notably the ‘free market’ Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which is fanatically opposed to renewable energy, most of all on-shore wind.

After a recent IEA ‘political economy supper‘ Paterson dodged questions on whether he’s organising a challenge to the Conservative Party leadership in the run-up to next May’s general election, answering only “it’s a private dinner, you better ask the organisers.”

Bankrolled by Big Oil and Big Tobacco, the IEA helped Thatcher’s rise to power. More recently, DeSmog UK revealed in September that Neil Record, IEA trustee and Lord Vinson, ‘Life Vice-President’ of the IEA are both funders of the GWPF.

Paterson, who gave the keynote speech at the GWPF last month arrived at the event with the head of his newly launched conservative think tank UK2020. Among its goals, UK2020 seeks to free Britain from climate change regulations and targets.

While Paterson mentioned UK2020 “several times” at the IEA event according to dinner guest Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, MP for the Cotswolds, the event was not connected to the new think tank, and the 20-30 male dinner guests mostly talked public policy.

“We didn’t talk much about climate, it was really free market stuff”, he explained. “It was a discussion about how we win the ideas of the centre-right of British politics … How are we going to promote those [free market ideas] and be able to make sure the electorate actually votes for a centre-right government?”

UKIP brothers under the skin

In addition to IEA staff, those in attendance included former conservative MP and current UKIP deputy chairman, Neil Hamilton, Alistair Hide of British American Tobacco, Allan Rankine of BP and Edgar Miller, a Texan-born venture capitalist and GWPF funder.

Several MPs were also there such as Julian Smith, MP for Skipton and Ripon, as well Lord Glentoran and academics Jeremy Jennings, head of department and professor of political theory at Kings College London and David Myddelton, professor at Cranfield School of Management.

Daniel Johnson, founding editor of Standpoint, and Sir John Craven, a director of Reuters and former director of Deutsche Bank, were also there. Christopher Chope, conservative MP for Christchurch said: “I think most of us are singing off of the same hymn sheet as one might say.”

Lord Howard Flight, deputy chair of the Conservative party and member of the IEA’s advisory board, described the evening’s conversation as “fundamentally [about] why the economic model that Russia and China used to employ was such a disaster and caused so much starving and death and why by contrast the model which the West has followed has been successful.”

None of which explains their enthusiasm at throwing vast public subsidies at nuclear power, fracking and other fossil fuel developments – in far larger volumes than ever granted to renewable energy generators.

 

 

This article was originally published on DeSmog UK. It also contains additional reporting from DeSmog UK.

 




386867

Britain’s ‘energy policy’ – carried out by Tories, made by UKIP? Updated for 2026

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The coalition government’s muddled approach to renewable energy is beginning to undermine climate change mitigation and technological innovation say industry leaders.

It’s also starting to hurt the viability of both UK businesses driving the development of alternatives to fossil fuels and of hard-pressed English farmers.

Panic over the rise of UKIP and policy u-turns aimed at placating the most ferociously conservative of Tory constituents are playing a role in the disarray.

This is combined with ministers looking for easy popularity points and a willingness to make blanket statements presented as facts, despite a complete lack of evidence.

This jostling for profile and power – both within the Tory ranks and as a response to voters switching party allegiance – is playing into the hands of Lord Lawson and Owen Paterson‘s anti-renewables crusade.

Since leaving his position as environment secretary, Paterson has called for the Climate Change Act to be dismantled and spoke at the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

In a Pickle – 17 of 19 wind farms shot down

RenewableUK‘s Rob Norris said: “The likes of Pickles and Paterson are using the vital issue of renewables to raise their own profiles and promote themselves within their own fiefdoms.

“Ministers are making statements espousing emotive, populist viewpoints that are based on no evidence whatsoever but rather on prejudice and a fetish for technologies such as nuclear and shale.”

Ministers – from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and the Department for Energy, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) – responsible for local and rural economies as well as the environment are not only actively working against these interests but are doing so with scant regard for economic or scientific fact.

DCLG’s secretary of state, Eric Pickles, for example, has now weighed in on 50 onshore windfarm applications, rejecting 17 of the 19 decided on so far.

This has led Ed Davey – the Lib Dem actually in charge of energy and climate change – to claim: “Mr Pickles doesn’t seem worried about climate or energy bills. Pickles, who claims to be a champion of localism, has been calling in every onshore wind planning application he can, interfering with the independent Planning Inspectorate process [and] over-riding decisions of elected councillors.

“Pickles is in danger of bringing the planning system into disrepute, of abusing ministerial power and so preventing Britain getting the green power revolution it needs.”

New Defra head Liz Truss has also announced changes to the Common Agricultural Policy aimed at thwarting solar farm developments as she “does not want to see the productive potential of English farmland is wasted and blighted by solar farms”.

Shortly after, however, it was shown in the Commons she had no evidence to suggest this is happening.

Amber Rudd, another Tory at DECC under Davey and in charge of solar, climate science and innovation, has also waded in saying: “Solar farms are not particularly welcome because we believe that solar should be on the roofs of buildings and homes, not in the beautiful green countryside. We are proud to stand on that record.”

Investment at risk

Not only do these ministers have real power to undermine the increase in renewable generation they’re tasked with supporting but their actions risk choking off investment, sinking start-ups and depriving the very farmers whose votes they’re after of much needed income.

“Pickles running riot has resulted in a pathetic amount of consents, chilling the blood of investors, who are likely to go elsewhere with their money, driving up cost and putting innovation at risk when we need to be encouraging developers and taking the technologies forward”, said Norris.

“UKIP has banged on about three ‘big issues’ – the EU, immigration and bizarrely onshore wind – which they say represent everything that’s wrong with modern Britain. Pickles is using his position to intervene as often as possible in an attempt to recapture lost ground.

“He now wants to take away the right of local government altogether to approve wind developments, a development that would be sinister as well as against his professed policy of localism.”

Climate-skeptic Owen Paterson a future Tory leader?

The rightwards drift of the Tory party is illustrated by the celebrity status of the sacked environment secretary Owen Paterson on the right-wing think tank circuit – notably the ‘free market’ Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which is fanatically opposed to renewable energy, most of all on-shore wind.

After a recent IEA ‘political economy supper‘ Paterson dodged questions on whether he’s organising a challenge to the Conservative Party leadership in the run-up to next May’s general election, answering only “it’s a private dinner, you better ask the organisers.”

Bankrolled by Big Oil and Big Tobacco, the IEA helped Thatcher’s rise to power. More recently, DeSmog UK revealed in September that Neil Record, IEA trustee and Lord Vinson, ‘Life Vice-President’ of the IEA are both funders of the GWPF.

Paterson, who gave the keynote speech at the GWPF last month arrived at the event with the head of his newly launched conservative think tank UK2020. Among its goals, UK2020 seeks to free Britain from climate change regulations and targets.

While Paterson mentioned UK2020 “several times” at the IEA event according to dinner guest Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, MP for the Cotswolds, the event was not connected to the new think tank, and the 20-30 male dinner guests mostly talked public policy.

“We didn’t talk much about climate, it was really free market stuff”, he explained. “It was a discussion about how we win the ideas of the centre-right of British politics … How are we going to promote those [free market ideas] and be able to make sure the electorate actually votes for a centre-right government?”

UKIP brothers under the skin

In addition to IEA staff, those in attendance included former conservative MP and current UKIP deputy chairman, Neil Hamilton, Alistair Hide of British American Tobacco, Allan Rankine of BP and Edgar Miller, a Texan-born venture capitalist and GWPF funder.

Several MPs were also there such as Julian Smith, MP for Skipton and Ripon, as well Lord Glentoran and academics Jeremy Jennings, head of department and professor of political theory at Kings College London and David Myddelton, professor at Cranfield School of Management.

Daniel Johnson, founding editor of Standpoint, and Sir John Craven, a director of Reuters and former director of Deutsche Bank, were also there. Christopher Chope, conservative MP for Christchurch said: “I think most of us are singing off of the same hymn sheet as one might say.”

Lord Howard Flight, deputy chair of the Conservative party and member of the IEA’s advisory board, described the evening’s conversation as “fundamentally [about] why the economic model that Russia and China used to employ was such a disaster and caused so much starving and death and why by contrast the model which the West has followed has been successful.”

None of which explains their enthusiasm at throwing vast public subsidies at nuclear power, fracking and other fossil fuel developments – in far larger volumes than ever granted to renewable energy generators.

 

 

This article was originally published on DeSmog UK. It also contains additional reporting from DeSmog UK.

 




386867

Britain’s real ‘terror threat’: eco-sceptic politicians Updated for 2026

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Over the last few weeks, as the situation in Syria and Iraq has deteriorated, we’ve seen politicians in the West become more bellicose about the “threat” of terrorism to our way of life.

What few in this debate seem to address is whether there is any objective data, compared to other non-terrorist ‘threats’, to support that assertion.

Rather like the ‘reds under the bed’ scares of the Cold War, the threat of ‘Islamism’ is held up as an existential threat to the British public innocently going about their daily lives. However, if we look at the statistics we can’t demonstrate that claim.

How many people in Britain get killed by terrorism in Britain in an average year? Given recent media coverage, how many do you think?

Bees and hornets pose the same risk as ‘terrorism’

Until the murder of Private Lee Rigby in May 2013, no members of the public had been killed by terrorist acts in Britain since 2005. Even with Britain’s history of terrorism, due to the conflict in Ireland, in global terms the risk from terrorism here is low.

The relative scale of the public’s risk of fatality from terrorism was outlined in the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation’s report published in 2012:

“During the 21st century, terrorism has been an insignificant cause of mortality in the United Kingdom. The annualised average of five deaths caused by terrorism in England and Wales over this period compares with total accidental deaths in 2010 of 17,201, including 123 cyclists killed in traffic accidents, 102 personnel killed in Afghanistan, 29 people drowned in the bathtub and five killed by stings from hornets, wasps and bees.”

That said, must we declare bees and hornets to be as dangerous as al-Qaida? Perhaps that’s why the Government doesn’t want to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in Britain.

Is the loss of civil liberties proportionate to the threat?

The Government, incited by sections of the media, has made a great play of their tough stance on counter-terrorism – and the powers which we grant our security services. Again, are these proportionate to the objective threat?

In July, Britain’s oldest ethical Internet service provider, GreenNet, sued the Government and GCHQ for their arguably unlawful breach of British citizens right to privacy as part of their mass collection of on-line data.

The response of the Government was to regularise that breach of privacy laws by rushing through emergency legislation. David Cameron’s justification for this was that

“Sometimes in the dangerous world in which we live we need our security services to listen to someone’s phone or read their emails to identify and disrupt a terrorist plot.”

Is the threat to our civil rights and privacy really worth that intrusion? And, compared to the threat to democratic values posed by the Government’s spy systems, does that power significantly reduce the risks to the public from terrorism?

To answer that point let’s put that 5 per year terrorism fatality figure into a wider statistical context:

I think that makes the relative hazard of terrorism to other ‘threats’ quite clear. Is this reflected in the current media debate? Clearly not!

Now this really is scary – ditching the ‘green crap’

As I outlined in a recent article for The Ecologist, last year David Cameron instructed his aides to “get rid of all the green crap” from Government policy.

And yet some of the greatest threats to the public are a result of that so called “green crap”. You don’t have to take my word for that – let’s look at what the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has to say.

The MoD publishes its Global Strategic Trends report for those within the MoD and wider Government who are involved in developing long term planning. They recently published the fifth edition, which identifies long term threats and opportunities to 2045 (it even has a scary cartoon which summarises it).

If you read that report, you could almost think you were reading something penned by WWF or Greenpeace. For example:

“As we increase the stress we place on the natural environment, our need to understand, protect and preserve it will almost certainly grow. Climate change, a rise in sea levels, desertification and reducing biodiversity are all issues that could affect us even more over the next 30 years. They are likely to impact on agricultural production and fishing, and could exacerbate humanitarian crises.”

In stating that, the MoD are not being alarmist. You can find similar reports being produced today by other ‘establishment’ organisations – such as the World Economic Forum.

US military researchers produced a broadly similar document in March 2014, which considered climate change to be a particular threat. In response, in May 2014, the US Congress passed a bill which banned the US military from considering the security implications of climate change.

As that US example shows, where the real statistical threats to public life are concerned, we might judge the inaction of our politicians to be a greater ‘threat’ than the risks from terrorism.

In my view our politicians concentrate on terrorism because it’s the perfect ‘paper tiger’. It’s scary, and unpredictable, but by its very nature the success or failure of their policies are not subject to external assessment. The secretive nature of the agencies involved allow politicians to say what wish, and justify their actions to some abstract threat, without any great risk of being proven wrong.

In contrast, if the Government started to address some of those really serious, ecologically-based issues, then that would require fighting some very difficult political battles – abandoning historic commitments to certain economic and ideological principles to achieve those ecological goals.

Tackling the ecological roots of the world’s conflicts

Terrorism, globally, is a serious issue – one which we should all be concerned about. What we’re talking about here is the relative weight of that issue compared to other issues which the UK Government, arguably, has a far greater power to address.

When it comes to the problems of the Middle East, the historic issue of the control of oil supplies is a key factor in the West’s foreign policy strategy. Arguably Britain and France created these problems when they enforced the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the region in 1916 – creating the boundaries within the region we see today.

However, adapting to ecological limits requires that the world wean itself off oil-burning within a decade or two at most. That would allow us to try and find a new, less exploitative way to co-operatively engage with the peoples of that region.

The UN’s decade-old study of “future threats and challenges” highlighted the range of problems which will confront in years to come. And, despite David Cameron’s desire to “get rid of the green crap”, most of these serious, long-term issues are driven by a common ecological root.

Instead of the current Western policy of control and exploitation, we need a new strategy. As outlined in that report, we

“face threats that no nation can hope to master by acting alone – and opportunities that can be much more hopefully exploited if all nations work together. The purpose of this report is to suggest how nations can work together to meet this formidable challenge.”

What has come from the mouths of politicians and pundits over the last few weeks does nothing to address the root of the greater human ecological crisis – manifesting itself in the many regional problems we see in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.

Until we have that discussion about global equity and justice, and we end the ‘exceptionalism’ in Western foreign policy, the issue of terrorism will not go away.

Instead, as we escalate measures to control dissent at home and abroad, knee-jerk security and surveillance measures will arguably degrade the democratic principles which our government’s claim to protect.

 

 

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer. He runs the Free Range Activism website.

 




383600

Britain’s real ‘terror threat’: eco-sceptic politicians Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Over the last few weeks, as the situation in Syria and Iraq has deteriorated, we’ve seen politicians in the West become more bellicose about the “threat” of terrorism to our way of life.

What few in this debate seem to address is whether there is any objective data, compared to other non-terrorist ‘threats’, to support that assertion.

Rather like the ‘reds under the bed’ scares of the Cold War, the threat of ‘Islamism’ is held up as an existential threat to the British public innocently going about their daily lives. However, if we look at the statistics we can’t demonstrate that claim.

How many people in Britain get killed by terrorism in Britain in an average year? Given recent media coverage, how many do you think?

Bees and hornets pose the same risk as ‘terrorism’

Until the murder of Private Lee Rigby in May 2013, no members of the public had been killed by terrorist acts in Britain since 2005. Even with Britain’s history of terrorism, due to the conflict in Ireland, in global terms the risk from terrorism here is low.

The relative scale of the public’s risk of fatality from terrorism was outlined in the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation’s report published in 2012:

“During the 21st century, terrorism has been an insignificant cause of mortality in the United Kingdom. The annualised average of five deaths caused by terrorism in England and Wales over this period compares with total accidental deaths in 2010 of 17,201, including 123 cyclists killed in traffic accidents, 102 personnel killed in Afghanistan, 29 people drowned in the bathtub and five killed by stings from hornets, wasps and bees.”

That said, must we declare bees and hornets to be as dangerous as al-Qaida? Perhaps that’s why the Government doesn’t want to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in Britain.

Is the loss of civil liberties proportionate to the threat?

The Government, incited by sections of the media, has made a great play of their tough stance on counter-terrorism – and the powers which we grant our security services. Again, are these proportionate to the objective threat?

In July, Britain’s oldest ethical Internet service provider, GreenNet, sued the Government and GCHQ for their arguably unlawful breach of British citizens right to privacy as part of their mass collection of on-line data.

The response of the Government was to regularise that breach of privacy laws by rushing through emergency legislation. David Cameron’s justification for this was that

“Sometimes in the dangerous world in which we live we need our security services to listen to someone’s phone or read their emails to identify and disrupt a terrorist plot.”

Is the threat to our civil rights and privacy really worth that intrusion? And, compared to the threat to democratic values posed by the Government’s spy systems, does that power significantly reduce the risks to the public from terrorism?

To answer that point let’s put that 5 per year terrorism fatality figure into a wider statistical context:

I think that makes the relative hazard of terrorism to other ‘threats’ quite clear. Is this reflected in the current media debate? Clearly not!

Now this really is scary – ditching the ‘green crap’

As I outlined in a recent article for The Ecologist, last year David Cameron instructed his aides to “get rid of all the green crap” from Government policy.

And yet some of the greatest threats to the public are a result of that so called “green crap”. You don’t have to take my word for that – let’s look at what the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has to say.

The MoD publishes its Global Strategic Trends report for those within the MoD and wider Government who are involved in developing long term planning. They recently published the fifth edition, which identifies long term threats and opportunities to 2045 (it even has a scary cartoon which summarises it).

If you read that report, you could almost think you were reading something penned by WWF or Greenpeace. For example:

“As we increase the stress we place on the natural environment, our need to understand, protect and preserve it will almost certainly grow. Climate change, a rise in sea levels, desertification and reducing biodiversity are all issues that could affect us even more over the next 30 years. They are likely to impact on agricultural production and fishing, and could exacerbate humanitarian crises.”

In stating that, the MoD are not being alarmist. You can find similar reports being produced today by other ‘establishment’ organisations – such as the World Economic Forum.

US military researchers produced a broadly similar document in March 2014, which considered climate change to be a particular threat. In response, in May 2014, the US Congress passed a bill which banned the US military from considering the security implications of climate change.

As that US example shows, where the real statistical threats to public life are concerned, we might judge the inaction of our politicians to be a greater ‘threat’ than the risks from terrorism.

In my view our politicians concentrate on terrorism because it’s the perfect ‘paper tiger’. It’s scary, and unpredictable, but by its very nature the success or failure of their policies are not subject to external assessment. The secretive nature of the agencies involved allow politicians to say what wish, and justify their actions to some abstract threat, without any great risk of being proven wrong.

In contrast, if the Government started to address some of those really serious, ecologically-based issues, then that would require fighting some very difficult political battles – abandoning historic commitments to certain economic and ideological principles to achieve those ecological goals.

Tackling the ecological roots of the world’s conflicts

Terrorism, globally, is a serious issue – one which we should all be concerned about. What we’re talking about here is the relative weight of that issue compared to other issues which the UK Government, arguably, has a far greater power to address.

When it comes to the problems of the Middle East, the historic issue of the control of oil supplies is a key factor in the West’s foreign policy strategy. Arguably Britain and France created these problems when they enforced the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the region in 1916 – creating the boundaries within the region we see today.

However, adapting to ecological limits requires that the world wean itself off oil-burning within a decade or two at most. That would allow us to try and find a new, less exploitative way to co-operatively engage with the peoples of that region.

The UN’s decade-old study of “future threats and challenges” highlighted the range of problems which will confront in years to come. And, despite David Cameron’s desire to “get rid of the green crap”, most of these serious, long-term issues are driven by a common ecological root.

Instead of the current Western policy of control and exploitation, we need a new strategy. As outlined in that report, we

“face threats that no nation can hope to master by acting alone – and opportunities that can be much more hopefully exploited if all nations work together. The purpose of this report is to suggest how nations can work together to meet this formidable challenge.”

What has come from the mouths of politicians and pundits over the last few weeks does nothing to address the root of the greater human ecological crisis – manifesting itself in the many regional problems we see in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.

Until we have that discussion about global equity and justice, and we end the ‘exceptionalism’ in Western foreign policy, the issue of terrorism will not go away.

Instead, as we escalate measures to control dissent at home and abroad, knee-jerk security and surveillance measures will arguably degrade the democratic principles which our government’s claim to protect.

 

 

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer. He runs the Free Range Activism website.

 




383600

Britain’s real ‘terror threat’: eco-sceptic politicians Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




Over the last few weeks, as the situation in Syria and Iraq has deteriorated, we’ve seen politicians in the West become more bellicose about the “threat” of terrorism to our way of life.

What few in this debate seem to address is whether there is any objective data, compared to other non-terrorist ‘threats’, to support that assertion.

Rather like the ‘reds under the bed’ scares of the Cold War, the threat of ‘Islamism’ is held up as an existential threat to the British public innocently going about their daily lives. However, if we look at the statistics we can’t demonstrate that claim.

How many people in Britain get killed by terrorism in Britain in an average year? Given recent media coverage, how many do you think?

Bees and hornets pose the same risk as ‘terrorism’

Until the murder of Private Lee Rigby in May 2013, no members of the public had been killed by terrorist acts in Britain since 2005. Even with Britain’s history of terrorism, due to the conflict in Ireland, in global terms the risk from terrorism here is low.

The relative scale of the public’s risk of fatality from terrorism was outlined in the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation’s report published in 2012:

“During the 21st century, terrorism has been an insignificant cause of mortality in the United Kingdom. The annualised average of five deaths caused by terrorism in England and Wales over this period compares with total accidental deaths in 2010 of 17,201, including 123 cyclists killed in traffic accidents, 102 personnel killed in Afghanistan, 29 people drowned in the bathtub and five killed by stings from hornets, wasps and bees.”

That said, must we declare bees and hornets to be as dangerous as al-Qaida? Perhaps that’s why the Government doesn’t want to ban neonicotinoid pesticides in Britain.

Is the loss of civil liberties proportionate to the threat?

The Government, incited by sections of the media, has made a great play of their tough stance on counter-terrorism – and the powers which we grant our security services. Again, are these proportionate to the objective threat?

In July, Britain’s oldest ethical Internet service provider, GreenNet, sued the Government and GCHQ for their arguably unlawful breach of British citizens right to privacy as part of their mass collection of on-line data.

The response of the Government was to regularise that breach of privacy laws by rushing through emergency legislation. David Cameron’s justification for this was that

“Sometimes in the dangerous world in which we live we need our security services to listen to someone’s phone or read their emails to identify and disrupt a terrorist plot.”

Is the threat to our civil rights and privacy really worth that intrusion? And, compared to the threat to democratic values posed by the Government’s spy systems, does that power significantly reduce the risks to the public from terrorism?

To answer that point let’s put that 5 per year terrorism fatality figure into a wider statistical context:

I think that makes the relative hazard of terrorism to other ‘threats’ quite clear. Is this reflected in the current media debate? Clearly not!

Now this really is scary – ditching the ‘green crap’

As I outlined in a recent article for The Ecologist, last year David Cameron instructed his aides to “get rid of all the green crap” from Government policy.

And yet some of the greatest threats to the public are a result of that so called “green crap”. You don’t have to take my word for that – let’s look at what the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has to say.

The MoD publishes its Global Strategic Trends report for those within the MoD and wider Government who are involved in developing long term planning. They recently published the fifth edition, which identifies long term threats and opportunities to 2045 (it even has a scary cartoon which summarises it).

If you read that report, you could almost think you were reading something penned by WWF or Greenpeace. For example:

“As we increase the stress we place on the natural environment, our need to understand, protect and preserve it will almost certainly grow. Climate change, a rise in sea levels, desertification and reducing biodiversity are all issues that could affect us even more over the next 30 years. They are likely to impact on agricultural production and fishing, and could exacerbate humanitarian crises.”

In stating that, the MoD are not being alarmist. You can find similar reports being produced today by other ‘establishment’ organisations – such as the World Economic Forum.

US military researchers produced a broadly similar document in March 2014, which considered climate change to be a particular threat. In response, in May 2014, the US Congress passed a bill which banned the US military from considering the security implications of climate change.

As that US example shows, where the real statistical threats to public life are concerned, we might judge the inaction of our politicians to be a greater ‘threat’ than the risks from terrorism.

In my view our politicians concentrate on terrorism because it’s the perfect ‘paper tiger’. It’s scary, and unpredictable, but by its very nature the success or failure of their policies are not subject to external assessment. The secretive nature of the agencies involved allow politicians to say what wish, and justify their actions to some abstract threat, without any great risk of being proven wrong.

In contrast, if the Government started to address some of those really serious, ecologically-based issues, then that would require fighting some very difficult political battles – abandoning historic commitments to certain economic and ideological principles to achieve those ecological goals.

Tackling the ecological roots of the world’s conflicts

Terrorism, globally, is a serious issue – one which we should all be concerned about. What we’re talking about here is the relative weight of that issue compared to other issues which the UK Government, arguably, has a far greater power to address.

When it comes to the problems of the Middle East, the historic issue of the control of oil supplies is a key factor in the West’s foreign policy strategy. Arguably Britain and France created these problems when they enforced the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the region in 1916 – creating the boundaries within the region we see today.

However, adapting to ecological limits requires that the world wean itself off oil-burning within a decade or two at most. That would allow us to try and find a new, less exploitative way to co-operatively engage with the peoples of that region.

The UN’s decade-old study of “future threats and challenges” highlighted the range of problems which will confront in years to come. And, despite David Cameron’s desire to “get rid of the green crap”, most of these serious, long-term issues are driven by a common ecological root.

Instead of the current Western policy of control and exploitation, we need a new strategy. As outlined in that report, we

“face threats that no nation can hope to master by acting alone – and opportunities that can be much more hopefully exploited if all nations work together. The purpose of this report is to suggest how nations can work together to meet this formidable challenge.”

What has come from the mouths of politicians and pundits over the last few weeks does nothing to address the root of the greater human ecological crisis – manifesting itself in the many regional problems we see in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.

Until we have that discussion about global equity and justice, and we end the ‘exceptionalism’ in Western foreign policy, the issue of terrorism will not go away.

Instead, as we escalate measures to control dissent at home and abroad, knee-jerk security and surveillance measures will arguably degrade the democratic principles which our government’s claim to protect.

 

 

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer. He runs the Free Range Activism website.

 




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