The fracturing of the Net Zero policy agenda continues this week,
with a new report from the one-time Thatcherite think tank the Centre
for Policy Studies (CPS). With a press release boasting that it has been “endorsed” by Ed Miliband’s Conservative opposite, Claire Coutinho MP, the report, ‘Power to the Markets‘,
claims to offer “a new centre-Right vision for energy policy”. And, in
parts, it may well deliver. It even makes no fewer than 12 references to
the late Nigel Lawson, whose anti-statist determination to remove
government from industrial and energy policies are credited with
producing the lowest prices for consumers. Surely, such a homage to the
founder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Net Zero Watch
represents a terminal point for the climate-Right-of-centre? Sadly,
despite very many words spread over 112 pages, there isn’t much evidence
of the Conservative-aligned think tank’s reflection on what it hitherto
supported.
The report begins with a review of what went wrong. If there is
anything interesting in this long-winded preamble through the history of
Britain’s energy policy failures, it is nothing that could not have
been read on these pages or offered by Net Zero Watch and the Global
Warming Policy Foundation, or individual voices such as Kathryn Porter
and David Turver, among many others. These independent perspectives were
developing while think tanks, including the CPS, were urging Net Zero
on on the Green Blob’s coin. And in the absence of much new amid so much
waffle, I am forced to wonder, not just what is the point, but if the
point is to convince you that a point has been made....<<<Read More>>>...
