Cost of Living

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and David T C Davies

Tuesday 14th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

May I turn to the comments made earlier about our energy policy by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey)? That policy will have an impact on the cost of living for all householders and anyone who buys manufactured goods. I do not accept his premise that the science on climate change, on which our energy policies are based, is settled.

The theory is pretty simple: ever since we started industrialising at the end of the 1700s, we started pouring CO₂ into the atmosphere. As a result, the temperature across the world has warmed up and we must do something about it—that is the basic theory our energy policy follows. There are various flaws in that argument. The earth has always gone through cycles of warming and cooling. Coincidentally, at a time when we started to industrialise, we were coming out of a very cool period—a time referred to as a little ice age—when even the Thames used to freeze over. What is the total increase in temperature on which we are basing our policies and fears about climate change? According to all the statistics, it is just 0.7° C, yet some of that is clearly due to the fact that the earth was coming out of that cool period. Nobody can answer this simple question: how much of that 0.7° C is not down to CO₂, but down to the natural warming that would have taken place anyway?

Then there is a problem with correlating CO₂ levels with temperature increases in the past 300 years or so, because there is no straight line between the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere and temperatures going up. Between 1940 and 1970, temperatures were going down, and that was at a time when we were putting enormous amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Nobody can explain why that is. Since 1998, there has been no increase in average global temperatures—it has completely tailed off. Again, nobody can come up with a convincing explanation for that. Yet despite all that, and many other queries too, we are embarking on policies that will put up costs for householders, through the use of subsidies for solar and wind-powered energy, and put up costs for manufacturers, through the various taxes on carbon that we are levying.

The most serious point is that we are doing so unilaterally: Britain is taking steps that nobody else in the world is taking. Our carbon emissions are actually not that great compared with the rest of the world, yet we are unilaterally punishing manufacturers, forcing them to take their factories elsewhere, where they will continue to emit exactly the same amount of CO₂, taking their jobs and forcing us into foreign exchange deficits as we buy goods that were originally made here.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend is eloquently putting the case for those who doubt that global warming is down to climate change, and I am sure that many support his views, but does he agree that moving to a more renewable energy environment is important for energy security as much as anything else?

[David T. C. Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, because there is a lot that we can do to generate electricity without CO₂ and one would think that the Greens would be the first to support it. We had a proposal recently for a Severn barrage that could generate 20% of Britain’s electricity. It was an interesting proposal and one for which I would want to see more costings, but it was totally opposed by the environmentalists. We know that we can generate large amounts of electricity on demand and relatively cheaply from nuclear power without emitting CO₂, but where do the environmentalists stand on it? They are totally against it.

In the United States of America, by exploiting shale gas, I understand that they have halved electricity prices and created a wonderful environment for manufacturers—so much so that they are returning to the States. More importantly for the environmentalists, however, that has also reduced American CO₂ emissions. One would think that the Greens would be jumping for joy, but instead they are doing everything they can to prevent the Government from encouraging those companies to get in there, drill and exploit the cheap shale gas that we know we have and which could do so much. I question what their beliefs really are.

I hear the environmentalists saying to me, “The most important thing to do is reduce our CO₂ emissions”, but whenever anyone puts solutions in front of them that would reduce CO₂ emissions and deliver the cheap electricity that we all need, they do not want to know. They are the same people who march against globalisation and capitalism, who totally opposed any form of nuclear deterrent in the 1980s and who a few hundred years ago would have been the Luddites smashing up the spinning wheels. These people live in a fantasy world, believing that if we could just get rid of technology, we could go back to living in wonderful grass huts and things in some Tolkienesque world, like the hobbits before the evil one started attacking them. They are totally opposed to the high standards of living that globalisation and capitalism have delivered in the west and are delivering across the whole world.

It is high time that the Government realised that these people will never support anyone in government. Only recently, Friends of the Earth ran a big campaign against increased energy costs, but one reason energy costs have increased is that the Government have been trying to follow policies recommended by that same organisation—policies of supporting wind farms and solar panels that are bound to increase energy costs. It is ludicrous for the people who have been advocating policies that will increase energy costs to demand that we bring them down.