With nearly everyone accepting the arguments of climate change, and the green agenda being taken up by every and any politician like there's no tomorrow - which, I guess, there isn't really, if they're right! - it is refreshing to hear a leading politician lambast the 'green alarmists'. If only for a change of tune. And yes, he's really an ex-politician, since we're talking about Nigel Lawson, the good lord who was once Margaret Thatcher's reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Early in November, in a speech to the Centre for Policy Studies, Lawson attacked many of the green scientists as 'eco-fundamentalists', said warmer climates would in any case be good for some countries and that we can surely all cope with a little bit of rising ocean level. He's weighed in again this evening, in an interview on the web channel 18 doughtystreet.com, describing the Stern Report as 'fraudulent', and a new 'dodgy dossier' for Blair to wield in our faces.
It's certainly a different view. Previous criticisms of the Stern Report complained that it was the only report to make the cataclysm of climate change sound positively boring. And it is not, perhaps, surprising that any report endorsed by Blair would now be seen in a negative light - weapons of mass destruction in Iraq anyone? That said, it would be bad news for a liberal democracy if the debate on climate change was all one way, so we should welcome Lord Lawson's comments for that reason alone. On the whole, I think it is getting hotter...but I'm no scientist.
1 comment:
Not everyone it seems is accepting the argument regarding a world slipping away into self-destruction it seems.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/archive/26726/the-world-is-richer-and-healthier.thtml
This article from The Spectator a few weeks ago claims (while I acknowledge not wholly focusing on the environmental aspects) that the human race and Earth has never had it so good.
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