The bankruptcy of green policy

OK, so if we sit and think about it for ... ooh, ten seconds, we know that the EU cannot make a blind bit of difference to global temperatures on its own.

And we know they have no idea what their de-industrialisation policy will cost - except that it will be hugely expensive.

And we know that none of this bothers these smug know-alls in their ivory towers.

But how foolish can a senior EU official be to go on air and be pushed into admitting it? As James Delingpole summarises

First, they ask, what the expected cost is of this grand Europe-wide scheme to reduce carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2020. Duggan says she doesn’t have a figure. So her interviewers put to her the estimate by (non-sceptic) Richard Tol: $250 billion.

Next they ask what she hopes to achieve by spending all this money. What will be the reduction in global temperatures? Duggan again isn’t quite sure but knows that “the models show” that in order to have an even chance of lowering temperatures by 2 per cent CO2 emissions must be reduced by 50 per cent by 2050. Duggan then concedes that this will not be possible if the EU nations act unilaterally since they only contribute 14 per cent of total global carbon emissions.

Her interviewers try again. Does Duggan know what the estimated effect on global temperatures will be if Europe goes it alone in its carbon emissions reduction campaign? Her interviewers tell her 0.05 degrees C by 2100.

“You’re in charge of a massive programme to rejig an economy and you don’t know what it costs and you don’t know what it will achieve,” says Bolt.

Duggan changes tack. She claims that “a million” green jobs have been created in Germany; and that many hundreds of thousands of green jobs are going to be created in Britain. “Really?” wonders Bolt. That would seem to contradict the real world evidence which shows that, far from creating jobs, government “investment” in renewable energy is in fact destroying jobs in the real economy.

(This “economic” argument for renewables, incidentally, is the new Big Lie being promoted by the European Union – inter alia, of course, through its propaganda mouthpiece the BBC)

Finally Duggan makes one last try at digging herself out of the hole. She tries to imply that there’s something eccentric and behind-the-curve about her interviewers’ desire not to emulate the EU’s great decarbonisation programme.

Bolt and Price are unimpressed: “We’re talking about a region which has got unemployment at 10 per cent and growth forecast of 1.6 per cent. I don’t know why what we could learn from Europe actually.”

That's your money and mine they're spending, that's our children who aere being made poorer on a whim.

Of course none of us voted for this. But no major party opposes it.