My Lords, as a Member of Parliament, I was unable to vote for the original climate change legislation. It seemed to be totally unrealistic, it was likely to be extremely expensive, and I thought it would be self-defeating. It was quite obvious that a large number of important economies around the world would not adopt this. It was extremely likely that an economy such as China would use the huge opportunity of our self-inflicted wound to export more and more to us—burning lots of coal and gas and marine diesel to get it here—and that we would deindustrialise too rapidly. Of course, that is exactly what is happening.
Lord Deben has just asserted that we have not deindustrialised, but he needs to look at the facts. We are losing massive amounts of traditional industry in petrochemicals, ceramics, glass and glass fibre. Many companies have gone down, many plants are being closed, and we are losing our traditional steel industry. It is true that we have had great success in industries such as pharmaceuticals. That may have been what my noble friend had in mind with the figures he was quoting, but he cannot get away from the fact that this is now doing huge damage: closing factories, closing plants, and causing a loss of jobs.
My first objection to the Government’s proposal tonight is that we should not adopt a very tough national carbon budget without knowing what the impact is going to be on carbon dioxide produced elsewhere in the world. You need to look at the net position, not just at the UK’s position. I suspect that the future will be like the last 20 years: there will not be a big net reduction in world CO2. There will probably be an increase in world CO2,because of all the extra marine diesel needed for the imports; because of a shift from gas down a pipe from our own fields to LNG, which my noble friend on the Front Bench has stressed is much more CO2intensive; and because, for traditional industrial products, we will be more and more dependent on countries that may use methods that are more CO2intensive—as well as all the obvious extra environmental costs those countries will incur, from the way they get the raw materials out of the ground, to the social costs of the conditions of labour that they use for producing the products, and the extra transport involved in the imports.
My second big objection to this order is cost. We are given a provisional figure of £880 billion, or £35 billion a year. My noble friend is right that this is likely to be a gross underestimate of the true cost.
I challenge the Minister on how much he thinks grid expansion will cost, because the grid expansion will have to be on a completely unprecedented scale. When all the energy sources come from renewables, rather than the more dependable gas-fired sources—which do not need nearly so much grid—the Minister will need a much bigger grid to deliver the current amount of power that we need. Further, since electricity is still a minority part of the power we use, if we are going to treble or quadruple our use of electricity to replace the gas that we burn in our home heating, and the petrol and diesel we burn in our transport, the mind boggles at just how many pylons there will need to be around the country, and at just how much grid capacity there will have to be to deliver all that extra power.
The Minister also needs to understand that, while he is right legally that he can meet his commitments now by coming up with a—probably completely fictional—plan for the amount of carbon the country will produce over the next 12 to 16 years, he does not have to show in any detail how we might get there. My advice to all Governments is not to try to predict the future beyond 10 years, because nobody can. Everything is going to change. A year ago, we could not even predict who the Prime Minister of the current Government was going to be, but we meet tonight on the eve of a new Prime Minister. So how on earth can we predict how big the UK economy is going to be in 2040? How can we predict whether any of our industry of a traditional kind will survive or not? How can we predict what the technologies will be? It may be that the so-called new technologies around the lithium-ion battery—currently the main marketing ploy of those who favour this kind of policy—will be completely old hat in 10 or 15-years’ time. There may be something genuinely better. There may be an electric product that I want to buy because it works well and is genuinely cheaper.
My next challenge to the Minister is that I do not believe this line that electricity is cheap and will get cheaper with the more renewables we use. The evidence is there for all to see. We have gone further than most with renewables. We have the dearest electricity in the advanced world, and one of the reasons for that is the cost of renewable—a lot of renewable power is contracted at very high guaranteed prices. Worse still, we need the gas power stations, and we need to pay them for doing nothing, because you need the backup. Of course it is going to be a lot dearer to have electricity from renewables, because you have to pay twice to have two different lots of capital equipment. The Minister has wisely limited my time, so I will have to suffice with just those few very strong objections. I back my noble friend’s amendment.
June 26, 2026
I had to look up Lord Deben. Turns out it is John Gummer of BSE and feeding his daughter a burger fame. He is now Climate change committee chairman.
It says he is a Catholic convert though his father was a Church of England vicar. He looks a lot older than I remember on Wikipedia
Not sure how a minister can limit time in the House of Lords but I know far less about the Lords than the Commons.
The speech itself was fine – all common sense really.
June 26, 2026
Eh no, the CCC chairman has been Neil Topping since July 2025. And in between Lord Deben who left in June 2023 and him there was Piers Forster.
Should I take that to illustrate how the people commenting on this blog are far very far from being able to look for information easily available on the web.
June 26, 2026
What would we do without you on here hefner.
You seem to have made it your role to be like a grumpy old Professor who finds it impossible comment or correct anyone without either sarcasm or having to demonstrate their superiority.
We can’t all be as clever you.
June 26, 2026
You make an unproven allegation, Wikipedia, AI and ordinary search engines can make anyone seem clever.
June 26, 2026
h,
You can take it however you like. He was there until 2023 – though it is not an organisation in which I take more than a passing interest.
I should also point out that, as John Gummer MP, he was the darling of the environmentalist crowd – beloved by both the BBC and Friends of the Earth.
My take on all that is that he is probably a very decent sort of chap, but possibly susceptible to persuasion by zealots who don’t always know what they are talking about.
June 26, 2026
We have to be very careful in research now that search engines use AI models that give priority to the prejudices of the system owners, and soon may be required by law to promote government propaganda. All the more so for the summaries of search results. It becomes necessary to build your own library of bookmarks of better sources. The ultimate danger will be when those sites are excluded and shut down by government.
June 26, 2026
Evidently, John Gummer knew less about heat transfer than his daughter rapidly learnt to a painful disadvantage.
June 26, 2026
Well said the policy is insane. For equipment connected to the grid the best “battery” is a pile of coal or a tank of gas or oil then only generate the electricity as needed. For mobile devices like cars hopefully we will find better batteries than the current ones they need to be cheaper, lighter, store more energy per KG or Litre, ignite far less, charge more quickly and lose less energy on the charge discharge and when standing. They also need to decay less quickly lucky to get 10 years currently before the energy capacity fall to low. Not easy to recycle either.
We could easily have gas or coal powered on demand electricity from natural gas for well under 8p a KWH in the UK if we just drilled and fracked as they have in the UK from coal it can be even cheaper. This reliable, on demand energy not the far less valuable intermittent when god decides energy.
https://members.parliament.uk/member/4154/registeredinterests Lord Debden (Gummer)
June 26, 2026
Vested interest surely remain vested interests declared or not?
June 26, 2026
US not UK I meant.
June 26, 2026
In the telegraph. King has opened the books – here’s what we learnt
Since his accession to the throne, His Majesty has paid a total of £30m in tax, placing him in the country’s top 100 payers.
Well he has not exactly opened the books at all, just given us this figure. But then the Sovereign Grant is £132m PA plus he is exempt from IHT, CGT, CT. So he saved £200 m just on IHT on the Queens death and similar again on his. He also has vast vested interest in wind farm seabed rental income.
I strongly support the Monarchy as better than any alternatives but best not to say anything Charlie and William, it just opens the discussion – but please do shut up about your deluded and hypocritical Climate Alarmist lunacy and keep out of politics stick to smiling, expressing sympathy for tradgedies and cutting ribbons.
Long live an apolitical king.
June 26, 2026
If the King is going to interfere in politics he should do so on behalf of the people, and behind the scenes as much as possible. There is much Bagehot’s dictum for the monarch’s relationship with a PM: the role is to encourage, to warn and to advise.
Part of the purpose of touring the country and making public appearances should be to listen to the public. Best done by not being obtrusive about it, which would likely provoke guesses at what he wants to hear.
June 26, 2026
There is so much this government does that can accurately described as stupid, but they continue in the naïve belief that it is sensible, and repeatedly make a mess of simple things.
June 26, 2026
“ I do not believe this line that electricity is cheap and will get cheaper with the more renewables we use. The evidence is there for all to see.”
Indeed it is & not only that but when the cost of building and maintaining renewables and connecting them up to the grid (which can be about 180 times more grid costs than large power stations) and of backing them up you find they do not even safe significant CO2 over their lifetimes anyway.
June 26, 2026
@Lifelogic – the UK’s so-called renewables are sourced from buying in hardware mainly from China that is produced be carbon intensive industries. Then these facilities are run in the UK by Foreign companies some nationalised state owned companies.
Having an ‘open-market’ is good but it is not reciprocated, these same countries ban the UK from entering their market place. So the up-shot is hard-earned UK money is effectively just thrown out of the Country never to return and the means to replenish it is banned. The money drain is built in by the UK Parliament the UK Citizen must keep sending their money abroad under these deals, as they get to own and run these operations
June 26, 2026
The energy policy based on carbon nett zero is nothing to do with energy availability at affordable cost. The policy is to remove energy options from ordinary people giving them no choice, thus ensuring a reduction in energy use due to lack of competition and guarantees of high price contracts.
The deindustrialising objective is clear to see. It is not only happening in the U.K. the entire Anglo Saxon world is being forced to deindustrialise. The outcome of there energy policies will be a new world order.
Be assured you will own nothing and you ‘will’ be happy, by absolute decree.
June 26, 2026
Nowadays it is commonplace for ministers to tell us barefaced lies such as ” we are not deindustrialising” or ” energy is growing cheaper” both of which are plainly and obviously wrong. The trend started with lockdown when we were lied to every night about the virulence of covid and the need stay indoors and follow stupidly arbitrary rules. We also need a prominent spokesperson to tackle the lie that CO2 is a danger. It isn’t. Half an hour spent watching one of the youtubes from prominent physicists who dispute the notion, such as William Happer, is time well spent.
June 26, 2026
WT,
‘BS baffles brains’ as they used to say.
Speak with confidence. Use obscure terminology and/or supporting references. Hope to get away with it
June 26, 2026
Thanks John for stating the blindingly obvious to those who do not seem to have a clue about even the basic provisions of reality with regards to the cost of power generation and usage..
June 26, 2026
I couldn’t agree more with your criticism of Lord Deben on deindustrialisation caused by high energy prices. It seems so obvious that energy intensive industries will be uncompetitive where our prices are 3 to 4 times those of our competitors. Why is it that Net Zero zealots are so blind to this?
June 26, 2026
Yet again, South East Water are victim blaming their customers for water shortages and have imposed a hosepipe ban on the hottest days of the year
I’m calling out SEW for blatantly lying. The water shortage has nothing to do with their customers wanting to use more water to cool down. It’s because they have – yet again – failed in their pipe replacement program. The Victorian pipes which they own move and crack in dry weather as the ground around them shrinks and subsides, loosing hundreds of thousands of gallons of clean, drinkable water each summer.
The second reason is that SEW have never built a new reservoir, nor extended their two existing ones since they were privatised in 1989. Since then, they have gained an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 additional customers onto their water and sewage dumping network. These are supplied by abstracting larger and larger amounts of borehole water from underground aquifers. This adds to the ground subsidence and shrinkage
Now that Burnham is apparently about to be anointed as the new Labour leader, maybe he will do what is necessary and re-nationalise the industry. If this has to be done by taking on the humungous debts that their shareholders have loaded it with, then it must be done without compensation to their foreign owners. Many think that the industry’s shareholders should be left with the debts themselves anyway.
June 26, 2026
As someone who lives within SEW’s area. I can say all the problems we suffer have two root causes.
1) Failure to invest in the necessary infrastructure, whilst paying the Chairmen/board members etc massive bonuses, and paying shareholder dividends.
2) The government controlled drive to concrete over Kent by building more and more houses to support unfettered population increase. SEW do not have sufficient water available all the time for the existing homes. So certainly cannot supply more, currently.
Lord JR disagrees. For once I agree with ‘Sakara Gold’ SEW must be re-nationalised.
June 26, 2026
SG,
Burnham’s right hand man will be James Purnell a former Blairite MP who works for Flint, an organisation that works to help big corporations to circumvent and thwart government legislation that might have an adverse effect on their profits.
We will soon see how nationalisation plans turn out.
June 26, 2026
For the benefit of hefner, ‘works’ should of course read ‘worked’.
June 26, 2026
OFWAT has been regulating them in accordance with the EU Water Directives, which require water supply to be rationed and prices increased. Underinvestment is policy. What I find incomprehensible is the large section of the public who believe that nationalisation would change things. The EU Water Directives legislation is still in place as retained law, so nationalisation would probably achieve the objectives on steroids with even less investment and perhaps higher charges (on “environmental” grounds, so it isn’t a “real” price increase).
June 26, 2026
On Thursday NESO had to ask for an increase in the power we import from Europe and request the CCGT operators ramp up gas fired generation. This was because solar wasn’t as efficient during the heatwave. Gas and nuclear where providing 58% of demand. Where do the idiots in Westminster think this is going to come from after the expected closure of existing plant.
We have reached an almost perfect storm where older nuclear plants are to be retired. Some gas plants are reaching end of life and Hinckley Point will not even cover redundancy.
Lead time for large gas turbines is 7 years. We are in for a bumpy ride over the coming years.
Entirely predictable when the nations infrastructure is left to PPE graduates and Marxist ideology.
June 26, 2026
In fact although NESO paid for supply from the Continent, most of it was to reduce export obligations rather than for imports. Prices were much higher there, reaching €4,000/MWh in the Netherlands, so they will have paid fancy numbers that they have yet to reveal when I last looked. Fortunately the high prices only apply to what they had to buy, rather than all supply.
The Continental system was under extreme stress, with statutory limits on cooling water egress temperatures leading to reduced output or shutdowns of some French nuclear and other thermal plants. Wind was slight, and as the sun went down the solar contribution faded to nothing. Hot transmission lines had to limit power levels to avoid overheating, sagging and failing which would rapidly lead to blackout. High prices were because of inadequate levels of dispatchable capacity in the right places, so they were being set by demand destruction to stay within available supply.
It is clear that the sexy investment in providing links for wind farms that have yet to be built have been prioritised over fixing the main grid and ensuring we have dispatchable generation close to demand which avoids the need for long distance pylons. It is also clear that depending on interconnectors for supply is high risk. NESO had to negotiate an exemption to the new limits on their interconnector trades that they had agreed just a few weeks ago, imposed by ENTSO-E because they were disruptive to the Continental grid.
June 26, 2026
It is beyond belief that in this modern age of advanced communications and information processing we cannot even agree on the basic facts, never mind complex chains of causation. It brought to mind the case of Stafford Beer, the cyberneticist who was appointed to advise Argentinian President Allende on how to monitor and control the mining industry to increase productivity. He achieved this by working out exactly what information is required to support deciion making rather than demanding floods of statistics. This enabled control to be established using very early computers and minimal communications constrained by the available narrow bandwidth of the existing twin copper wire telephone lines.
These days indiscriminant floods of data – which is not the same as information – swamps analysts and the essential information is obscured in this sea of data. Even worse, people with an agenda can always find something in the data, however irrelevant to the issue, with which to support their narrative, however false. Nothing gives cause for large change like fear. And so fear is the weapon of choice of the climate change fanatics. All they need do is scratch around in this sea of data on which to construct their argument. It gets the result they want but it remains false, a lie.
June 26, 2026
… as obviously temperature in the South of England these last few days has been the climatological one?
In Reading maximum temperature (from observed temperatures between 1991 and 2020) for May is 17.4 C and June in 20.4 C. So do I have to think that the 30+C we have had ‘remain false, a lie’?
June 26, 2026
Anecdotal..
June 26, 2026
In COVID-2020, I remember how extremely hot it was in June. Spiked toward 28°C to 30°C (82°F to 86°F) during the late June heatwave.
June 26, 2026
Just a simple comment, but why not go back much further and look at averages over the last 100-150 years and then look at individual spikes (Like the 1930″s, 1943 and certainly 1976 which I certainly remember) then you may get a better idea if we are in just one of those occasional spikes, or if as I suspect we are in a minimal average increase curve, which has perhaps happened before.
Back in the 1960’s from memory, they were suggesting the next ice age was on the way and we should prepare for that.
June 26, 2026
My domestic energy & water meters are measured in real-time with data transmitted to those companies. We give the met-office £millions and on their own website thay can only say ‘We operate a comprehensive network of over 200 automatic weather stations across the UK’ ….why don’t they clearly state how many, station there class (UN category) and transmit data in real-time (some every hour, others unknown)
This is a state quango and our politcians need to challedge it more
June 26, 2026
A good start would be for the Met Office to ensure their weather station sites are properly maintained. Recent photos of the Kew Gardens site show it overgrown with long grass, and the fence around unpainted. That will bias temperature measurements upwards.
June 26, 2026
Met-Office reporting Santon Downham another hottest June day …..its a class-4 (ie +- 2 degree)
June 26, 2026
Good try Lord JR. Unfortunately the zealots won’t listen…
June 26, 2026
Well said.
Net Zero will bankrupt us.
June 26, 2026
Thank you, a well needed synopsis of the ‘serious lack of thought’ by the UK Parliament. Endeavouring to reduce carbon dioxide just in the UK when all the actions being taken, all the remedies suggested, just increase World carbon dioxide by another magnitude. That is hypocrisy of the highest order or plain ‘dumb’. That is personal ego preening at other people cost. Well-meaning but ill thought through words gone bonkers.
June 26, 2026
The lack of ‘thought’ from the UK Parliament is heightened by the refusal to ‘cost’ their aspirations. Without knowing the cost, how can the plan the future.
Banning something without costing the alternatives, means they can’t comprehend where the money will come from to pay for it. Another irrational ill-thought-out case of ‘ego’ preening to be on some sort of message for the next election.
You have to despair at the quality of the individuals the Gang Bosses stuff into Parliament, just so that those bosses can surround themselves by obedient numpties
June 26, 2026
CO2 not CO I assume in the actual speech. More CO would indeed be a problem.
This issue is becoming a real dividing line for the next election. Should be a good way to reduce votes for the left.
June 26, 2026
We should remember who we are dealing with when we argue against such data from this government – too many complex terms and the message doesn’t get across to them.
I would just say:
– Having other countries provide materials for us negates any saving in co2 that we allegedly have;
– The cost of de-industrialisation is destroying our country and far too high in term of livelihoods and security;
– The estimates of the actual cost in taxpayer pounds of going green and renewable are not just unrealistic, they are an insult to logic.
When even the IPCC admit that their assumptions were completely false, driven by political dogma rather than science, when is the government going to admit they tied our future to an unrealistic distorted venture that will never achieve a fraction of what was propagandazied.
June 26, 2026
The lithium-ion battery use has already peaked and the replacements are filtering through. As you say predicting the future is futile in that respect.
A good honest UK Parliament and its Government would ensure the UK has the facilities to face the future; the seed corn of any direction we need to take is the money from wealth creation. The ‘bans’, the deindustrialisation the focus on sending the UK’s hard-earned money to prop up alternative regimes all show the UK Parliament and its Government is in denial. What is the cost, just to date, in money sent abroad never to return to buy-in the solar and wind farms and then pay foreign nationalised industries to run them?
Only yesterday we learn the already damaging high UK energy costs have to suffer still further abuse because the weather is warm. The UK is paying 17 times more to import energy from Europe during heatwave than the regular imported price. This is UK money its wealth being thrown out never to return due to incompetence. 2TK has loaded the UK into being beholden to others to keep us safe and secure, but other nations aren’t stupid they get to control the costs and the UK will pay for its incompetent Parliament.
June 26, 2026
“I suspect that the future will be like the last 20 years: there will not be a big net reduction in world CO”.
I agree with you Lord J. We should have a policy of scepticism and cynicism, drag our feet and take what money is on offer – not give it.
Miliband may (or not) be an honest man but he is on a quixotic quest. We may well be going to hell in a handcart and climate change will bring unpleasant changes. But a tiny country with tenuous trade links will make no difference. The countries that matter climate wise are America, China and India. They show no sign of pulling back on CO2 production.
The incentives for America, China and India are to get ahead as fast as possible. The effects of climate change will be felt by the poor, America, China and India do not aim to be poor. The devil take the hindmost is the realpolitik.
Realistically the UK must take a back seat. Which means our politicians are forced to dream up political makework schemes to keep themselves in well paid ‘work’. Which means there is work available for deniers of all kinds, deception is a valuable commodity in politics. Happy is the man who expects little, he is seldom disappointed.
June 26, 2026
@Jim – enforced poverty, means more control by the few
June 26, 2026
Excellent speech, which clearly identifies the problem. So why can’t the Net Zero fanatics see it? Is Lord Deben deliberately lying or just too thick to accept facts he does not like? With the UK being led by people like him and “don’t confuse me with the facts” Miliband, what hope do we have? To solve a problem, you must first get the facts and understand them. You can’t let emotion get in the way, and that is what the Net Zero fanatics do.
They are so convinced of their cause that they get emotionally attached to it. That distorts their judgment and they can’t face the true reality of the situation.
Global warming and cooling are facts of life and have been going on for thousands of years!
June 26, 2026
It’s ridiculous and, economically, a disaster. Chasing rainbows is very costly.
Why do they do it? It benefits only the likes of China, and it is we, stupid Brits, funding their employment growth by cutting our own levels! If it does not make sense, it must be cancelled.
June 26, 2026
Several owners of EVs tell me how cheap they are to run compared to an ICE vehicle. I thought about this and whether I should investigate getting one as my 20 year old petrol hatchback is showing its age. The prices of used EVs vary enormously and I suspect the cheaper ones have issues that may not be mentioned in the sales patter. A friend recently paid around £20k for a 4 year old non-SUV car which turned out to have a range of 90 miles (in summer, half that in winter?). If I were to pay anything like that it would mean reducing my investments and thus its earnings, all costs which should be applied to the EV. Were I to take out a loan then the interest charges would count as a running cost of the car. But, having spent large sums on such expensive vehicles it is human nature to convince oneself that it has been a “good buy” and deny any suggestion to the contrary. For corporate buyers there are taxpayer-funded subsidies I believe, a breath-taking obscenity when many people are struggling financially. “Climate, The Movie” is freely available online and may give people a pause for thought from the constant doom mongering.
June 26, 2026
I welcome your speech LordR, excellent words
June 26, 2026
The UK produces around 1% of current global greenhouse gas emissions.
If we reached Net Zero yesterday, what difference would that make?
June 26, 2026
…and the man-made content is a fraction of the 1%
June 26, 2026
Carbon budget, net-zero & climate change …..how come no one votes ‘green’, time and time again the green party come 3rd or 4th in most elections, they lost their deposit in the makersfield by-election
Why is our government(s) pursuing something that the public are clearly not interested in? The majority of voters and businesses just want cheap energy & cheap fuel
June 26, 2026
Lord Whitehead, Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero) (Labour) began by saying: “With the offshore wind secured in our recent auction 40% cheaper than building and operating new gas plants.”
Well, the 2024 price for offshore wind in the recent auction, AR7, was:
Fixed: £91.20/MWhr, floating: £216.49/MWhr
From the DESNZ Electricity Generating Costs 2025 LCOE calculations:
Annex A: Projects Commissioning 2030 in 2024 prices:
Gas CCGT 93% load factor: £70/MWhr + £41/MWhr carbon tax
Offshore wind: Fixed : £103/MWhr, floating: £153/MWhr
So how can the minister make this claim especially when the LCOE calculation compares dispatchable, reliable gas generated electricity with chaotically, intermittent wind generation and ignores all the additional wind generation costs of geographic location and grid-scale storage, upgrades and stability measures? The grid stability measures require the running of gas generation to provide thermal grid inertia and hence the need to run two parallel systems in order to possibly save some CO2 emissions to save the planet.
June 26, 2026
He is of course omitting the cost of extra grid to connect the new wind farms. The EGL4 link that is to run from Peterhead to Norfolk recently signed £5bn of contracts for offshore cables and HVDC converters, so there is a bit more to spend on the grid substation links. It can carry 2GW, but allowing for wind intermittency, some curtailment of excess supply and use of other lines when output is low, it is unlikely to move more than 7TWh/a on average. So at a 7% RIIO charge we will be billed £350+m p.a. or £50/MWh to connect. Plus more to get to Peterhead, and from Norfolk to Tilbury.
Not such a bargain.
June 26, 2026
Lord Whitehead, Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero) (Labour) said: “The main driver of high energy costs has been global gas prices, which have also pushed up electricity prices.”
Well, everyone knows how much cheaper per KWhr is our gas is compared to electricity. And here is the link to the Low carbon Contracts Company historical data dashboard which shows that apart from 3 quarters in 2021/22, at the start of the Russia/Ukraine war, the CfD prices for offshore wind/all renewables has been higher than for the gas generation which always sets the price as renewables are given grid priority and gas is only used when necessary for backup or grid stability:
https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/resources/scheme-dashboards/cfd-historical-data-dashboard/
BTW, there is no global gas price, as there is for oil, as gas is far more difficult and expensive to transport. The price of gas in the USA is a third to a quarter of that of the UK. Furthermore our North Sea gas has no option but to come ashore and the UK has no gas liquification facilities for export.
June 26, 2026
I was pleased to note that the Lords voted to regret the CB7 measures, and also that there was a substantive vote against adopting them in the Commons, including 1 Labour MP (a number among those with no vote recorded will be those with objections such as Graham Stringer), most of Reform (Farage and Pochin were absent), and a very solid block of 86 Conservatives, including several CEN members. No Conservatives supported the measure, although some of those who did not vote are known net zero advocates. It’s an important change that lays down markers for a future government.
So Claire Coutinho’s efforts to change the party policy and secure Kemi Badenoch’s endorsement are clearly making a real difference. Well done.
June 26, 2026
Do you have any figures? How ‘Many companies have gone down’, many plants are being closed, …the fact that this is now doing huge damage: closing factories, closing plants, and causing a loss of jobs.
It’s always useful to have evidential figures.
June 26, 2026
150 ‘illegal immigrants’ invaded the UK yesterday 25th June 2026
June 26, 2026
First Carbon Budget (2008–2012): 3,018 MtCO₂e (26% reduction)
Second Carbon Budget (2013–2017): 2,782 MtCO₂e (32% reduction)
Third Carbon Budget (2018–2022): 2,544 MtCO₂e (38% reduction) source ‘house of lords library’
An problem invented by politcians two decades ago ….whats it achieved and whats it still going to cost
June 26, 2026
There were Lords in the debate who used the current heatwave as proof that the planet’s temperature is the highest ever and must be caused by human CO2 emissions quoting “the science”. They should examine the history of CO2 and temperature. The Antarctic Vostok ice core data clearly shows, when both temperature and CO2 are at historically low levels, as they have been for the last 450,000 years, that CO2 follows temperature not vice versa. There is no “human induced” planetary warming to explain why today’s receding glaciers are revealing 7000 year old tree stumps or human artifacts:
https://www.livescience.com/4702-melting-glacier-reveals-ancient-tree-stumps.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/reel/video/p0gl9tq4/watch
There is no climate crisis and temperatures have previously been higher than today as we slowly warm out of the Little Ice Age. This would have been recognised if it were not for the fact that the Net Zero “solution” to this warming has been weaponised to force the West to de-industrialise and thus cause impoverishment and national insecurity. Until this false “science” that global warming is caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2, and this will cause a climate catastrophe, is tackled head-on all the arguments that it is destroying our industry and economy will come to nothing as the climate activists will continue to claim that the West’s de-industrialisation is a price worth paying to save the planet and all life on it. How can you argue against that using purely economic arguments?
June 26, 2026
Oh Look; Iran has begun implementing a major infrastructure project: the construction of a cross-border railway line. The railway, which runs 657 km from Khaf (Iran) to Herat (Afghanistan) to Mazar-i-Sharif (Afghanistan) to Kashi (China).
Be interesting to see how much this costs and how soon it will be completed.
In terms of Carbon, in the case of CO2 it has no relevance. That form of Carbon is insignificant apart from grass and hedge cutting! All world impacts from this gas are positive (unless you are a desert enthusiast)
June 26, 2026
I’m so glad we banned plastic bags & straws
June 27, 2026
but the amount of plastic removed from the oceans is barely calculated despite some brave efforts to deal with the disgrace.