The Thin Green Line is giving Cameron a real problem
Dear David Cameron,
One of Gordon Brown’s failings that surely cannot have escaped your attention is his inability to lead with conviction and strength. Climategate has provided a real test of both Brown’s leadership and yours, and as far as I can see you have both performed dismally when the public were crying out for someone to take charge. As a result, your own MPs are having to fill the void that you created.
You are now facing a growing challenge from senior Conservative MPs who say they have doubts about the Conservatives’ stance on global warming. Peter Lilley MP, who is tipped for a return to government if you win power, has said that while he believed the climate was changing the effects were being overstated. John Maples, the deputy Tory chairman, told the Commons last year that he no longer accepted the consensus on the issue. “I do not believe that the science is anything like as settled as the proponents of the [Climate Change] Bill are making out,” he said, but has declined to comment on recent events. Backbenchers have also been having their say. Philip Davies MP admitted he did not share your views on the subject: “I would like to see some proper cost-benefit analysis [at Copenhagen] on the impact on the economy, rather than this charge towards trying to be trendy and to please the environmental lobby. Everyone has gone completely mad on this. It has taken on the hallmarks of a religion rather than a policy issue. Anyone who says ‘hang on a minute’ is completely decried and treated like a Holocaust denier.” Graham Brady MP added: “There is some room for debate about why the climate is changing and the best ways of tackling it. It is a good idea to reduce carbon emissions, but I would not want to see the whole economy destroyed in the process. There is a balance to be struck.”
Yesterday, David Davis, the former shadow Home Secretary, joined the fray, warning that your policy of tough targets to cut carbon emissions is “destined to collapse”. He criticised “the fixation of the green movement with setting ever tougher targets, in the face of failure to meet earlier promises,” adding that ”the ferocious determination to impose hair-shirt policies on the public – taxes on holiday flights, or covering our beautiful countryside with wind turbines that look like props from War of the Worlds – is bound to cause a reaction in any democratic country.” Davis was adamant that he is not a “denier” of climate change and accepts that it has “probably” been caused by human activity, but he is worried about the economic cost of meeting emissions targets. He wants other voices to be heard in the debate and a “middle way” found instead of the name-calling between “deniers and liars” on each side. Not unsurprisingly, the likes of Dan Hannan and Roger Helmer have been flying the anti-Copenhagen flag (albeit with limited success) in the European Parliament.
What a mess. Although this situation might appear to have come out of nowhere, the signs have been there for a long time. Last year, five Conservative MPs voted against the Climate Change Bill – Mr Lilley, Philip Davies, Andrew Tyrie, Ann Widdecombe and Christopher Chope. More importantly, only 40 of your 193 MPs actively supported it, and many abstained. It is thought that you deliberately imposed a low priority one-line whip to prevent a backbench rebellion that would have highlighted divisions. The simple fact is that Conservative MPs and Conservative bloggers want to have a debate about this topic, whereas you and the Government evidently don’t. Even the most fundamental questions surrounding Climate Change (e.g. how strong is the supporting evidence? how much damage will emissions targets do? are the biggest polluters being hit hardest by the legislation?) are not being addressed. It is this avoidance of the core issues that infuriates me and many other supporters. All you’ve said is that ”what we need to see emerge from [the Copenhagen] discussions is an effective, binding and fair deal to cut carbon emissions that includes all major economies.” This is not good enough and for your own MPs to be forced to speak out against such narrow thinking and flawed analysis in the absence of any discussion led by you is bitterly disappointing.
What you don’t seem to realise is that your reaction to Climategate has caused all these problems. Your decision to not even comment on what happened at the University of East Anglia was a bad, bad mistake. The public don’t have time to sift through the scientific evidence and the leaked emails – what they need is for someone to stand up at the front and reassure them that everything being done in the name of ‘climate change’ is right and proper. Climategate shook the public’s confidence to a massive degree, yet you couldn’t even muster up the courage to stand in front of a TV camera and say ‘I’m very concerned about what has happened, we need a full investigation into this incident and I intend to follow this story closely. I still believe that climate change is a real threat but it is essential that our understanding is based on strong, credible evidence.’ That’s it – no more, no less. Sadly, when the time came for you to show real leadership and conviction, when the time came for you to show that you are in a different class to Gordon Brown, that you are in touch with the public mood, that you understood their worries, you blew it. You just blew it. To say that I am disappointed doesn’t even come close to how I feel right now.
Yours in dismay,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
“What a mess. Although this situation might appear to have come out of nowhere, the signs have been there for a long time.”
Indeed. One might wonder why all these Tories are saying this now. Do they sense the way the wind is blowing?
If so, why do we call them ‘leaders’ in the first place? Are they really any better than Call-Me-Dave?
Cameron is not a leader, he’s a follower – of focus groups. At the moment the focus group data isn’t clear enough for him to take a position.
Please be patient.
Probably best if Cameron keeps a low profile and stays out of it or the media will give him all the flak just as they did on the Lisbon treaty.
Would that be a change in the political climate…?
“….inability to lead with conviction and strength”.
In truth, I suspect that at the fundamental level neither Brown nor Cameron might be short of convictions (Jeez we all believe in, or have ideas about, lots of things) or would be genuinely unable to take a firm position thereon.
Sadly, and frustratingly, within the current political ’system’, in order to get elected in this media age, both are now so committed to appearing to be all things to all men, on policy, procedure, publicity; ‘assisted’ or influenced by SPADS, focus groups, minority interests, vested interests (and any other interest group imaginable), that intellectually, idealogically and practically they meet themselves coming back. Hence the lack of identifiable (and meaningful) policy, strategy and tactics.
Twenty years ago I was charged with undertaking a substantial piece of written work (a policy document) for my boss, a senior executive. When I presented it to him he expressed his gratitude and general satisfaction. However, for it to be promulgated he told me ‘You need to vague it up’. Wonderful! Truly, a man before his time.
LFAT,
Why is it that all deny the true reason for Cameron’s ‘Green’ crusade? It is purely to enable him to implement the policies of his masters in Brussels, whose dictats he must follow. Nothing more, nothing less. His hyprocasy is breathtaking!
Thursday 11th July 2002
“Piers Corbyn, Jeremy’s brother, who is a weather expert, told me he is sceptical about global warming, and promised to send me his analysis. I was told to be wary of environmentalists because they’re the ones pushing nuclear power, which I thought was interesting.”
Tony Benn
More Time For Politics – Diaries 2001-2007
@Scan – Couple of days ago watched documentary ‘Earth Story’ on TV. One of a series, this film dealt with glaciation. One illustration took the viewer to Barbados where there is a series of fossil coral terraces. These comprise a series of horizontal terraces separated by a former sea cliff.
No expert, I, but it was my understanding that these features were formed during the quaternary period (ie over the past 2.5 million years) as result of both long-term uplift and world-wide changes in sea level owing to regular periods of glaciation and subsequent melting.
Point is (and, yes, I know this is pretty superficial) the present sea level in Barbados (and how it got that way) don’t seem to bother the Bajans much: and, for sure, it didn’t bother me while I drank my rum punch on Boatyard Beach.
The thing that I don’t understand is that polls and focus groups are surely all know saying the same thing: we don’t think climate change is as serious as Labour want us to believe, and we’re not sure the evidence is perfect either.
If Cameron really just followed the focus groups, wouldn’t he have gone with this line too? I suspect that he just wants to avoid the debate altogether for fear to upsetting either the ‘deniers’ or the ‘warmists’.
@wonderfulforhisage –
His focus group is one man named zac goldsmith.Of course they are all right,they can afford to pay a pseudo carbon tax,my monthly energy bill is almost a quarter of my income even now.
This is typical heir to blair stuff.He thinks only of the brainwashed young not the more mature ones who actually had an education.
Davmc, anyone with a shred of intelligence – young or old – could see how serious Climategate really is as the ramifications are absolutely enormous. By avoiding the issue, Cameron will have won no friends.
After the way BSE destroyed the last conservative govt, with Major’s ministers gurning to the camera while feeding their children potentially contaminated beef, I can understand Dave’s approach.
Now bear in mind I’m a skeptic on man-made global warming. I don’t doubt that the climate is, and has, changed but am not quite solipsistic enough to believe that some smart monkeys wandering around could impact such a large and complex closed system. Not without seeing some data that wasn’t ‘value added’ anyway (as the CRUgate mails term ‘fiddled with data’ – imagine of the Catholic Church used that language – children raped by priests would be abused children, they’d be ‘value added children’!).
However, heading an organistation and being on a self-appointed mission to ‘de-contaminate the brand’ Cameron is not keen to jump the gun on the side of those questioning the science lest he cast the tories back into the same ‘belief > science’ position currently occupied solely by the main parties drugs policy.
Sorry, don’t buy it.
Like I said in my letter, all he had to do was take control by taking ownership of the situation – not solve it. Say that he’s concerned, say that he’s not going to rest until he understands what happened, say that any allegations of fixing or fudging scientific data are extremely serious – just get stuck in, that’s all he had to do. Expressing an opinion on what happened was not necessary or relevant, he simply had to show his face. Even that, it seems, was too much.
LFAT, Cameron cannot take control of the situation because he knows that his party is hideuosly split. It’s not because of the climate issue per se, but because of the real reasons that the climate debate has taken the shape it has.
Much of the funding for research comes from supranational bodies. The results of that research then give these supranational bodies an excuse to act in a way which runs contrary to the democratic principle. All those Conservatives who believe in the current move to supranational rather than intergovernmental co-operation solutions are therefore much more in favour of the continual use of an ‘emergency’ to to reach this end. This has been the history of the EU, a great many leading conservatives have been totally in favour of it, and have connived in it to such a degree that they deposed a PM for it.
The Conservatives are hopelessly split on Europe, Cameron is papering over the cracks with his silence on a great many issues which ultimately lead back to the EU.
Talwin,
“and world-wide changes in sea level owing to regular periods of glaciation and subsequent melting.”
Not sure: the coral shelving goes in very marked and very substantial steps – 20 to 30 feet at a time. A sea level change due to glaciation would not create this effect as the sea level change is not at all sudden and hence the coral would have time to grow out forming a slope in direct proportion to declining sea levels on the way down, and no step at all as levels rise since the colar will just grow up to meet it.
My understanding is that the island is very close to a fault line (the rest of the Caribbean islands are volcanic and follow the line of the fault) and that the shelving was caused by earthquakes causing a really extremely sudden and sharp change in the ground level, essentially lifting the entire reef by 30 feet in a matter of seconds: existing reef dies when out of water, then new reef starts to grow at new sea level.
@The Pedant-General – Thanks PG. I said I wasn’t an expert and meant it. But I think the general point may still stand: that whatever the reason sea levels may rise or fall, and for whatever reason land masses may do the same (or I suppose the effects of just about any significant geological/physical manifestation) the good old Earth and its occupants just get on with things as they find them to be.
vote bnp and dont be a muppet
@The Pedant-General –
Barbados is actually positioned over a tectonic plate fault. The coral cliffs are a result of lava flows gradually pushing the island up. There is a Bajan Govt.-sponsored booklet on the island’s formation, but understandably, Bajans prefer not to discuss the serpent in their Eden.
@pm –
Be a Goon instead.
@Talwin – Talwin, I’m not sure what your point was in regard to my post, whether you were agreeing or not.
Do I beleve the climate is changing? Yes, of course. Do I believe in the current religion that climate change is our original sin and unless we all give Gordon Brown £5 the world will explode, then no I don’t.
The reason behind me posting an excerpt from Tony Benn’s diary was (to use some dreadful imagery) that it’s interesting to see what was happening below the surface years before the topic rose to prominence and compare it to what’s happening in politics today.
How far away from his journal entry are we? For me, I think it’s not too far away from the truth at all.
Kind Regards
Find a school atlas from Austria. The one I saw showed maps from 1860 and 1980. Maps of the mountainous areas in 1860 are mostly white, permanent snow and ice. In 1980 practically all the white had gone. I have not seen a 2009 map.
Seems pretty clear to me. It’s getting warmer. I cannt tell you if we are responsible, but what I do know of the science says we should be having an effect. It is basic stuff.
Bobbymodo,
“Seems pretty clear to me. It’s getting warmer.”
That’s irrelevant in the timescale of your maps: the question is whether we are warmer now that we were 1000 years ago.
” I cannt tell you if we are responsible, ”
That is the simply essential piece. If you can’t tell, you shouldn’t be committing $100 billion dollars per annum on trying to solve the problem. Especially if said $100 Billion dollars per annum will almost certainly go straight into a slew of numbered bank accounts in favour of a large number of fairly unpleasant dictator-types and, even if it didn’t, would have an almost negligible effect on the outcome.
“but what I do know of the science says we should be having an effect.”
Except that that’s what you;ve just said you don’t know. The reason you don’t know is precisely the point of this post – the science that might tell us has been systematically nobbled.
“It is basic stuff.”
The basic science gets nowhere close to the IPCC projected impact and there is frankly no basis whatsoever for the prediction of some catastrophic tipping point – it’s a logarithmic effect, not an exponential one.