David Blackburn

“Saboteur” or realist?

Lord Lawson is Andrew Neil’s guest on this week’s BBC Straight Talk and, among other topics, the former chancellor rebuffs Ed Miliband’s accusation of climate change heresy. Lawson said:

“I hope that all parties…take a good hard look at this, we don’t want a sort of Stalinist monolithic line in everything.  But I do think, because of the damage that will be done to the economy, that is why, and for very little good, if any, that is why we have got to take a good hard look at the fact that we can’t get a global agreement on this anyway, as will be seen in Copenhagen…So, I think you have got to go back to the drawing board and have a fresh approach.  And that is why my think tank is the Global Warming Policy Foundation, it’s not the Global Warming Foundation, it’s the Global Warming Policy Foundation, because it is policy which is so damaging at the present time and threatening so much, and it doesn’t work and it can’t work, and that’s why we’ve got to think of another approach.”

Lawson’s comments are aimed at Cameron as much as anyone else, but he is not ‘denying’ the science, though I am sure he’s sceptical, and rightly so. Like David Davis, Lawson challenges the political approach inspired by the Prophet Stern, which will endanger global growth and condemn billions in the developing world to a slow and grinding death in poverty. Ed Miliband’s “saboteur” jibe proves what Fraser says in this week’s magazine: climate change has morphed from debate to catechism. It is now an issue bereft of rationality. A debate on policy, not science, is an immediate necessity – I fear all Copenhagen will amount to is a joyless shindig.

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