The Green Agenda Will Lead to Civil War
BY BEN PILE 26 APRIL 2024 9:00 AM
Chris Stark, the outgoing Chief Executive of the U.K. Climate Change Committee (CCC), is demob-happy. In a number of interviews, the highly-paid civil servant has criticised the Prime Minister for seemingly faltering in his commitment to Net Zero. This unguarded criticism is unusual in itself, unwittingly highlighting, rather than seeking to resolve, the increasing tensions between green ideological ambition and political reality. But it is Stark’s curious framing of the problems apparently holding climate policy back that is most revealing of the growing democratic deficit. The only things now sustaining the green agenda are the political establishment’s intransigence and sense of entitlement. And that increases the risk of catastrophic policy failure.
The CCC is a troubled organisation. Its former Chairman, pka John Gummer, now Lord Deben, left his role last year, and since then political disagreements between Westminster and the devolved governments have prevented the appointment of a permanent successor. Now, the CCC’s Chief Executive’s chair is also empty, and whoever steps into it has a much bigger set of problems to face than his or her predecessor.
This is all the more an irony because the CCC itself was summoned into existence by the Climate Change Act 2008 (CCA), which was the act not just of the dying days of the last Labour Government but also the expression of the cross-party consensus on climate change. MPs didn’t believe that they or their successors were able or should be free to represent their constituencies on matters of climate policies, and so only an ‘independent’ panel of experts – a quango, or Non-Departmental Statutory Body – would be able to set the terms of climate and energy policy, which the Act put beyond democratic control. Accordingly, the CCC has since its inception set the U.K.’s Carbon Budget. Now, however, the quarrelsome devolved parliaments – which were also created to bring all parts of Britain into harmonious consensus – and a growing sense of the impossibility of Net Zero makes it hard to fill the current vacancies. The pay is good, but you’d have to be daft to accept such a poisoned chalice. The climate agenda is literally out of control.
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/04/26/the-green-agenda-will-lead-to-civil-war/
