Pretending to be green comes with heavy price

If agreed, she says, it could save the island £200m. over the next few decades compared with carrying on as we are now.

She accepts that many islanders are struggling with the cost of living. Yet she tells us ‘our proposals have got strong support from across the energy industry and business sector’. What a surprise!

Bankers are also rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of all those ‘investments’ in green/sustainable banking.

Apparently, the energy strategy doesn’t ask for any funding commitments or even ask the States to agree any specific components (whatever that may mean).

Having just said that she and her committee aren’t asking for any funding from the States she then continues ‘we are currently on course to spend close to £2bn.’. Is it any wonder that P&R has requested some clarification of the costing.

She tells us that demand for electricity is growing partly because more people are switching to electricity from other energy sources. Surely, she must be aware that the people are not being given any choice. These policies will bankrupt Western nations and greatly enrich others.

Environmentalists have persuaded politicians (of all colours) that CO2 (a greenhouse gas) is a danger to our planet. Two weeks ago Mr Guiteres, secretary-general of the United Nations, announced to the world that ‘the planet is now boiling’.

If he and the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] really believed that nonsense surely they would order Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to cease using fossil-fuelled power stations let alone stand by and watch them build even more every week. Or do their emissions miraculously have no effect on global temperatures?

I could go on at some length (and usually do) but there really seems little point in bemoaning the fate of this island. Politicians in the UK legally bound their country to aim for ‘net zero’ by 2030. I don’t remember any referendum to decide that act. Guernsey has now signed the Paris Accord. Were we asked about that? Of course not! The taxpayers will pay a very heavy price for this virtue signalling.

Can we not see the hypocrisy in ‘pretending’ to be green, while all of our requirements – cars, computers, phones etc. – are produced in countries far away. Their pollution, not ours. Aren’t we virtuous?

I’ll finish here and leave you to digest my rant. Talking of digestion, perhaps you might like a couple of grasshoppers with your meal. Soon we won’t have any cattle, sheep or pigs and the poor farmers will be growing crops not for human consumption but to go as biomass to Drax power station.

Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts. I suspect that it might be a long hard winter. Despite all the useless computer-modelled doom I suspect that by the end of this century there will be scares about ‘global cooling’. It will still have nothing to do with CO2 and everything to do with ‘natural variation’.

P N HUGO

St Andrew’s