Bishop Hill has a posting up today about the gigantic folly that is the D(epartment) of E(nergy) and C(limate) C(hange).
Says the Bishop:
As we look at UK energy policy now, DECC has had the country make a massive financial gamble on the back of a prediction that was wholly unfounded and which has been obviously so for many years. We now learn that DECC has also distributed this astonishing wave of public money in a manner that can only be described as monstrously incompetent, and which many will assume to be monstrously corrupt…
Comment (Oct 3 9.32am) from “fen tiger”:
I have a relative who works at DECC, and has done since getting his masters. He’s an environmental economist (one of many in DECC, I imagine), briefing the likes of Huhne, Davey, and Gummer. He appears to know nothing whatever about the climate question, but is fully invested in the warming scare (condition of employment, I guess).
Closing DECC would obviously benefit the country: but it would also benefit many of those who work there. My relative is not an untruthful man, but he has worked since leaving university in an environment where systematic untruthfulness and wishful thinking are the norm; an environment where the taxpayer would get better value if he were paid to stay at home and do nothing. He desperately needs to get out and find a real job (although his qualifications won’t help with that).
This comment is anonymous partly because I don’t want to foment a family rift, and partly because I am ashamed of having a family member employed in this way.
But how to close DECC?
“Roger Tallbloke” (Oct 3 9.08am) had already commented earlier, thus:
Strategic action on the part of the consumer could actually make a difference and help get rid of DECC. This action is quite simple, and won’t take long or cost the consumer anything. Here’s what they need to do.
Vote UKIP.
Would that work? Is this a case where your vote might actually make a difference?
UKIP has turned into a me-too operation on most of the big items of state spending, as Ben Kelly writes in this Libertarian Home report of the recent UKIP conference. But on UKIP’s energy policies, Kelly writes this:
Energy – Ah, Roger Helmer; an intelligent and articulate man, an asset until you get him on the subject of gays or the finer details of rape. Then it’s hide behind your hands time. Luckily he was simply talking about energy policy today. He wants to scrap the Climate Change Act, cut all green taxes, end subsidies for wind farms and get fracking, creating a sovereign wealth fund with the tax income. It is the Guardian’s worst nightmare, and I like it.
Me too. It would be a worse Guardian nightmare if there wasn’t that bit there about “creating a sovereign wealth fund with the tax income”. But when it comes to voting, the question is not: What gets me everything? It is: Does anything get me anything?
Paul makes his standard comment – if they really care about C02 emissions they would back nuclear power.
Aah, but a proper sovereign wealth fund is invested in non-national assets (c.f. Norway’s); that would burst a few Guardian blood vessels.
How to close DECC?
1. Repeal the legislation that mandates Climate Change to be an issue.
2. Evacuate the Ministry.
3. Deploy Lancaster.
The major point that UKIP needs to stress in regards to energy is that if we follow the tenets of the Climate Change Act religiously and if the worst case scenario forcast by the models occurs, our sacrifice – our reversion to a third world energy generating system – will not make a smidgeon of a smidgeon of a difference to the global climate.
And many – perhaps most – of those in government or outside who push so hard for this nonsense know this. So why are they pushing this nonsense.
“We must set an example.”
So that’s why fewer and fewer countries are even remaining in the basic Kyoto agreement and no new countries – China for instance, or India – are even contemplating reducing their carbon footprint.
So what reason is left? Noble cause corruption. Or plain old corruption.
And our UKIP doorstepper should add that the whole AGW farce is nonsense.
Vfts, a “proper” sovereign wealth fund is a contradiction in terms. No nation which makes any pretense of being “democratic” has any business managing a “wealth fund”; leave that wealth in the hands of the citizens to whom it belongs, and who will stand a far better chance of investing it intelligently. Wealth funds belong only in monarchies like Saudi Arabia. Since all the wealth there belongs to the House of Saud anyway, it’s only reasonable that they invest it.