The govt is finally catching up with the ASI

A second day for the ASI to celebrate. It may have taken HMG four years to catch up with our policy on a bad bank, but it took just six months for our arguments on green taxes to win through. In April’s blog, “An end to Zombie politics”, we called for the government to “suspend surcharges on energy bills [and] subsidies to energy suppliers or technologies”. Yesterday Cameron told the House of Commons that he is doing just that. There has been a certain amount of backing and filling since, with today’s Times suggesting that the Government may pick up costs no longer funded from energy bills. This sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul misses the point. The most recent IPCC report altogether rejects the alarmism formerly propelling green policy. In addition, reviews of the climate change literature point to the benign effect for the next fifty years of such warming as may occur. To use the slogan of climate change campaigners, “the science is settled”, that is settled against the expensive green policies which the government seems set to abandon.

And while in self-congratulatory mood, let’s note that our call for an acceleration of shale exploration was endorsed overnight by the National Trust, also reinforced by the agony of the Grangemouth complex, unable to compete with cheap American feedstock.

Whatever next? Let’s set up our scorecard on the policies we were calling for earlier in the year.