Dave revisited

Part of the Climate Clinic blog

So, having lambasted the leader of the opposition for being all talk, perhaps in fairness I should talk a bit more about what he talked about. It's mostly good stuff. Blair may have said that climate change is our biggest threat and challenge, but he clearly hasn't put it at the top of his to-do list (although as Bush seems to have editorial control that's not really surprising). Cameron stands in marked contrast for having given the issue as much time as Tony's apocalyptic pronouncements imply that it deserves, so firstly that should be acknowleged - every time Cameron has spoken about the climate, he was sacrificing the opportunity to talk about law and order or some other issue which might have given him a political benefit. Talk may be cheap, but it isn't free.

Full marks for quantity then, but what about quality? Well, the Tories appear to be slightly ahead of Labour on aviation, although every sensible statement comes accompanied by a disclaimer expressing their reluctance to interfere with anyone's holiday plans. Statements on emissions from road transport are similarly double-edged, but given their history, getting the Tories to even approach Labour on this issue is a major achievement. However, Cameron's real advantage lies in energy.

Blair's commitment to nuclear energy has followed the same path as his commitment to regime change - a decision taken on no discernable grounds, and then a farcical scramble to devise a workable justification, which ends up convincing nobody at all, except possibly Tony. Cameron should be adamantly opposed to nukes, both because it is a distraction in the climate debate at a time when we can ill-afford such silliness, and because it offers political opportunities based around people's lack of enthusiasm for the technology and Blair's embarrassingly inept attempt to rig the arguement. On the other hand, the Conservatives have generally been fairly pro-nuke, and reforming the Conservative party was always going to be a struggle.

Cameron's line on nukes, as he put it forward last night, was that they might be needed, but the sensible approach is to give genuinely green technologies such as wind, wave, tidal, solar etc. a fair shake of the stick first, as if they can do the job, that would clearly be preferrable. Now, presuming that Cameron is being strictly honest here, I think that's entirely sensible. I have no doubt whatsoever that were renewables given a fraction of the subsidies showered on nukes over the years they would have no problem at all producing more energy than we need, and Dave seems to have some grasp of the blockages which need shifting to make this happen.

So why not rule nukes out altogether? Well, that would amount to saying that if renewables, having been given a fair chance, didn't come up with the goods, then we'd just have to keep using fossil fuels until we ran out of people. Environmentalists agree that catastrophic climate change is a far more serious threat than nuclear power, and so if the only choice we had was nukes or fossil fuels, even Greenpeace would favour nukes. Fortunately there is a better option, and that's the one Cameron and Greenpeace favour.

Before we're inundated with emails about the view from your kitchen window being more environmentally important than the climate, neither Greenpeace nor Cameron expect on-shore wind to do the job on its own. Wind, in the form of micro-turbines, on-shore and off-shore wind farms, would play a major role, but the key, central concept on which all of the varied energy efficiency and renewable technologies hang, is decentralised energy. This, to me, is Cameron's best bit of talk, the bit that separates him out from the many politicians who bandy the word 'renewable' around just to try and sound modern.

"Decentralised energy" means that Cameron has got past the realisation that a windmill or a solar panel can make electricity, and understands the challenges and benefits of implementing an integrated energy network with all of its complexities. If wind power is penecillin, then DE is the NHS. Dave, I salute you.

Presuming, of course, that you are being strictly honest.