Godfrey Bloom

So Copenhagen is over. A deal to “save the planet” from the ravages of global warming have failed. Meanwhile, in spite of all the hot air blowing in from Scandinavia, almost the entire of the UK has been under a sheet of snow and ice. Some parts of the UK have recorded temperatures as low as -16C.

What people will say to this is that weather is not climate. It’s a fair argument. But this weather is colder than the average by more than the amount of warming that alarmists get their knickers in a twist about. My point here is that while people are panicking about a rise of 2 or 3 degrees C over the next 100 years, a bigger drop in temperature has left many thousands of people across the UK – myself and my neighbours in Yorkshire included – stranded. It has caused travel chaos. It has caused accidents. It has cost a lot of money. It is cold weather that kills and costs.

Environmentalists will say that climate change will increase the frequency of extreme weather events. But there exists virtually no evidence that this is either happening, or will happen. Wild claims about increased storm intensity have proven to be sheer bunk. “But what about floods and droughts, Godfrey”, I hear the Greens whinging. To the first, I would point out that – if it is true that we face, or have faced increased rainfall as a result of climate change, which I happen to doubt – floods are more easily prevented than we like to imagine. We simply need to get off our arses, much as our Victorian great-great-grandfathers did, and start building the kind of things they managed to build over a century ago. Huge dams, reservoirs, and artificial lakes and channels were constructed during the industrial revolution. The stuff about droughts we can answer in the same way. Why was this possible over a century ago, but not now?

“But what about the thousands of people who died in the 2003 European heatwave, Godfrey”, the whinge continues. The fact that old people aren’t looked after properly on the continent has nothing to do with climate change. All that was needed to protect these people were air-conditioning units and glasses of water. Anyone who thinks that not driving your car will make life better for old people is already senile. And it is of course the cold which has always done for old people far worse than hot weather.

So there we have it. Three solutions to three problems of climate change – if it exists – solved in just two paragraphs.

But it’s not so easy to solve the problem of cold weather. Imagine the same conditions we are experiencing now, after Brown, Mandelson, and Miliband have constructed their Green Utopia in the UK. The snow rolls in. The ice grips. Temperatures plummet. What happens next? First, thousands of wind turbines stop moving as they either seize up in the frost, or the wind stops blowing as high pressure develops over the UK. This leads to blackouts, leaving millions of homes without electricity, heat and light. Nobody has gas anymore – it’s too polluting. And few people can afford to run a car on the measly carbon rations that the government doles out. People are stuck in their freezing homes, and unable to reach isolated and elderly friends and relatives. It is only now that we realise the value of things like 4x4 cars, and coal-fuelled power stations. Britain will be well and truly broken.

The deal that was sought last week at Copenhagen was intended – if you believe the hyperbole – to address the problem of climate change. If it turned out to be successful, would sea-level remain static? Would there be no more floods in Britain? Would there never be a drought again? No. No. And no.

Changes in sea level, and weather-related problems would continue, just as they always have. All that would happen after a deal in Copenhagen is that we would be poorer and less equipped to deal with them. By being poorer, the same weather might in fact affect us more severely. The world’s leaders are worried about climate. But what affects us is weather. We can deal with weather if we’ve got the right stuff... a functioning energy supply, good vehicles, and plenty of money to throw at problems when they turn up. ‘Climate’, to us folk who know what weather is because we live in it, is a nonsense term. It is a political invention, an absurd and useless abstract idea. I don’t care about the climate, I care about the weather. It’s not the climate that’s going to stop you getting to work, it’s the weather.

So, thank the heavens that a costly and dangerous treaty has been avoided.

In fact, thank China. The disappointed delegates returning from Copenhagen have started pointing their fingers at the East, saying that the Chinese delegation prevented a deal being reached.

It is curious, isn’t it, that it is a non-democratic country like China that is being blamed by representatives from ‘democratic’ countries like the UK for the failure of undemocratic conferences like the one in Copenhagen. As I’ve said in previous blog posts, polls show that most people in the UK aren’t buying the government’s green agenda at all. So the government’s campaign to get the entire world to sign up to a legally-binding treaty is a decision they have taken against the public mood and against the interests and will of individuals, and the country as a whole. Our arrogant politicians took it upon themselves to act without winning, let alone having, the public debate. It is China – where nobody votes – that best represented the interests of its own, and our populations. What does that say about our democracy?

Copenhagen is dead. But the ambition has not gone away. New ways will be found to ram the green agenda down your throats, whether you want it or not. The feckless and reckless at Westminster and Brussels won’t stop this nonsense just because they didn’t manage to bully the rest of the world into agreement. The new year, in the wake of Climategate, and the failure of Copenhagen, the way in which the debate has changed will become clearer.

But the next week is about ignoring environmentalists’ complaints about our Xmas-carbon-footprints, and eating until we pop, drinking until we drop, and enjoying ourselves. I wish you and your families a very happy Christmas, and a prosperous new year.

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