Last month the manufacture and import of the humble 100 watt lightbulb was banned. By 2012 – in just 3 years – the sale of all incandescent light bulbs will also be banned thanks to the European Ecodesign Directive. The EU says,
The measure on household lamps was prepared after in-depth technical and economic study, extensive consultation of all interested parties including consumer organizations, environmental NGOs and lamps and luminaires manufacturers. It was endorsed by the Council of Member States and the European Parliament and formally adopted by the Commission on 18 March 2009 (Commission Regulation N° 244/2009 on the eco design of household lamps).
But do you remember voting for a party that said it would ban the bulb at any local, national, or EU elections?
The ‘consultation of all interested parties’ in the creation of this legislation extended as far as the likes of Greenpeace. But your‘representative’ – if there was any – didn’t think to ask you what you thought.
You might say, ‘So what, Godfrey, it’s just light bulbs’. But the Eco design Directective doesn’t stop at light bulbs.
Over the next few years, it will control the manufacture and import of air-conditioning and ventilation systems, heating equipment, kitchen appliances, tools, computer hardware, fridges, televisions, DVD players, games consoles, stereo systems, and video recorders.
And it doesn’t stop there.
The EU landfill directive forced local governments to change the way they collect and process waste. Consequently you are forced to limit the amount of rubbish you produce – no matter how big your family or whatever your circumstances happen to be.Now you have to waste your time sorting your waste into different containers correctly, under the threat of fines.
For busy and especially for older people – just as with the banning of light bulbs – this kind of authoritarian legislation and regulation causes confusion and distress.
For people living in rural areas, it has meant living near rotting piles of human excrement – sewage sludge – that would have gone to landfill, but are instead left in fields. They cause a stink like you would not believe, and are spread over the crops that we are supposed to eat.
The weak-kneed UK government, wishy-washy opposition parties, and supine local authorities are indifferent to your views and are entirely obedient to each and every EU directive like this that gets issued. They could not challenge these instructions, even if they wanted to. Your representatives are impotent, and are being made to act against you.
An unprecedented democratic deficit is developing in the UK. Our interests are being ignored for the benefit of a vast, pointless and self-serving bureaucracy.
You may well think that regulations concerning light bulbs and refuse collection are trivial. But a lot more is on the cards. I believe these changes will cause even more damage to UK jobs and industry and to our economy than they have already suffered, and the liberties that we enjoy will be taken away, bit by bit. What took the British people hundreds of years to create is being destroyed by the EU and by our leaders’ preoccupation with the environment at the expense of your interests.
In December, the United Nations Climate Change Conference will meet in Copenhagen to build a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol that will bind countries to carbon emission reduction agreements. The EU and the UK government are fully committed to this process, and will be among the parties arguing for the strongest possible targets and regulation. I believe that they are doing this not on your behalf, but for the interests of a narrow political elite. And I believe they are doing this not on the basis of sound, consensus science, but after an entirely one-sided process that has excluded any dissenting opinion.
For example, the Tyndall Centre - an organisation charged with generating the evidence for the UK’s climate policies – published a report this week. As an article in the Telegraph says,
The report says the only way to avoid going beyond the dangerous tipping point is to double the target to 70 per cent by 2020.This would mean reducing the size of the economy through a "planned recession".
Kevin Anderson, director of the research body, said the building of new airports, petrol cars and dirty coal-fired power stations will have to be halted in the UK until new technology provides an alternative to burning fossil fuels."To meet [Government] targets of not exceeding two degrees C, there would have to be a moratorium on airport expansion, stringent measures on the type of vehicle being used and a rapid transition to low carbon technology," he said.
Prof Anderson also said individuals will have to consume less.
I do not believe that a recession – planned or otherwise – is a very good idea, and is certainly not in the interests of the British public, even if it happens to suit the ambitions of Professor Ansderson and the likes of Lord Peter Mandelson. I do not believe that the argument for a planned recession has a sound scientific basis that has been subject to the scrutiny it badly needs. I believe it is simply politically expedient to our useless political leaders because it explains their failure to manage the UK economy.
On this blog, I will attempt to address the problems I have outlined above. I will be reporting on the machinations of the EU environment committee, of which I am a member. I will give you the lowdown on the torrent of EU and UK environmental legislation that is heading your way. I will be showing how the climate ‘debate’ is dominated by just a few high-profile and self-serving individuals for whom ‘green’ really is the colour of money. I will be showing how the media coverage of the debate is skewed. And over the coming months I will be adding to this site many pages of information about the science, economics and politics of the climate debate.
But democracy is about more than me telling you what I think. I want to hear from you, about what you think. I have built this site to allow visitors to add their views.
One of the things I hear most from people about is the issue of wind farms and how they have made people’s lives a misery, and are destroying Britain’s natural beauty. So the first section of this site I have added so that readers can keep me informed concerns wind farms.
Do you live near a built or planned wind farm? Is there a wind farm that you feel has destroyed, or threatens to destroy a place you love? I want to hear your story, and I would like you to share your thoughts here on this site. Let me know how the building of a wind farm affected you and the area surrounding it. You could send photos with your story.
Do you live near a planned or proposed wind farm site? Tell me about what you think the wind farm will do to the area. If there is a local campaign to stop the wind farm, let me know, and keep me informed about your news. I want this site to put people in touch with each other, not just me, whether they vote for me or not.
Do you have photos of a wind farm site, before and/or after its construction? Show the other visitors to this site what a wind farm does to an area. I would like to collect before and after images of every single wind farm in the UK so that there can be no doubt about the senseless destruction that wind farms have caused, in the name of ‘saving the planet’.
Do you have access to a video camera, or a mobile phone with a video function? You, with a friend, or even a group, could record your thoughts in a ‘video diary’ or ‘piece to camera’ at the wind farm site in question. You could then either upload it to Youtube, or send it to me, so that we can show that there are many good reasons for the objection to these hideous, pointless and destructive machines.
Let us stop the attack on all of the good things – democracy, trade, industry, and freedom – that the British people have given their lives and their life’s work for. Let us stop the endarkenment.
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