Economic suicide

The Grauniad has an editorial which must rate as one of the most ridiculous even in a newspaper that excels in a long history of ridiculous editorials.

Yesterday's interim advice from the committee on climate change was short and strong: by 2050 Britain must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to below 80% of 1990 levels, rather than the 60% cut now proposed in the climate change bill. This tougher target, the report says, must be written into the bill before it becomes law.

It's well known that committees - much like CO2 with global warming - lag behind the event they are supposed to influence. The difference is that with CO2 the lag is several hundred years, but with committees it is much much longer. Nevertheless, the poseurs at the Guardian love it.

This excellent report is the first fruit of Britain's forthcoming climate change law. It comes from a committee proposed in the bill and set up at the start of the year, chaired by Lord Turner.

I mean, what sort of lunatic thinks we should have a law about "climate change"? We don't even know how or why climate changes - only that it does change all the time quite naturally.

We also know that our climate is influenced on a cosmic scale - by massive objects such as the Sun and major planets as well as the movement of our solar system around the galaxy - and they think we need a law to sort that out? It's as preposterous as proposing a "gravity" law, but I expect the Gruaniad would favour that as well if they thought they could wring yet more taxes out of the hard pressed public.

But if you thought that was bad enough - get a load of this from the Guardian editorial writers on planet la-la-land.

[C]limate change is now in the hands of three able politicians who do not want the issue to become a backwater: Mr Miliband, the Tories' Greg Clark and the Lib Dems' Steve Webb.

Yippee! We're all saved.

Who are they kidding? These are three professional politicians who have no real idea what life is like in the real world they are proposing to save. Add the fact that anyone who thinks that anything Britain does will make the slightest bit of difference to "climate change" is clearly not playing with a full deck and you have some notion of just how divorced the Grauniad is from reality.

The reality is that the proposal suggested by Lord Turner is akin to economic suicide. Lord Turner is a professional bureaucrat - a self-confessed "technocrat" - who not only chairs the committee on climate change, but is also involved in the FSA and was wearing that hat when he was advising the government yesterday about the economic crisis.

Judging by what he has proposed in his climate change report, Turner has looked at Britain's economic body as the life blood pours from the self-inflicted wounds on its wrists and his only suggestion is to slit the throat as well.