George Osborne’s attempt to backtrack on green policies by supporting a new “dash for gas” ran into trouble after the incoming head of the Government’s climate change committee said future economic growth would be impossible without more renewable energy.
The comments from John Gummer, who has been chosen to chair the independent Committee on Climate Change, came amid growing signs that the Chancellor is leading a headlong Government retreat from David Cameron’s much-vaunted commitment to lead “the greenest government ever”.
Suspicions were raised last week that the Prime Minister had accepted the need to downgrade green policies, which many Tory MPs see as too expensive in a recession, when he promoted climate skeptics in his reshuffle. He switched Owen Paterson, who has made clear that he is opposed to wind farms, to Environment Secretary, and made another green skeptic, John Hayes, Energy Minister.
Speaking to the Observer days before taking up his appointment at the head of a committee that includes many of the country’s top climate scientists, Gummer (now Lord Deben) said he was convinced that current Government policy, which backs the increased use of renewable energy was the only way forward.
“I think there can be no growth unless there is green growth,” he said, stressing that population growth would put increasing pressure on finite resources such as gas, while renewable energy was a natural limitless resource. “If we want to grow in this world, we can only grow in a green way,” said Gummer, a Tory Environment Secretary in the 1990s.
Source: GreenWise
