Energy Company Licence Revocation

Debate between David T C Davies and Julie Hilling

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

Yes, please do take note. People should not think I am saying anything now that I have not said before. Indeed, I more or less said it a few months ago at a meeting with the Global Warming Policy Foundation at which the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) was present. I am absolutely not going to hide my views on this.

Most Members are completely wrong on energy policy because they have all bought into the idea that we are going to suffer runaway global warming, and the reality is that that is not happening. We are being told to look at the evidence. The evidence is clear: there has been no increase in temperature since 1997. We are told that in the 1800s we started putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is of course true, that carbon dioxide is a global warming gas, which is true, and that therefore CO₂ has been responsible for the very small increase in temperature that has taken place since then. However, if one looks at the evidence, one can see that there has not been a straightforward rise in temperatures; they fell between 1940 and 1970. That proves that something else was affecting them. As we started to industrialise, we were coming out of a particularly cool period that climatologists call the little ice age, so there had to be some increase in warming anyway.

Since 1997, as I said, there has not been any increase in temperature. That proves beyond all doubt that something other than carbon dioxide is affecting the climate, and nobody can say what that is. Nobody has been able to tell me what it is, and I have had meetings with people at the Met Office and all sorts of other people. It is therefore foolish of us to levy on our industries all sorts of taxes and subsidies that are affecting manufacturing and pushing up prices for home owners, and then to try to put all the blame on to the big six energy companies, as we are doing now, using them as a kind of whipping boy for the sins of those of us who have bought into the big green theories.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is equally foolish to say, “It doesn’t matter then. We’re not quite sure why the climate is changing, so we’ll carry on pumping out CO₂ and pollutants into the atmosphere without any concern about what we’re doing to the world, because maybe, just maybe, it’s not having an effect”? Maybe it is having an effect? Is it not equally foolish to do nothing?

[David T. C. Davies]

Maybe it is and maybe it is not. Maybe, as the Prime Minister has suggested, we should be looking at dealing with antibiotics and the rise in diseases that are resistant to them. Maybe we should be doing something about a comet strike, which may or may not happen. Maybe we should be worried about a complete economic collapse—which, incidentally, is made far more likely by the policies of spending money that we do not have that are propagated by Labour Members. That is far more likely to keep me awake at night. Of course, we should also be very concerned about terrorism.