World Leader on Climate Change Plans Painless Abdication

I am a martyr to my charitable nature. Less than twenty-four hours after I implied that New Labour was doing nothing to mitigate the approaching energy crisis, it turns out that New Labour is doing less than nothing. Some public-spirited soul has leaked documents to the Guardian which show that John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Corporate Pandering, intends to advise the Glorious Successor to abandon even the pitifully inadequate measures to which Tony Blair signed up, on the grounds that they involve "severe practical difficulties". Apparently the decidedly mixed blessing of an economy based on something that isn't going to disappear in a few years (what is a shortage if not a convenient business opportunity?) is not worth the trouble of "persuading the Ministry of Defence and the shipping industry to accept more offshore wind power", let alone shouldering the costs of research and development. Another of Hutton's complaints is that, if Britain is indiscreet enough to live up to its obligations, "it will undermine the role of the European emission trading scheme" and "reduces the incentives to invest in other carbon technologies like nuclear power". I suppose we must be grateful for the small mercy that Hutton's interest in medicine has gone into abeyance, or else we might be hearing why the use of penicillin faces severe practical difficulties on the grounds that it undermines the credibility of mercury and leeches. Hutton claims that it could cost four thousand million pounds a year to improve our policy to the extent that only 91% of our energy depends on things that are about to run out. Provided we cut down on certain other forms of waste, this would leave us with over two thousand million a year to spare.