Tony Good, Greenies Bad

The man who first informed the Vicar of Downing Street about the propaganda advantages of greenwashing has accused environmentalists of hindering the War Against Warming. This is, of course, a standard New Labour tactic: the crisis in the NHS is the fault of doctors, nurses and patients; the crisis in education is the fault of teachers and pupils; the pensions crisis is the fault of people who pay National Insurance; the crisis of public confidence in the Metropolitan Police is the fault of the people who got shot. Sir David King caricatures the Green position as "let's get away from all the technological gizmos and developments of the 20th century" and "well, we'll just use less energy" and hence encounters little difficulty disposing of the argument. He "prescribes a barrage of technological measures based on nuclear energy, wind power, cutting emissions from cars and buildings, increasing the global area of solar panels by a factor of 700, and capturing and storing emissions from fossil fuel power generation" and also argues that "aviation has been unfairly scapegoated". So far, he has managed to persuade the Government of the case for nuclear power, based on the well-known renewable isotope of uranium, and for lots of airports; but the rest of these admirable measures seem to have fallen by the wayside. Those Luddites at Greenpeace certainly have some explaining to do.