Britain Basks On

Remarkably enough, despite years of dynamic environmental leadership by the intellectual firebucket Owen Paterson, the gormless Andrea Leadsom and the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove, the Government has no plans for protecting the more expendable breeds of Briton from the effects of climate change; nor has it shown much interest in trying to mitigate the effects themselves. If one did not know better, one might almost suspect that the Conservative Party didn't care very much. Fortunately, the Committee on Climate Change obviously does know better: it has professed itself "shocked" at the Government's inaction, while most of us who have spent some portion of the last few years on the present planet can hardly aspire any longer even to mild surprise. Slightly shocking in itself, at least for a managerial political culture based almost entirely on rah-rah and media projectiles of the expired feline persuasion, will be the CCC's assertion that setting targets with no intention of enforcing them is not a particularly effective way of getting things done, and that if changes are to be effected upon the reality-based community, actual alterations in policy may occasionally be required.