Over in the Telegraph on Sunday, an article by Chief Political Correspondent Nick Gutteridge worries that ‘Miliband’s “Net Zero zealotry leaves Britain vulnerable to Russia and China”‘. The piece echoes Conservative MP Nick Timothy’s letter to the Government’s National Security Advisor, Jonathan Powell, in which the former Number 10 insider warns about the possibility of attacks against Britain’s sea floor energy infrastructure – offshore wind farms and interconnectors. This hardware, lying unprotected on the sea floor, makes us vulnerable to sabotage from Russia and China, argues Timothy. But these arguments miss the point that Net Zero is already an act of self-sabotage and are somewhat silly.
As the saying attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte goes, “never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”. Britain once had a cheap, abundant and reliable source of energy, and had 24-7 supply of power. Shortly after the turn of the century, energy prices were a third of what they are now. But then Britain was quickly gripped by green ideology. Faster than the dash for gas, U.K. politicians set about dismantling what generations of Britain’s technicians, scientists and engineers had pioneered. They fancied themselves planet-savers, not industrial revolutionaries.
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