MEP attacks "climate change mania"
15 September 2008
Speaking at a Christian Aid Conference on Climate Change on Saturday (13 September) in Belfast, Jim Allister, Traditional Unionist MEP, defended the Environment Minister’s stance on climate change, after the Minister was attacked by several speakers.
Mr Allister told the conference no one disputed climate change was occurring – it always had and always would – the issue was how far man-made CO2 emissions were contributing. The MEP took issue with the green lobby’s hysterical analysis and reminded the audience that the world’s climate had always passed through distinct cycles, like the Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures were higher than now, but no one could blame factory emissions or agriculture or any man-related activity for that fact of history. Even in the 20th century we saw varying trends and despite all the clamour annual temperatures had fallen since 1998.
Attacking the EU for its unthinking endorsement of every tax-raising device generated by climate change mania, Mr Allister exposed its glaring hypocrisy in producing one of the biggest carbon footprints of any organisation by persisting in the folly of transporting MEPs, staff and documentation needlessly a week a month from Brussels to Strasbourg. “Further”, said Mr Allister, “we have so over-regulated our manufacturing industry by unreasonable demands on emissions that we are driving this sector to China and India where the same goods are produced with no regard to CO2 emissions or anything else, and then we transport the goods back to Europe, with no regard the extra carbon footprint created thereby. This whole climate change mania has got out of hand and is costing consumers dearly. Yes, we want to be as efficient in energy consumption as possible, yes it makes sense to use resources wisely, but the veritable industry of taxation which has been spuriously built on much of the nonsense that is talked about climate change is something which consumers should not have to bear.”
Mr Allister went on to criticise the promotion of biofuels by the unthinking green lobby, so that cereals were being used to produce biodeisel, rather than food, and in consequence world food stocks were at an all-time low and poverty in the third world was growing. “This is what comes from following the latest craze of eco-fanatics. The EU rushed headlong into promoting biofuels and only now is slowly coming to realise the full consequences as food prices rocket and food stocks dwindle. So, too, in time will the hysteria over climate change be seen to have produced wrongheaded and expensive policies for which we are all paying the price.”
