The Telegraph: The shale gas revolution: green taxes will mean sky-high prices for dirt-cheap energy
A telling moment on Thursday’s Today programme neatly exposed the schizophrenic mess the Government is getting into over one of the most far-reaching issues of our time. The excitement of the day was the laborious statement whereby Ed Davey, our Energy Secretary, announced that he has been dragged very reluctantly into giving the go-ahead to “fracking” for shale gas.
It is hilarious how the shale gas revolution has pulled the rug from beneath all that green ideology which has been driving government policy to the point where we seem doomed to watch our energy bills soar through the roof – that is, if we can see at all after our lights have gone out.
The green obsessives who have hijacked our energy policy hate the very idea of shale gas. All the fraudulent calculations of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), and its shadowy guru, the Committee on Climate Change, rest on the assumption that energy from fossil fuels must become so expensive that it will eventually make the windmills and solar panels they dream of look competitive. Even Mr Davey, though, has grudgingly conceded that we will actually rely even more heavily on gas to keep our lights on when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining (which is, on average, about three-quarters of the time).
So, when faced with the prospect of gas becoming very much cheaper (as in the US, where its price has more than halved in four years), they lash out with every kind of make-believe allegation about how fracking will cause earthquakes, pollute our water supplies and ruin the countryside. It’s a last desperate attempt to fight off the most serious threat yet to the grand plan for railroading Britain into a “low carbon” future. MORE