On being appointed Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in May this year, our MP Amber Rudd said she wanted to “unleash a new solar revolution”. Within a few weeks of taking office, Amber Rudd was announcing the government’s decision to abandon nearly all forms of support for renewable energy including solar.
Why this sudden change of heart? As a member of the Cabinet, our MP has to toe the line. But you wonder who is deciding which line to take. The boss – David Cameron – said only five years ago he wanted the coalition government to be “the greenest government ever”.
He stood next to his ministers and said to the assembled civil servants in the Department of Energy and Climate Change: “There is a fourth minister in this department who cares passionately about this agenda and that is me, the prime minister, right, I mean that from the bottom of my heart.” He went on to say: “Nowhere are long-term decisions more needed than actually in the fields of energy and climate change and environment.”
My guess is that the people responsible for these thoughtless and damaging policies are George Osborne and his friends who include the redoubtable and increasingly odd former Chancellor Nigel Lawson and his “Global Warming Policy Foundation”.
The recent policies and incentives implemented by the Department of Energy and Climate Change had genuinely started a revolution – a second industrial revolution. The first revolution was founded on coal and abundant carbon-based energy, the second will be solar. The UK was leading the way.
What happens now is up to us.
Do we want to continue to try and exploit the last drop of fossil fuel, drilling in every part of the British countryside – including Kent and Sussex – or do we want to move on from fossil fuels and boldly go into a sustainable low carbon future?
Maybe we should let our MP know.
Email her at: amber.rudd.mp@parliament.uk
Or do you disagree ? Then use the comment box below.
Christopher Strangeways is a committee member of the Rother Environmental Group.Image background by Sundance Solar, Photo of Amber from her website
This is the first time comments on stories in Rye News has been possible. I think this is a good thing and and I hope it will encourage a robust but polite debate when opinions are divided.
Of course if you actually agree with anything we say then it would be good to hear from you too.
I understand that not all comments will be published but that Rye News has some guidelines to ensure an impartial approach.
There’s a fine irony in Mr Strangeways threatening us with the horrors of “… drilling in every part of the British countryside – including Kent and Sussex …” when we already have the local landscape dominated by the subsidy farm at Cheyne Court and blighted by the solar acreage on once productive farmland at New Romney.
Comments are closed.