The Millennium Irritant.

Thursday 26 October 2006

Conservative “green” tax proposals will erode everyone’s living standards (with the exception of those on the “global warming” gravy train) and all for nothing.

Once again the Conservative Party's naïve young leader has demonstrated his failure to grasp the fundamentals of the linkage between so-called "environmental" taxes and the erosion of the economies and living standards in the developed nations. Mr Cameron talks of "shifting the burden of tax from families, aspiration and opportunity to pollution and carbon emissions."

While I have no problem with taxes on genuine pollution it is with regret that I observe the formerly rational Conservative party climbing on the carbon emissions band wagon.

There would be partial justification for Cameron’s approach were there firm evidence of adverse climate change conditions resulting from anthropogenic carbon dioxide generation.

However, it is an inconvenient truth for those who insist on this apocalyptic vision that the concept of adverse man-made effects on climate remains unproven. Those on the “global warming” gravy train predict dire consequences (different every time) as a result of this unproven phenomenon. It is, of course, by now de rigeur for these doom mongers to quote from the unlikely extreme limits of even their own unlikely “predictions”.

Cameron also seems to have been taken in by the Climate Change Fundamentalist dogma of consensus among scientists on the more esoteric predictions of climate change and its effects. Scientific truth is not arrived at by democratic consensus. There have been many instances in the recent past of overwhelming scientific consensus on a particular subject turning out to have been totally misplaced. Such is the nature of scientific progress. However, leaving that aside, it is fact that no such consensus exists among scientists on the extent of or the human influence on climate change. This is yet another inconvenient truth (I really must write to Al Gore and thank him for this useful phrase) for Climate Change Fundamentalists.

By advocating penalising action to be taken to mitigate the unlikely effects of unproven climatic trends Cameron and his supporters risk placing a serious check in the path of our economic growth. Taxing carbon emissions in any meaningful way will have a stifling effect on our manufacturing, aviation and transport industries. Since it seems possible that other western countries, including the hitherto sensible United States of America, may follow the same ill-advised course, major recession in Western economies could well follow. As well as seriously eroding standards of living for those in developed nations, such a recession would spell disaster for the poor of developing countries whose economies depend so heavily on the support of western nations.

What would Mr Cameron propose to do if, as a result of a future Conservative Government’s ill-judged “green” taxation, recession really begins to bite? He has talked of shifting taxation from families, sustainable revenue based on income, to “pollution”, an unsustainable source of revenue. In times of recession any government will be anxious to raise sufficient revenue to mitigate its worst social effects. In the absence of sustainable environment tax revenue the burden will have to put back on families.

Mr Cameron proposes all of this in the name of possibly mitigating the unlikely effects of an unproven phenomenon. While this nonsense remains Conservative policy it is to hoped that they get nowhere near forming a government.

Recently I criticised the Conservative Party for changing its leader more frequently than most of us change our socks. However, I must now bite back those words and urge all members of my former party to seriously reflect on the possibility of putting a new leader in place within the next 12 months. Then get ahead with dropping all this environmental silliness and concentrate on providing the United Kingdom with a decent government after the next election.

If the Conservative party falters in this task it is time for all of us on the democratic right of UK politics, inside or outside the Conservative Party, to seriously consider presenting the UK electorate with a real alternative to today’s life expired political parties.