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Corruption of Bribery
Chapter 6 : Corruption in the “Carbon World”
In plain English this means that even worthless measures are justified if by causing inconvenience
to citizens they demonstrate political “seriousness”. This is no different from the Bribery Act’s
concentration on trivia such as hospitality and facilitation payments. The principle seems to be
that if politicians hyperventilate over the importance of trivia, to cause maximum inconvenience,
citizens will be impressed and will not complain when power bills increase by 100%. This is known
in skulduggery circles as "getting your foot in the door".
An Impact Assessment was signed off by Miliband the Younger, running to 124 pages of
economic twaddle. There is not a word about:
any benefits from alleged “global warming”
the power crisis that will hit the UK post 2015
the domination of Russia and China in a post 2015 world
the euphemistically labelled carbon leakage and the massive loss of British jobs
the impact on the competitiveness of British businesses
The assessment continues with yet another statement of – as Monty Python would say – “the
bleedin’ obvious”:
“The benefits of UK action will be distributed across the globe. In the case where the UK acts in concert with other
countries then the UK will benefit from other nations’ reduced emissions and would be expected to experience a
large net benefit. Where the UK acts alone, though there would be a net benefit for the world as a whole, the UK
would bear the costs of the action and would not experience any benefit from reciprocal reductions elsewhere.
The economic case for the UK continuing to act alone where global action cannot be achieved would be weak”.
But you can bet the UK and EU will push ahead even without “global action”; self‐flagellation is
now in the DNA especially when there is a sniff of a “noble cause” about, the chance to prove
European superiority and leadership or, more importantly, to raise yet more taxes.
5.6.2 The Fourth Carbon Budget
Over 3oo pages of the “Fourth Carbon Budget” (covering the period from 2023 to 2027) were
published in June 2011 by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). This is an independent
statutory body established under the Climate Change Act (2008) “to advise the UK and devolved
administrative governments in setting and meeting carbon budgets and preparing for climate
change and to put the UK on trajectory of an 80% reduction by 2050”.
It is chaired by Lord Adair Turner of Eccinswell (also Chairman of the Financial Services Authority
and a very busy person), and its membership (consisting primarily of academics with impressive
"green" credentials) is nominated by the British government. It would have been sensible to
appoint a few sceptics and hard‐nosed business people to the Committee, but that is not the way
things are done when a “noble cause” is being pursued because you don’t want any dissent.
To imply that the “budget” is overly complex would be an understatement. In fact, although it
might be uncharitable to say so, the document gives the impression that it was written with the
C:\Cobasco\NEW BOOK ON BRIBERY AND CARBON\For Cobasco Web Site Remove Chapters\Chapter 6 Corruption in 23
the Carbon World for Gower.docx | A SHORT HISTORY OF GLOBAL COOLING
Warming
