Their timing is not just impeccable, it's a gas:
With breathtaking abruptness, the British government has in recent months slashed its support for solar power and other renewable forms of energy, leaving a once-promising industry with grim prospects and throwing into doubt the country’s commitment to clean power.
If it were promising, it wouldn't have needed government subsidies. Or, in other words, "clean power" is NO power.
The moves have baffled environmentalists, business leaders and even many government allies. Britain has long been in the vanguard of efforts to combat global warming. It has been expected to play a leading role — alongside the Obama administration — in efforts to secure a package of tough reforms at the U.N. climate change summit in Paris, which kicks off at the end of this month.
But the decision to cut hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of support for renewable energy at home, with a planned 87% reduction in subsidies for solar power, threatens to undermine Britain’s international authority, while showing just how difficult it can be for a developed nation to break a centuries-long addiction to fossil fuels.
Pretty much every nation on Earth is "addicted" to electricity. Fossil fuels are the most economical and efficient fuel source there is. It's not complicated, really.
Parenthetically, aren't the British isles about the worst place on the planet, aside from the poles, to make solar power a top priority? Doesn't it rain there an awful lot? And doesn't that mean frequent and heavy cloud cover? Sounds like something out of a Benny Hill skit.
The only reason the greenstremists are " baffled" is because they don't understand capitalism. So I'll explain it to them veeeeery sloooooowly and use as many monosyllabic words as I can: The Brits came to their senses. Or you could say that they got a better offer: Natural gas, which is much cheaper and more plentiful and to which their old power plants can easily be converted. And they've ceased to throw money away on "green" fantasies in service to a cause that is a complete fraud. Would that we were following London's example.
And those "wind farms" (a double entendre that also sounds like a Benny Hill skit) turn out to have an awfully big carbon footprint:
Wind farms are typically built on upland sites, where peat soil is common. In Scotland alone, two thirds of all planned onshore wind development is on peatland. England and Wales also have large numbers of current or proposed peatland wind farms.
But peat is also a massive store of carbon, described as Europe’s equivalent of the tropical rainforest. Peat bogs contain and absorb carbon in the same way as trees and plants — but in much higher quantities.
British peatland stores at least 3.2 billion tons of carbon, making it by far the country’s most important carbon sink and among the most important in the world.
Wind farms, and the miles of new roads and tracks needed to service them, damage or destroy the peat and cause significant loss of carbon to the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change. [emphasis added]
No, not really. Although we certainly need it to to offset the mini-ice age that's on the horizon. Still, it's at the same time amazing and completely unsurprising that the greenies didn't think of that little detail. I guess that's what happens when your case and cause are based on lies and fiction and facts are whatever you need them to be instead of intractably objective and grounded in reality.
The next logical step would be the Brits skipping Greenapalooza altogether. Why bother attending after having peed in the enviros' punch bowl? All they're going to get is flack and ritualistic denunciations for "destroying the planet" and "selling out" to "Big Oil" and so forth. Better to stay home in their nice, warm, toasty, and more prosperous isles and keep setting that newfound good example.
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