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Tuesday, December 08, 2009

"Expert" team

You just can't make it up, can you....
Bosses from some of Scotland's main energy companies are to advise the Scottish government on achieving its climate change targets.
The experts include:
  • Ian Marchant (Chair), Scottish and Southern Energy
  • Nick Horler, ScottishPower
  • Gordon Grant, Ineos (Grangemouth oil refinery)
  • Nicola Shaw, FirstGroup
  • Brian Souter, Stagecoach
This new group brings together a wide range of expertise to examine in detail the actions needed across Scotland to meet our ambitious climate change targets.
Yes, but, with the Chair having such heavy vested interests in certain courses of action, is the credibility of the Group (Committee? Panel?) not already compromised.

As Alex Salmond says:
There should be no doubt climate change is the greatest environmental threat we face.
Can't argue too much with that, but that surely calls for decisive and urgent action, by the Government, and not the creation of another talking shop to confirm the vested interests of various industry representatives.

There's no timescale for action; no detail of when and how reports will be made; and no details of their remit. These may come out in time, but the lack of time is the key issue.

Next week, the Corleone family are advising the Government on crime policy.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a controversial question which strikes me as rather important. We are told that the timescale for reducing emissions is critical and short-term, if the world is to avoid catastrophe. But so far a lot of effort has gone into talking and targets and not very much has happened else.

Politicians seem to be spending an astounding amount of time, in fact years, arranging incentives and subsidies and fiddling with legislation, and setting up quangos. However despite this and all the grandiose claims about Scotland's and indeed the UK's potential for renewables and clean technology, everyone is in agreement that these are going to take a very long time, way past the critical deadline to achieve. This being mainly due to practical limitations such as the availability of finished working designs, raw materials, components, installation capacity etc, etc. In the meantime we are heading for a burning.

As the situation is so critical should we not be considering new nuclear as this would allow us to decimate our emissions in a relatively short and predicable timescale, i.e. a few years. The SNP is totally against this, but inevitably we are all going to be using nuclear generated electricity as we are all party to the same 'national grid'.

Anonymous said...

I agree. Nuclear is the way forward. The jobs it creares in west Cumbria (Sellafield), Somerset (Hinkley) and Kent (Dungeness for example) is immense.

Long gone are the days of scares about dangers etc. All these developments are near major population centres too.

Bring on nuclear and cut the flannel.

Anonymous said...

Could you explain yourself 3.02, you sound a bit reactionary.

Anonymous said...

4:15
Well, I'm not 3.02 but I do reflect on Chernobyl, Three mile island, Hiroshima, Johnson Island, and Muroroa.
Oh, and come to think of it, a bit closer to home there is Sandiside beach.

There are parts of Wales where it is still forbidden to sell sheep off the hill for human consumption because of the fallout from Chernobyl

I also see the massive rise in incidences of cancer in the southern isles which appears to be the cause of most "young' deaths.

Push for nuclear anyone?

Anonymous said...

Hmm its a problem isn't it and an interesting moral issue - that we in Scotland will be relying on stable base-load electricity supplied from nuclear power stations down south but are rejecting the technology up here because of the perceived risks.

We will also continue to be reliant on coal and gas, which are similarly associated with primary pollution, deaths and ultimately the imminent crisis of climate change which, if the environmental groups are right is going to kill many hundreds of time more people than the nuclear generation incidents. I don't think bringing bombs into it is useful.

Anonymous said...

11.09 couldn't have put it better myself (3:02)