The cost of climate change policy – @mattwridley

Matt Ridley has posted his Times column on the cost and consequences of the government’s ill-conceived climate policy, here.

It doesn’t really matter where you stand on climate change –  unreal, real and devastating or real but not actually cataclysmic – no-one is ever served by bad policy, founded on poor analysis and dishonestly presented:

“We now know from three different sources that Britain’s climate and energy policy is not just too expensive but has also been dishonestly presented. Peter Lilley MP, an unusually numerate former cabinet minister, has written a devastating new report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, published today, on the costs of Britain’s Climate Change Act 2008. It reveals “at best economic illiteracy and at worst deliberate deception” by government…

“But even on true believers’ own terms — indeed, especially on those terms — the Climate Change Act has been disastrous. In devising its climate-dominated energy policy, government has proceeded as if cost was no object. That is economically irrational, morally wrong and politically foolish. It has needlessly put climate policy on a collision course with public opinion.”