Biofuels - a bad day for the environment

It is a sad day for the environment. The United Kingdom has decided that burning biofuels should happen in the United Kingdom’s power stations. Not only are biofuels – things like wood and palm oil- going to be burned to provide electricity for our televisions and luxuries, but these biofuels are going to be heavily subsidised.Germany and the Netherlands have already removed these subsidies from their power markets. Where they lead the United Kingdom refuses to follow. Our Energy Minister attacks those who point out that (a) the purpose of using renewable energy is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions not increase them and burning biofuels increases emissions and (b) the use of biofuels, particularly wood pellets can only be sustained by importing low energy density wood from places far away using fossil fuel and (c) using such biofuels as palm oil and corn destroys habitats and increases food prices.

The decision to subsidise biofuels was made by Parliament. It makes you wonder about the quality of the members of Parliament.

Apparently the Energy Minister, John Hayes, thinks that such scientific and environmental concerns are simply the product of bourgeois thinking. He described David King’s concerns as slightly detached and bourgeois. Mr King is the Chief Scientific Officer, and clearly no match for Mr Hayes’ mental capacities, whatever they are. Mr Hayes is, no doubt, a radical thinker of very little brain and less competence. He answers science with bluster and prejudice and insult.

Mr Hayes is almost certainly the wrong kind of person to be working as Energy Minister. He acts as though science is a matter of opinion, his opinion, and that is all that counts. It is very odd for a Conservative to claim that the views of the Chief Scientific Officer are detached and bourgeois, but then it seems that Mr Hayes is a person whose mind works in very odd ways. That strikes me as not a qualification that an Energy Minister should possess.