Most of us accept the science that says CO 2 is a greenhouse gas, and accept manmade CO 2 is an influence on the climate. Clearly, however, most people do not think there is a manmade CO 2 driven climate emergency, because if they did we would see jet travel plunging, car use falling, meat diets disappearing, heat pumps flying off the shelves and many other behavioural changes.

Instead polls tell us people are against dearer fossil fuel energy. They oppose higher petrol taxes, oppose schemes to make it more difficult to use  cars and vans, oppose wind farms and pylons near their homes and are angry about climate protesters trying to block roads and attacking petrol companies.Only a small minority buy all electric cars.

Many voters would like government to limit UK CO 2 by enforcing a major reduction in migration numbers. We would like more home grown food to cut the food miles  rather than wilding schemes to boost imports. We support promoting fuel efficiency.

Some say in a temperate climate like the UK a possible average rise of temperature of say 2 degrees might help agriculture, as would some increase in CO 2.There have been many changes in climate during earth history. Some think adaptation is a more affordable and practical response as and when change occurs. It is self evidently true that unless China, India and the US reduce their CO 2 output nothing we do can stop more rises in world CO 2. It is also obvious importing instead of making and growing at home usually increases world CO 2 so it is not a win. The Green party who promote climate crisis as their lead issue never get out single figures in the polls.

Sir John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con):
When will the Government do something about the very high energy prices in this country, which have been made high by regulations and taxes? Does my right hon. Friend not accept that any kind of steelmaking will be extremely difficult if we have uncompetitive energy, and is it not wrong to import such materials, because it will mean even more carbon dioxide emissions, as well as destroying jobs here?

David T. C. Davies (Secretary of State for Wales):
We have looked carefully at the losses that Tata is making, which have come about partly because of the age of the infrastructure. In fact, Tata has had to close down the furnaces at the Morfa coke ovens within the last few weeks. The UK Government are fully cognisant of the cost of energy at the moment, which is why Tata has already benefited from many of the schemes that we have introduced over the past few years, will begin to benefit from the British industry supercharger scheme shortly, and will benefit from the carbon border adjustment mechanism at the start of 2027.

The more government we have the worse it is. I have more government than I want, more government than I need and more government than I can afford.

It is great news we have got rid of the needless, prying, interventionist EU government . Too many place still have three layers of local government with County,  district and town or parish. There are then national quangos and regional quangos.

Wokingham has a Borough Unitary rather than County and District. That avoids disputes and confusions over which Council does what and saves a double overhead. I did with others successfully press to get rid of the regional Development Agency but we are now lumbered with a useless, annoying and expensive  LEP, though it is cheaper than the RDA.

Elected Mayors are prone to playing national politics in preference to doing the day job of improving and supervising local public services. Mayor Kahn has damaged London with his anti driver measures, his failure to control knife crime and his inability to run a good value strike free public transport system, The overlap with the London Boroughs causes tensions and extra cost, especially over planning.

The low level of turnout at many of the elections and the low level of support for all the main parties with Labour topping the polls with just 35% on the national calculation displays a big gap between what the public want and will support and what the parties are offering.

Councils spend huge sums of money. They have extensive powers over our roads, schools, social services, planning, trading standards, the public estate, sport and leisure. Many of them claim poverty and blame the government for their excesses and mistakes.

The more Councils claim to be incapable of marshalling their resources to serve us better, the less interest there is by many in voting or engaging with them. Instead of building a strong local democracy their incompetence and denials of responsibility encourage people if they do wish to engage to gravitate their complaints or opinions to government or Parliament.Many people assume their Council will continue to ignore their needs and wishes as it has so often in the past.

The Liberal Democrat Wokingham Council is a good  example of what is wrong. They spend money on consultations, only to ignore the results. They waste millions on road projects that make our roads worse, impede people living their lives and damage local businesses. They have amnesia about their decisions when people complain about what they are doing.

I went to the GWF lecture given this year by Professor Judith Curry. As a non climate scientist I do not campaign against the establishment scientific view on global warming. I have asked various questions in speeches and writings about the data, models and predictions. Professor Curry’s book and lecture argues that the fundamental proposition adopted by the UN and most governments that the world is warming caused by man made CO 2 is not proven and subject to major uncertainties.

She confirmed that most of the climate models ignore changes in solar intensity and in volcanic activity and struggle with winds and clouds. She said there is no good agreed explanation for warming periods in earth history prior to man made CO 2. She did not rate the chances of current models being right that highly. This blog gives those of you who do argue the establishment science is wrong to briefly make your case.

I will stick to making 3 main arguments about current policy.

1, It is absurd for the UK to close down energy using activities and to keep our oil and gas in the ground if we replace them with imports that increase world CO 2

2.The Green transition cannot work without widespread consumer buy in, which will need better and cheaper products than heat pumps and dear electric vehicles

3.Some of the proposed products of electric transition increase CO 2 especially as quite often our system cannot supply renewable power to run  them.