Owen Paterson

Wednesday

Owen Paterson

Owen Paterson’s speech on abandoning the 2050 climate change targets – full text

Tonight former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson gave the Global Warming Policy Foundation's annual lecture. Here's how he said we should go about ‘Keeping the Lights On’: I would like to thank Lord Lawson and the Global Warming Policy Foundation for inviting me to deliver the annual lecture - an important event in the calendar. As a member of the Cabinet for four years I supported Coalition energy policy. However I have become increasingly aware from my own constituency and from widespread travel around the UK of intense public dissatisfaction with heavily subsidized renewable technologies in particular onshore wind. I have used the last three months since leaving the Cabinet to learn more about the consequences of this policy. And what I have unearthed is alarming.

Saturday

Owen Paterson

When the (fish and) chips are down

There is much to commend this book. Charles Clover lays bare the depths of a neglected subject — the rape of our seas — to expose the destruction caused by modern technological fishing. This is an issue which needs populist exposure; Clover has done it admirably. I hope it will attract readers who might otherwise have shown no interest in the subject. The framework of his book is a series of visits to selected fisheries around the world and the lessons he gleaned from them. Every visit seemed to have a gruesomely early start, and to involve eating delicious fish; the author’s obvious pleasure was then mitigated by his guilt. Later he expiates this with fierce criticism of celebrity chefs who seem oblivious to the growing crisis he identifies.