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UK Government's Energy Policy

The hon. Gentleman says that it is a conspiracy. Although I do not always communicate very well, I read the arguments on all sides. I have children and I hope one day to have grandchildren, and I do not want to do anything that could damage the earth. What worries me when I make these comments or raise these questions is that people look at me as if I have just blasphemed. Indeed, it is worse than that, because blasphemy is perfectly acceptable these days. However, it seems that we should never question the idea that every rise in temperature that has taken place since 1750 is the result of man-made carbon emissions, and that the only way to get around it is to completely abandon industrialisation and return to some sort of pre-industrial era. I dismiss all such thoughts. I agree thoroughly with the idea of doing away with our dependence on carbon, because of the instability of the regions from which we derive most of those fuels. Our gas comes from parts of the middle east and the former Soviet Union. Our oil comes mainly from the middle east, and about 10% or 15% comes from Saudi Arabia. Much of it has to be transported through unstable parts of the world. It makes sense from any point of view to reduce our reliance on gas and oil because we cannot rely on the regions that currently supply it. What we should be doing, and are doing to some extent, is thinking about alternative methods of energy generation. We hear a lot about wind power. I am not against it, and it has its place, but it will never be able to supply the base load of electricity that we need. We are never going to be able to rely on wind power to supply the large amounts of electricity that we need—especially when we need it. That is another reason why we were right to think carefully about going ahead with the Severn barrage. Although it may have been able to generate the large amounts of electricity being spoken of—everyone accepts that it was a first, so we would have had to wait with bated breath to find out—it could not have generated that electricity exactly when we needed it. One of our biggest engineering problems is that there is no efficient way of storing electricity.