Reactions to today's Autumn Statement from Chancellor George Osborne - how has the green economy faired?
A snap verdict from Business Green:
"There was barely a single mention of a green economy that employs nearly a million people and was growing at over four per cent.
The only section on the environment was focused on the "burden" presented by environmental rules and the need to protect energy intensive industries from green policies (which is fine if you also explain how any negative impact on our carbon budgets will be offset by savings elsewhere).
Osborne has been almost completely captured by the carbon reckless wing of his party and sounds more hostile to green development than ever, despite his name checking the Green Investment Bank and the Green Deal...."
For an overview see the link below and tell us what you think!
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2128433/autumn-statement-businessgreen-live-blog
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Reactions to today's Autumn Statement from Chancellor George Osborne - how has the green economy...
Another thing - Osborne's investment in infrastructure initially sounds 'a good idea' until you realise that the largest scheme - HS2 (High Speed train project) - is "carbon neutral AT BEST" (Government itself says) and will cost over £32 billion (not including environmental or mitigation or compensation costs ... so let's double it???) to get it up to Leeds/Manchester in the 2030s. A key problem is that it is being designed to go 400kph - faster than anything in Europe - and the faster you go, the worse for the carbon emmissions (and the worse for the environment because fast means going in a straight line so it ploughs through SSIs etc). Stop HS2 has shown that there are alternative ways to easily cope with the capacity problem, much cheaper, much quicker .... and leaving billions that could be spent on transport infrastructure right around the country OR green energy schemes. So when Osborne says there is no money for green energy schemes, that's absolutely not true. There is £32+ billion that is going to be frittered on a vanity scheme, one purpose of which is to turn Birmingham airport into another London airport now that the Heathrow expansion has been stopped (hence the emphasis on the VERY high speed, to get passengers landing in Birmingham down to London in less time than from Heathrow to London, as the Sec. of State said) - freeing up more slots at Heathrow for long distance flights (as BAA says). So, not much to do with 'green energy' and not much to do with rail needs either!