Home What's New Speeches & Articles Newsletter - Mar 2012 Biography Diary Contact Information Photo Album Parliamentary Highlights Publications Links MEPs' Transparency Visit the Freedom Association website
		MEP Challenges Climate "Hysteria" Monday, 6th December 2010 An East Midlands MEP has launched a campaign to challenge what he calls "Climate Hysteria". Conservative Roger Helmer MEP believes that current changes in climate are entirely driven by natural forces, and that policies designed to mitigate climate change by cutting CO2 emissions, although hugely expensive, will achieve nothing. He will be unveiling billboards in major cities across the region with the slogan "Green Climate Policies: Probably Unnecessary; Certainly Ineffectual; Ruinously Expensive", as soon as the sub zero temperatures currently affecting the United Kingdom subside. The poster campaign is backed by electronic media, including a banner on the popular Conservative Home website. The icy temperatures, which prevented the billboards being erected on time, highlight the claim that the green policies are probably unnecessary. Helmer has worked on the climate issue for a number of years, organising seminars in the European parliament, attending conferences in the UK and the USA, working with prominent climate scientists, and publishing a book and a DVD on the subject. He is currently on his way to the UN Climate Conference in Cancun, Mexico. He notes that recent opinion polls show that a majority of citizens in the UK and the USA no longer believe the hype on climate, and the public are increasingly tired of being blamed by politicians and the media for a non-problem. They are especially reluctant to pay green taxes and higher power bills "to combat climate change". Helmer notes that increasing numbers of scientists are also challenging the climate orthodoxy. A recent reader poll in the prestigious journal Scientific American showed 77% no longer believe that human activity causes climate change. Helmer argues that even if we in Britain were to close down our economy, our shortfall in emissions would be made up by China in around twelve months. China, he says, is building a new coal-fired power station every week, with India not far behind. Nothing we do will make any difference. Meantime many renewable technologies, like wind power, deliver only an intermittent trickle of very expensive electricity. The UK's renewables policies, spearheaded by Lib-Dem Chris Huhne MP, are likely to drive up electricity bills by 40% by 2020. Helmer argues that renewables will never do more than to contribute at the margin, and that the UK's future power generation must be based on coal and nuclear. Unless we commit to that programme, he says, we will see extensive blackouts and power failures within a few years.