Our new Prime Minister Al “Boris” Johnson likes to portray himself as somebody committed to delivering the most environmentally friendly electricity system.
The only trouble with his adopting this guise is that, since returning to Parliament in 2015, he seems deliberately to have voted against practically every measure designed to achieve just such a future.
For instance, on 14 March 2016, he voted against the concept of creating a strategy for carbon capture and storage for the energy industry. On the same day, Johnson also voted against setting a decarbonisation target for the UK within six months of June 2016, or of reviewing it annually thereafter.
The previous year, on 8 September 2015, Johnson voted to apply the Climate Change Levy tax to electricity generated from renewable sources – thus completely negating the tax’s purpose.
Johnson has generally voted against every measure designed to prevent climate change. Should we be surprised? In 2013, during a snowy UK winter, he highlighted a factually incorrect claim by Piers Corbyn (a weather forecaster who, coincidentally, is the brother of Johnson’s rival, the current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn) that low solar activity could lead to a mini ice age.
