
Their titles suggest that a Home Secretary looks after domestic affairs, a Foreign Secretary after international ones, and an Education Secretary after, well, education.
By the same token, Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Net Zero, must try to decarbonise Britain, by 2030 as he has promised. In fact, he pursues this subversive goal so zealously that one wishes someone would decarbonise Ed Miliband.
Even Tony Blair, who must have undergone woke conversion therapy, came out saying that Ed’s policy is “doomed to fail”. Forgive me for being so cynical, but I wonder if Tony had his Damascene experience because his company has close commercial ties with Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan, oil producers both. No, surely not.
Ed’s boss, Sir Keir Starmer, described Blair’s comments as “unhelpful”, but that’s because he is English. The Donald would convey the same opprobrium by saying that both Tony and his remarks suck out loud, emphasising yet again the endless lexical variety of the English language.
I fancy myself as a physiognomist, especially when trying to read the character of a person no longer in the first flush of youth. Age does leave biographical imprints on a face, and the greater the age, the more reliable those imprints are. On that basis, the briefest of looks at Ed Miliband, 55, will reveal his intellectual inadequacy.
And if you don’t believe me or, worse still, try to shove down my throat that old chestnut about judging a book by its cover, just compare two projects he pursues and tell me they aren’t the work of an idiot.
First, Ed sets out to cover every square inch of our green and pleasant land with solar panels, to make sure it becomes neither green nor pleasant. Most of those panels come from China, which, as a side benefit, adds muscle to the economic strength of a communist superpower.
Yet the strongest argument against this madness was delivered the other day by Spain and Portugal, which suffered the greatest blackout in European history. According to experts, the power cut was caused by the two countries’ growing reliance on net zero energy, meaning windmills and solar panels.
By the sound of it, Spain may beat Britain in the race to the net zero tape. At present, a mere six per cent of that country’s energy comes from gas. Most of the rest is generated by renewable sources that, alas, prove not to be as renewable as all that.
Unlike traditional energy systems, solar and wind lack the ability to keep running when a surge or power cut occurs. That inability makes it much harder to balance the grid.
After all, electricity grids are like markets: they require stability, meaning in their case a capacity to maintain electricity supply at a more or less constant level. Energy sources that depend on sunshine or wind can’t have that capacity by definition, and they also can’t store energy as effectively as traditional systems.
Moreover, even in the absence of catastrophic power cuts, solar and wind can’t sustain modern industry, especially steel and aluminium, and the growing appetite of cities to expand. This appetite is voracious, as any Londoner will confirm.
When driving to a neighbourhood for the first time in a few months, I usually can’t recognise its geometry: all the old landmarks are dwarfed by new construction, from office towers to upmarket flats. And each of those buildings is the flesh of concrete or brick on the skeleton of a steel frame.
How much steel does it take? Well, an average skyscraper requires up to 20 tonnes, and a tallish block of flats a third of that. If you look at the volume of construction in London alone, and other cities aren’t far behind, then add the amount of steel needed for other industries, you’ll believe the experts who insist that wind and solar can’t satisfy such a rapacious demand.
Hence blackouts will become more and more frequent, and HMG is already recommending that we stock up on cash to be able to buy food when card machines go zonk. That’s good advice, akin to a thug kindly telling you to stock up on plasters before he beats you up.
But let’s assume for the sake of argument that turning the British Isles into one giant solar panel can indeed take care of our energy needs. Then let’s assume further that the whole drive towards net zero rests on a sound scientific foundation, rather than an ideological swindle. Yes, you know a swindle is exactly what it is, but bear with me for a minute.
Making those wrong assumptions still doesn’t negate the self-evident fact that solar panels need sunshine to be effective, and the more energy we expect them to produce, the more sunshine they’ll need. Are you with me so far?
Good. Now we are into the oxymoron in the title. That word, as you know, denotes a proposition that combines two mutually exclusive terms. ‘Pious agnostic,’ ‘freedom-loving communist’, ‘young thinker’ and ‘charmer Starmer’ would be examples of that figure of speech.
Applying that understanding to the task in hand will help us appreciate the true idiocy of Ed’s other policy. Starting from the irrefutable observation that sunlight is warm, he reaches the conclusion that the sun throws a spanner in the wheels of his net zero project by causing global warming – or climate change, as it’s now coyly called.
That’s why, guided by his sure hand that seems to be unconnected to any semblance of a mind, HMG is about to embark on a £50 million programme investigating the possibility of blocking off sunlight. Field trials will include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere and brightening clouds to reflect sunshine.
The former bright idea will saturate the stratosphere with particles that reflect sunlight, preventing it from frying ‘our planet’ well-done. The latter involves ships spraying sea-salt particles into the sky to make low-lying clouds more reflective.
Such geoengineering reminds me of the Soviet Union, whose powers that be seriously considered diverting the course of the great Siberian rivers, thereby turning Siberia into a sort of Costa del Sol.
Scientists were screaming then that this would lead to catastrophic ecological consequences, and they are screaming roughly the same now. The Soviet government finally listened, but HMG, prodded by Miliband, is starting trials within weeks.
Now I’m going to ask you again to assume the impossible and agree that a) global warming isn’t a hoax and b) blocking off sunlight could save ‘our planet’.
Still, I can’t help noticing that this project is rather at odds with Ed’s other pet mania, that of densely covering the country with solar panels. See what I’m driving at? Actually, it’s a simple dialectical syllogism.
Thesis: solar panels, as we’ve established, require sunlight to do their job. Antithesis: since sunlight will be blocked off, they won’t be able to do their job. Synthesis: Ed’s two bright ideas are an oxymoron, and he is a moron. QED.