What is the green blob, and what is it doing to poor environment ministers?
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Version 0 of 1. Name: The green blob. Age: New. Appearance: A "tangled triangle of unelected busybodies". I see. So this is a triangular blob? That's right. Owen Paterson has just coined the phrase to describe "the mutually supportive network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape". You mean "freshly sacked environment secretary Owen Paterson"? That's right. He's in a bad mood for some reason, so he's written a rather wild opinion piece in the Telegraph denouncing environmentalists, much as Michael Gove used to deride educationalists and teachers. How therapeutic for him. So what did this green blob do to offend him? They lobbied him all the time about wind turbines, fracking and genetically modified crops. In his words, they "besieged me with their self-serving demands … Their goal was to enhance their own income streams and influence by myth making and lobbying". But isn't it the job of a cabinet minister to listen to the arguments on all sides of a debate? Yes. And to give Paterson credit, he certainly did listen to the views of the pesticide manufacturer Syngenta, the fracking firm Cuadrilla and the Agricultural Biotechnology Council (an agribusiness pressure group) on GM. OK. And of course his government gives its full support to lobbyists from the British Institute of Energy Economics (sustained by the "generous support" of Shell and BP), albeit quietly. I see. And he is positively friendly with the lobbyists at GWPF, who deny climate change, since he is about to give a lecture for them. I get it! So he hates green lobbyists and loves the other kind? Basically. He also disapproves of the former getting EU funding. "The European Commission website reveals that a staggering €150m (£119m) was paid to the top nine green NGOs from 2007-13," he points out. So across 28 EU states, that's £132,000 per NGO per state per year. Remind me of Shell and BP's profits again? Just £10bn and £7.8bn in 2013. Essentially, Paterson is right though, isn't he? These are all complex scientific questions. What's needed isn't lobbying, but a dispassionate evaluation of the evidence. Absolutely. And he was so busy evaluating evidence that he only spoke to the government's chief scientific adviser twice in his first 15 months in the job. (Before him the norm was monthly.) Do say: "It takes a brave man to fight the tyranny of scientific consensus!" Don't say: "Or a thick one." |