The government, although not yet ready to say so, has finally rejected the bogus economics of climate change or, more likely, it always knew the figures didn’t add up but is now desperate for the internationally competitive cheap energy needed to keep our industrial base from wholesale emigration.
The gap between comfort and chaos in modern civilisation is alarmingly narrow and defined by a four-letter word: fuel.
If we needed a reminder, the panic buying of petrol in preparation for a possible tanker drivers’ strike provided it.
Those with longer-term concerns about the survival of the good life will also have felt a spasm of fear at the news that the plug has been pulled (so to speak) on plans to build six new nuclear reactors.
Last week the two German energy giants Eon and RWE decided that the subsidies being dangled by the British government were not sufficient to justify the investment of £15 billion or so of their shareholders’ money.