Seriously Angry
I like the Daily Mail. It doesn’t represent my views but I have to admire how powerfully it conveys its messages. It is angry, argumentative and fantastically critical.
So, I was delighted when I read this about wind farms with quotes from David MacKay. It has conclusion of “And, yes, we need to invest in more renewable energy. “ and “The answer is messy, expensive and fraught with controversy and debate. But it is not blowing in the wind.”
The next day was budget day and there was: “Tough new targets on tackling climate change will cost every household in
This article goes on to say that “Critics said the targets, which include a drive to build more windfarms, would cost the economy £14billion a year by 2020 and would have only a negligible impact on climate change.”
So it is quite possible to have, in the same paper, using the same stock photos, science stories very positive about renewable energy but political and editorial stories that are totally negative about the way it is happening and its effects.
And it’s the criticism that is the headline grabbing stuff. It is more emotive to think of the government taking money from your family and wasting it, than it is to think about how cool it would be if we had a load of windmills.
But actually criticizing the government is a useful activity. The current situation is that we have a set of targets for reducing carbon emissions; it is 80% reduction from 1990 levels, by 2050. There are no complete plans yet for how to reach that target.
I would like to see groups getting together to intelligently criticize the government for missing opportunity with renewable technology and not having good enough policy or any policy at all and present these arguments in journalist sized pieces.
How would you do this?
The Daily Mail gets lots of its source material from The Tax Payers Alliance and Migration Watch. Again these two bodies don’t reflect my views, but they do an excellent job of communicating what they are about.