Tuesday 12 October 2010

Yeo says UK is in Battle of Britain for energy

Yeo says UK is in Battle of Britain for energy

Conservative MP Tim Yeo has warned that slashing spending on low carbon technology would be like "cutting the budget for Spitfires in 1939".

Mr Yeo is the chairman of parliament's cross-party energy and climate change committee and was also an environment minister under John Major.

Mr Yeo said this week that the budget of the Department of Energy and Climate Change should be increased, not reduced.

"Cutting spending on low carbon technologies now would be like cutting the budget for Spitfires in 1939," he said. "The UK was running an even bigger deficit in the 1930s, but we would never have won the battle of Britain if spending on defence had been sacrificed.

"Of course, today we are not faced with imminent invasion, but in many ways the destabilisation of the global climate also poses a grave threat to our long term national security. In future, climate change could jeopardise our food security, cause unprecedented mass migration and conceivably even spark wars. It would be folly, and something of a false economy, to cut investment on green infrastructure now."

Written by

Bruna Pinhoni

Trending Articles