As Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham wanted to slash hydrocarbon use by 90% in 10 years. Now the new Energy Minister is making similar noises. Chris Morrison wonders if destroying modern society is still the plan.
Praise the Lord, a Saviour from the North walks amongst us. The UK’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham has apparently hinted that a tad more oil and gas might be taken from Britain’s remaining treasure trove lying undisturbed in the North Sea. Is this a push back on fanatical Net Zero treason as some commentators have suggested? Probably not. As always there is no need for conspiracy theories – just look at what they supported and said in the past. The new Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh is a green blob-funded whack job straight out of central climate casting, while the new tee-shirt wearing top dog is all signed up to the evil, society-destroying Climate and Nature (CAN) Bill.
It didn’t take long for the bill promoter Zero Hour (ka-ching, Green Blob money) to list the new Prime Minister as one of 193 MPs who support the proposed private member’s CAN legislation that will cut the country’s entire use of hydrocarbons – domestic and overseas – to just 10% within 10 years. Zero Hour notes of Burnham: “In 2024, as Mayor of Greater Manchester, he backed the Climate and Nature Bill because he recognised that Britain needed bold, science-led action to tackle the climate and nature crisis.”
Other more accurate interpretations are available along the lines that the bill is an abominable neo-Marxist Trojan horse that would lead to mass starvation, death and almost immediate industrial and societal collapse. With little or no hydrocarbons available from any source, food supplies would be cut in half due to a lack of fertiliser, while most medicines would be unavailable. In the regular periods of wind and solar drought, particularly in the winter, thousands would die in their blacked-out and unheated homes. Thankfully, the bill failed in the House of Commons when it was debated last year, but a terrifying 200 MPs agreed with its vile contents. Over 90 Labour MPs, all the Greens and LibDems plus two crackpot Tories said they supported the bill.
We can but pray that the two unhinged Tories, Sir Roger Gale and Simon Hoare, are currently receiving sympathetic re-education treatment as the Kemi Badenoch-led Conservative party now rushes towards the Net Zero exit. Similar classes of course are required for wayward Tories who believe that men can become women, and open borders lead to civilisation contentment.
Just three reasons come to mind to explain the heavy support for the House of Commons horror show.
- Rank stupidity: If the IQ score of any supporter was much lower, steps might have to be taken to ensure regular watering.
- Blinding ignorance: Five decades of dumbed-down education must take some blame, but the inability not to use at least one critical-thinking brain cell is worrying.
- Tunnel-vision zealotry: Overwhelming desire to re-order society along State-controlling communist lines – and if the majority kulaks get it, too bad. Inventing a climate crisis without a scintilla of conclusive proof is justified to create an equal, virtuous, brave new post-truth world.
Of course, allowing the two North Sea fields Rosebank and Jackdaw to open is little more than re-arranging the deckchairs on the Net Zero Ship of Fools. Thanks to the 2008 Climate Change Act and later amendments made by the Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, Britain is legally committed to short-order Net Zero destruction. Unless the legislation is torn up, new drilling is likely to be challenged in the courts. As 2050 looms closer, lawfare will likely stop almost all new projects where emissions are likely to arise from using hydrocarbons.
The small Burnham North Sea relaxation, along with the removal of 5% VAT on electricity bills, is an obvious electoral ploy to disguise the fact that Britain now has some of the highest energy costs in the industrial world – and they are likely to get a great deal higher in the future.
Meanwhile, the woman who has taken charge of Britain’s laughably named energy security department is testament to the growing power of dark green money. Miatta Fahnbulleh has cut her teeth in two hard-Left green think tanks, both of which have relied on funding from billionaire donors. Over recent years, billions of pounds of this dark green money have flowed from rich individuals pushing a Net Zero agenda via ‘charitable’ tax-advantageous payments. Most of the foundation vehicles seem to be driven by virtuous liberal guilt or a desire to promote a trillion-dollar subsidy-driven Net Zero world. Sometimes a toxic mixture of both.
None of this will be news to regular readers of the Daily Sceptic over the last few years, although it is of interest that switched-on media such as the Spectator and Telegraph have started reporting on the massive narrative-grooming cash flows. To this day, most mainstream media seems happier blowing thick masking smoke around by lying that climate and Net Zero inquiring copy is generally funded by oil companies. Again, as Daily Sceptic readers will be aware, the green money tsunami has groomed climate journalists, funded Armageddon brainwashing in schools, made possible thousands of narrative-only science papers and bankrolled the growth of countless propaganda tanks and ersatz community groups. In addition, political operations dedicated to Net Zero such as the Sadiq Khan-led C40 operation linking around 100 capital cities around the world would not exist without tens of millions of dollars of financial support.
The elevation of Ms Fahnbulleh to high ministerial office is a great coup for this world of green cash – jackpot might not be an exaggeration to describe her elevation to the powerful energy role. From 2017 to 2023, she was the chief executive of the New Economics Foundation (NEF). During that period, she frequently argued for measures that would fundamentally reshape everyday life. A particular bugbear seems to have been airline travel, where the NEF argued for frequent flyer taxes reaching into hundreds of pounds. In addition to redirected local taxes from Manchester City Council and the Greater London Authority, the NEF has received funds from many Left-wing money trees including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Climate Works Foundation, Oak Foundation and the European Climate Foundation (ECF).
The latter operation has attracted considerable recent interest since it acts as a conduit for lobbying funds from numerous other sources. In a recent article by Marcel Crok of Clintel titled ‘The dark green lobby that nobody talks about’, it is noted that ECF received 275 million euros in donations in 2023 alone. Readers of the Daily Sceptic might recall that ECF was a major funder of the now-closed Oxford Climate Journalism Network that groomed around 800 useful messengers on the correct way to report the climate emergency. Initial funding to run an online six-month agitprop course was about £477,000.
In the recent past, Fahnbulleh has argued that Left-wing governments must treat the climate ‘crisis’ with the urgency of wartime mobilisation and prioritise systemic change over short-term considerations. In a 2020 article for Foreign Affairs, Fahnbulleh outlined her vision for a global green new deal. She called for a “massive mobilisation of resources to decarbonise” economies and advocated slashing carbon emissions to Net Zero within 10 to 15 years.
“The goal should be Net Zero carbon emissions within 10 to 15 years, which will require governments to make significant investments in green infrastructure”, she wrote. This clearly stated political aim is little different from that found in the proposed CAN Bill. Perhaps she and her new boss could make it clear if they still support destroying the UK economy in such a short timeframe.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
