Cold comfort for poor people as the Greens keep chasing windmills

ENVIRONMENT Minster John Gormley stood beside Taoiseach Brian Cowen during the four-year austerity plan press conference last Wednesday and proudly announced the doubling of Ireland’s carbon taxes (as part of the Green party contribution to that plan).

This is utter lunacy — to have a go-it-alone system of such unfair taxes while other countries have no such comparable impositions. As the three stood at the podium, Ireland was being swept by a bone-chilling airflow coming from Siberia. Met Éireann was predicting that the air temperatures would be well below normal for this time of year, well into next week.

At the same time the electrical power being supplied by the myriad of wind generators around Ireland was only around 50mw out of a system demand of more than 3,500mw (less than 1.5% of the nation’s electricity demand).