Falling behind in thought leadership and positive action

Given Mr Osbournes recent speech to the Conservative Party conference in Manchester today in effect we are turning back on our committments and our very real chance to put the UK at the front of carbon reduction and thought leadership in this field.

Lets look at what he has said

"Now we know that a decade of environmental laws and regulations are piling costs on the energy bills of households and companies."

Only those companies, and for that matter local authorities and LEP's that fail to recognise that this is a stick, move and invest in low carbon technologies and your bills will be lower and you will not be held hostage by the big electricity companies. Fail to recognise this stick and you will get higher energy bills, simples.

Yes, climate change is a man made disaster.  

Yes, George it is, and we can squarely lay the blame on politicians and companies that are failing to recognise the scale, extent and potential of the problem, flawed thinking, flawed strategy in fact just utter failure, not just by the Conservatives, but also Labour.

Yes, we need international agreement to stop it.

We do, but we also need to create the environment for thoughts and ideas to flow.

Yes, we must have investment in greener energy. And that’s why I gave the go ahead to the world’s first Green Investment Bank.

Bully for you, when does it open for business and what is it going to do?, more detail is required.


But Britain makes up less than 2% of the world’s carbon emissions to China and America’s 40%. 

So?, they'll have to deal with it too, why not go beyond conventional thinking and provide the tools, products and strategies to help them deal with it?

We’re not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business.

We dont have to save the planet George, the planet has been tootling through space for 4.5 billion years and has been far hotter and far colder at stages throughout that journey, what we're talking about is saving humanity on this planet, you need to change your scientific advisor. As to putting the country out of business, how can providing the products and innovative thought leadership throughout the world be putting it out of business, we still have a local market, we can be carbon neutral if we just thought about it a little more. Just who are the people who have turned your head ?

So let’s at the very least resolve that we’re going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe.

Shame on you then, we're going to just keep up or follow then rather than lead? Why not take the opportunuity to provide some real impetus to manufacturing and innovation by promoting green technologies, green systems and societal change (stolen from IBM Smarter Plant initative!), products and services that can be sold around the world to those that need help?

That’s what I’ve insisted on in the recent carbon budget.

That's a good start, 50% by 2025, 14 years to reduce by 1750 MTCO2e. It will not happen unless more Government investment and a sensible strategy ensues.

Sorry George, but this is not good enough, this lack of vision and foresight really throws the UK's Green businesses off the rails.