Benny Peiser’s CCNet is an invaluable resource for keeping track of environmental alarmism around the globe. [You can find out how to sign up here.] Today’s offering has a pile of interesting news from the U.K. A turning of the tide, perhaps?

LABOUR’S new green targets will cost every family in Britain more than £3,000, a Government dossier has warned. The decision by ministers to sign up to “unachievable” EU pledges on renewable energy will leave taxpayers with a £75 billion bill. Most of this will be passed on to householders in higher costs. – Jason Groves, Daily Express, 4 May 2008People’s electricity bills are going to soar because of this EU target. The EU have chosen the least effective and most costly way to go green and we are all going to have to pay as a result. Incredibly, the Government don’t seem to have realised what they were signing up to. We are handing over a huge amount of money and it’s not clear that we will get anything for it.
– Neil O’Brien, Open Europe, 4 May 2008
Five million drivers will pay £50 or £90 extra in road tax next year because of the Government’s covert decision to include older family cars in new higher tax bands. Treasury figures show that a million of those will incur at least another £130 rise the following year, meaning that their road tax will have more than doubled over two years.
– Ben Webster, The Times, 3 May 2008
Ken Livingstone’s decision to campaign hard on climate change was a strange lapse of political judgment. He may have won the dubious honour of being selected as the ‘greenest’ candidate by Friends of the Earth, but this has little resonance with the ordinary, cash-strapped Londoner.
– Phil Stevens, Adam Smith Institute, 3 May 2008
Recent polls suggest people are unwilling to throw money at global warming fantasies; no big surprise there. It is a surprise, however, to discover politicians (now in the UK, as in the US) are becoming aware of this. In the face of this Greenism rejection, the warmenist Independent is suddenly sceptical: “We should be sceptical about the notion of radical shifts in mood in politics … Now is the worst time for the Conservative Party to retreat from green politics.” Why? They’ve just started winning.
– Tim Blair, 4 May 2008
Party sources confirmed Mr Brown will ditch the “bin tax” on householders who fail to recycle their waste properly and shelve the delayed increase in duty on petrol in the autumn. He will back away from “green” taxes until the economy improves.
– Colin Brown, The Independent, 6 May 2008