According to the Liberal Democrats Party website the Liberal Democrats Party will try to achieve the following if they gain power at the 2010 general election: Climate change could destroy our way of life, but going green seems harder than ever. Instead of listening, and helping, the government piles on more taxes. Liberal Democrats will […]
Continue Reading Liberal Democrats Policies : Environment and Energy
Dear Mr Clegg,
I have been a supporter of the Liberal Democrats since their formation, both in national and in local elections, believing that they had the most sensible policies and that they were more trustworthy and open than the two other major parties. However, the issue of climate change is now of the utmost importance and regrettably I believe that your party’s anti-nuclear power energy policy, if implemented, would have catastrophic consequences for our country’s greenhouse gas emissions. I feel so strongly about this that unless the policy is reconsidered then at the forthcoming general election I must not only vote against you, but also actively encourage others to do so.
We all believe in the need for renewables and energy efficiency, but they can only ever have a limited part to play, and the major problem will continue to be with our baseload generation. It is an ill-advised and misinformed policy that continues to support a fossil fuel energy supply in the hope that so-called “carbon capture and storage” can be made feasible, let alone economic, for large scale electricity generation by land-based coal, oil and gas-fired power stations. Pumping exhaust gases underground has only ever been viable for specific oil-wells in the relatively small scale extraction of remaining deposits underneath locally situated impervious rocks. It is a vain hope that this technology could be transferred to capture and permanently store the huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions from conventional power stations in Britain.
Nuclear power is the only low-carbon option for the provision of our baseload electricity and we must proceed with the approval and building of new nuclear stations as soon as possible – even if the forecast energy gap means a period of reduced prosperity until the stations are commissioned. (Since this situation has been obvious for so long, it is a sorry indictment of politicians that they could only tackle the energy gap by committing the country to more and more imports of fossil fuels from insecure suppliers.)
The Liberal Democrats are virtually alone in their anti-nuclear stance. The technology is well established and proven, and it is reliable, safe, economic and widely used throughout the world. It was embarrassing to see Simon Hughes recently on television trying to claim that these facts were not so.
I would dearly like to continue supporting the Liberal Democrats, as I believe that Labour and the Conservatives have the wrong economic and social policies. I therefore strongly urge you to reconsider this anti-nuclear power policy.
Yours sincerely,
Lawrence Ward
View Comment