Demands that the European Union change its costly and ineffective climate policies are increasing

The IPCC is about to confirm that its previous forecasts about warming have been wrong, but that does not bother European Union's highest climate change official, Danish commissioner Connie Hedegaard and her colleagues in the European Commission the least - the EU should according to the EU warmists continue with its costly and useless climate policies regardless of the lack of warming!

In an interview with the Telegraph, Europe's most senior climate change official argued that the current policies are the correct ones because a growing world population will put pressure on energy supplies regardless of the rate of global warming.

"I personally have a very pragmatic view."

"Say that 30 years from now, science came back and said, 'wow, we were mistaken then now we have some new information so we think it is something else'. In a world with nine billion people, even 10 billion at the middle of this century, where literally billions of global citizens will still have to get out of poverty and enter the consuming middle classes, don't you think that anyway it makes a lot of sense to get more energy and resource efficient," she said.

"Let's say that science, some decades from now, said 'we were wrong, it was not about climate', would it not in any case have been good to do many of things you have to do in order to combat climate change?."

The Danish commissioner also rejected public complaints over increases in electricity prices to subsidise renewable energies, such as wind farms, as unrealistic because, she said, increased competition over diminishing energy resources such as oil and gas will lead to higher bills.

"I believe that in a world with still more people, wanting still more growth for good reasons, the demand for energy, raw materials and resources will increase and so, over time so, over time, will the prices," she said.

"I think we have to realise that in the world of the 21st century for us to have the cheapest possible energy is not the answer."

Mrs Hedegaard, and the European Commission, have not changed their position that the science that is currently used to justify EU climate change policy is "over 90 per cent" certain that global warming exists and that it is manmade.

However, EU and other policymakers are worried that the IPCC's forthcoming admission, expected on Sep 27, that previous forecasts are wrong will damage the legitimacy of climate change policies, such as levies and fuel taxes on consumers to fund renewable energy.

In fact, there are already signs that European policymakers are about to change their tone when speaking about climate change. The German daily Die Welt e.g. reports that the FDP's spokesperson for environmental policies in the European Parliament, Holger Krahmer, demands an about-turn of EU's climate policies.

Politicians are often slow to admit that they have been wrong, but when they realize that they are about to lose the confidence of their voters, for reasons of self-preservation change they will - or risk being replaced by others. For bureaucrats like Hedegaard  and the rest, there is only one solution - to replace them with more sensible people.