Reasons to see red over green energy, Government apathy sabotages Britain's shift to a low-carbon economy
Engineers fitting solar panels to a roof at Silvertown solar village, Docklands, London. You'd hope, wouldn't you, that the government department responsible for energy to heat our homes, power our cars and so on would be on top of two key issues - a switch to a low-carbon economy and the possibility that oil might run out sooner than we thought. Both these issues should concern us greatly and, indeed, there is growing discussion of them everywhere. But, the Department of Business As Usual (DBERR) doesn't seem to be on the case at all. It spends most of its time pointlessly changing its name (from the Department for Trade and Industry, you will recall) or changing ministers so often that few have time to get their feet under the desk before they are gone. Ed Matthew of Friends of the Earth puts it bluntly. "BERR [the department has inexplicably even dropped the D] is not fit to govern. They should all be sacked." That may sound a bit harsh but you have to wonder w...