Well, it's reassuring that everybody's talking about Somerset, it really is God's own county.
But yesterday was World Polar Bear Day. We don't have polar bears in Somerset, but it was World Polar Bear Day, and the Global Warming Policy Foundation has published its annual report on polar bear population statistics.
And as it happens, 2023 was an excellent year for polar bears.
Since the 1960s, in spite of the constant apocalyptic doom-sayers and their predictions, the polar bear population has nearly tripled to over 32,000. But polar bears are a metaphor for the climate change agenda.
Jacob Rees-Mogg shares his thoughts on climate change and the net zero agenda
GB News
For decades we've been warned about the apocalypse, and on many occasions the climate change's lobby have been wrong about its assertions.
Nearly ten years ago the Guardian wrote an obituary for the Great Barrier Reef.
Yet it was in 2022 that scientists revealed two thirds of the reef has the highest coral coverage since records began.
What about last summer when the wildfire hysteria reached its apex? Remember the fear mongering front page from the Evening Standard?
But none of the broadcasters or news institutions except GB News bothered to mention that according to both the Royal Society and to NASA, total global areas burnt by wildfires is at a 25 year low.
Now, it's not to say that climate change isn't occurring and we can do things to help in that respect, but the hysteria has serious consequences for policy.
Climate Change Committee is an increasingly powerful and influential unaccountable institution that holds sway of a government policy.
Climate Change Act, which established the committee, requires the government to commit to legally binding carbon budgets as a stepping stone, achieving Net Zero by 2050.
And we're currently on our fourth carbon budget for the years 2023 to 2027, and we've overachieved by about 391 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, 15 per cent or so of the total budget.
The Climate Change Committee is warning against carrying over these surplus emissions, claiming that future carbon budgets will require an increase in the pace and breadth of decarbonisation, according to the letter written to the climate minister, Graham Stewart, the letter also cites pledges made at the Dubai COP 28 summit.
But what is the point of setting carbon budgets if when we overachieve in certain areas, we can't carry over the surplus? That's how budgeting works. But it's beyond that because the real budget is how much does this cost in pounds, shillings and pence.
We see the news from Wales that Welsh farmers are worried that they're going to be put out of business because these costs are rising. The steel industry, I was in Scunthorpe a few weeks ago, is already being put out of business because of these very high energy prices. Our energy prices, our electricity prices are more than double those in the United States, and this is damaging our economy, lowering the standard of living and making us all poorer.
The United States and China are not following our lead. The idea that other nations will look at what Blighty is doing and think well they must do it too, has always been for the birds, hopelessly optimistic and an unreasonable expectation of the way we are viewed in the world nowadays.
So we're stuck with low growth because of an unaccountable committee and flawed policy. So of course we should carry forward the unused carbon dioxide from the previous budget. The time has come to focus on growth and standard of livings, not on a romantic but impoverishing iddle.