So Cameron’s new UK cabinet has gotten rid of environmentalists. In light of the widespread winter deluges, that’s just plain crazy.
First the “badgers moved the goalposts”. Now environment secretary, Owen Paterson, has been shown the red card in a cabinet reshuffle.
The environmental views of Paterson’s replacement, Liz Truss, are little known, but the former Shell employee is a free market enthusiast who backed the doomed sell-off of public forests. That suggests someone who – like Paterson – sees environmental protection as so much red tape to cut.
Elsewhere in the reshuffle, the departure of foreign secretary, William Hague, who clearly recognised climate change as the global strategic threat it is, and irrepressible green cheerleader Greg Barker as energy minister, removes two of a rare breed: strong green Tory voices in government.
Cameron is an American-style Republican or Thatcherist. The oligarchy (1%) in Britain believes the same things that the American oligarchs believe. Cameron works for them in Britain just like our elected leaders work for the oligarchy here in America. “Power to the People” instead.