Spectator diary

My recent Spectator diary:

Martin Williams, former head of the government’s air quality
science unit, has declared that the reason we have a problem with
air pollution now is that ‘policy has been focused on climate
change, and reducing CO2 emissions, to the exclusion of much
else, for most of the past two decades. Diesel was seen as a good
thing because it produces less CO2, so we gave people incentives to
buy diesel cars.’ Yet another example of how the global warming
obsession has been bad for the environment — like subsidising
biofuels, which encourage cutting down rainforests; or windfarms,
which kill eagles and spoil landscapes; or denying coal-fired
electricity to Africa, where millions die each year from the
effects of cooking over smoky wood fires.

Greens are too hard on coal. If much of the world had not
switched from wood to coal in the 1800s, we would have deforested
the planet almost entirely. By 1860, Britain was getting as much
energy from coal as a forest the size of Scotland could yield;
today, we’d need a forest the size of South Africa. And coal
produces less carbon dioxide than wood per unit of energy. I would
say this, wouldn’t I? My ancestors were in coal from about 1700 and
I still am, hosting a temporary surface mine on my land. It
provides good jobs, lots of tax, a community benefits fund and an
income windfall for local residents as well as me. Plus
opportunities for spectacular restoration schemes, like
Northumberlandia (look it up). It also helps keep electricity
affordable.

The Guardian, unhappy that I said last week
that its fossil-fuel divestment campaign was likely to hurt the
poor, writes to tell me that it intends to have a go at me, rather
than tackle my argument, by quoting an unreliable blogger about the
amount I make from coal. I don’t own as much land as he thinks I
do, nor share as little of the income with other residents, but I
am under no obligation to invade others’ privacy by naming the
sums. I always declare my interest when relevant. If I were getting
similar money from wind or solar power — as I could if I approved
of them — I’d be a hero to greens. It’s a strange world where the
left likes rich people getting money only if it comes from a tax on
poor people’s bills. (Meanwhile, part of
the Guardian’s website is sponsored by a
coal-mining company.)

Back in January, on the day a Japanese captive was beheaded by
Islamic State, the Guardian published its
previous attack on me over a picture of a severed zombie’s head. My
crime was to write about how I had been furiously denounced merely
for presenting the evidence that climate change is real but may not
be net harmful — so the Guardian piece rather
proved my point. Beneath the article online appeared two comments
recommending that I be beheaded, and one revealing the writer of
these comments was a Guardian contributor, Gary
Evans. Astonishingly, the comment outing Mr Evans was deleted to
protect him, while the death threats remained — until I
complained.

Although the economy of the North-east is doing better than for
many years, Northumberland’s old mining towns are still not
prospering. My wife and I fund a charity that supports community
projects mainly in Blyth, the port city that was built to export
coal and in the 1990s became a drugs hotspot. Visiting one of these
projects last week, the Silx Teen Bar, which gives 700 young people
a year a place to hang out, a meal to eat and coaching in applying
for jobs, I was encouraged. The bar’s been refurbished by
volunteers, jobs are more numerous, heroin has faded, but legal
highs are the new problem. Over tea and chocolate pizza, Jackie
Long, the incredibly dedicated senior youth worker, told me what
had happened to a young man I met on my last visit. Orphaned when
his parents died from drugs, he relied on Silx from the age of 12
for food and friendship, and lived with his grandmother. Apparently
she died recently and he drifted between evictions. Now he has a
secure job and was recently named employee of the week. Silx was
the family he came to show the certificate to.

The Homosexual Necrophiliac Duck Opera is opening
at Kings Place in London in August. Where I sometimes go salmon
fishing on the incomparably beautiful Coquet, there’s a mallard
ménage-a-trois. For two months now, every time I have visited, two
drakes and duck have been together in the mill race or below the
dam. They are inseparable. I can tell they are the same birds from
their markings. There’s no sexual jealousy, let alone necrophilia.
They just keep on working the shallows for fly larvae beneath the
tip of my fly rod. The rod is new and expensive. ‘There’s no
pockets on a shroud,’ said David, my fishing companion, excusing my
extravagance.