I totally agree with what Simon Thomas said, but from a totally different platform, of course, when I ask you: what was the point of this statement today? Was there anything new in it at all? Was there anything that had not been announced previously? It seems to me a perfect example of what Rhun ap Iorwerth was complaining about only this week: time taken up in this Assembly for endless Government statements, when we could be having useful debates on many other issues and having votes on things that really matter. So, was there anything new in this statement at all?

Isn’t the Cabinet Secretary constantly here trying to fill a sieve? Because whatever gains we may make—if gains they be—in reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, that is going to be completely swamped and overwhelmed by the increase in carbon emissions by other countries elsewhere in the world. Let’s just look at the facts here: China produces 30 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions; the entire EU produces 10 per cent; India produces 7 per cent and is destined to overtake the EU within three year; and the United Kingdom produces 1.16 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, any gains that we might make by closing down the entire British economy overnight would be wholly swamped by increases in carbon emissions from places like China and India in a matter of weeks. In the process, we are imposing a disproportionate burden upon the British people, and the Welsh people in particular, whether they be as consumers of electricity or as workers in industries that are highly intensive energy users.

Eighty-four per cent of the energy that we consume in the UK comes from fossil fuels; 70 per cent of electricity is generated, on average, by fossil fuels; and 100 per cent of our transport, virtually, is provided by fossil fuels.

I’m looking now, as we speak, at the national grid, and we are currently generating from wind 5.25 per cent of our energy. Fifty-one per cent of our energy is produced by combined-cycle gas turbine power stations, which are there as back-ups for the renewables when the wind doesn’t blow or blows too strongly. So, we’re vastly adding to the capital costs of energy production in this country via this requirement for duplication.

China has recently agreed to observe some targets on emissions, but what they’ve agreed to do is not cut their emissions, but actually to but their emissions per unit of economic output. But as the Chinese economy is forecast to grow very significantly in the decades ahead, actually their carbon emissions are forecast to rise by 50 per cent by 2030. Meanwhile, we are spending time in assemblies like this, wittering away about things that simply don’t matter in the context of the global economy, even if you accept the theories in relation to man-made global warming, which I know is a point of dispute between the Cabinet Secretary and me. Even if you accept her analysis of the science and its impact on the world, the kind of costs that we’re imposing on the British economy for virtually negligible gain are simply not worth it.

We’ve been talking about electric vehicles and how this is the way forward, but there’s no point in having electric vehicles if the electricity that powers them is produced by largely fossil fuel-generated electricity. I’m very much in favour of energy efficiency schemes, and I think, as Simon Thomas said, we could vastly improve our energy efficiency in Wales by a much enhanced system of insulation grants and other forms of making energy use more efficiently. The impact that that has on the lives of people on low incomes is very important as well, because let’s bear in mind that the people who are paying the biggest price for these policies are those at the bottom end of the income scale—the people for whom the Labour Party were supposed to have been created, and whose interests they purport to defend.

The last point I’ll make in this context is in relation to the other responsibilities of the Cabinet Secretary—and I raised this in questions the other day—as the Secretary for rural affairs. I’m very concerned about the conflict of interest in her portfolio between her requirement to advance the interests of renewable energy through windfarms and, in places like mid Wales in particular, we’re planting new forests of windmills all over our hills and landscape—. This is in conflict with the tourism requirements, as well as the aesthetic interests, of these areas, and I would like to see—if we are going to have these renewable projects, inevitably—that we are far more sensitive in where we’re going to deploy them. We don’t have to have every single hilltop in Wales with a windfarm on it. So, I’d like to hear from the Cabinet Secretary how she’s going to try and reconcile these conflicts in a way in which, perhaps, gives more emphasis to the needs of rural communities, rather than the kind of theories that are supposed to benefit the world at large. I’m more interested in my little world in Mid and West Wales.