Senior Tory attacks 'crippling' CO2 targets of green movement

A senior Tory attacked the "fixation" of the green movement with imposing ever tougher targets for reducing carbon emissions with potentially "crippling" costs for the economy.

David Davis, an ex-shadow cabinet member and former party leadership challenger, said the UK was already facing a £55 billion long-term price tag for its current policies and warned of a public backlash if more unpopular "green" measures were imposed.

His comments are likely to be seen as a direct challenge to the approach of Tory leader David Cameron who has made his commitment to tackling climate change a symbol of the way he has changed the party.

Writing in The Independent today, Mr Davis said it was "unsurprising" that more than half the public no longer believed in climate change as it now appeared that the earth had been cooling rather than warming over the past decade.

"The fixation of the green movement with setting ever tougher targets is a policy destined to collapse," he said.

"The ferocious determination to impose hair shirt policies on the public - taxes on holiday flights, or covering our beautiful countryside with wind turbines that look like props from War of the Worlds - would cause a reaction in any democratic country.

"Many of the people signed up to the green movement instinctively believe in statist, regulatory, dirigiste regimes. They forget these approaches have failed many times before."

Mr Davis said that building wind farms would blight hundreds of thousands of properties and "ruin" lives through the unbearable noise levels, while future predicted power shortages would further undermine public support for action.

"Lights going out around Britain could be an electoral off switch for environmental policy," he said.

He called for the development of an environmental "middle way" with "realistic" measures to reduce emissions without "crippling" the economy while containing the effects of climate change which cannot be prevented.

"Today the economic climate makes people question whether we can afford the expense of these policies," he said.

"We often worry, properly, about the potential effects of global warming on the poorer parts of the world. We should also worry that cutting the world's growth will condemn millions of people to continuing poverty in the decades to come."

Labour MP Emily Thornberry said: "David Davis is representing the real views of David Cameron's Conservative Party. This is the party that persistently fails to take the tough action on climate change and regularly opposes wind farms as 'bird blenders'.

"David Cameron's cycling to work can't cover the fact that he lacks a real green agenda and the strength to stand up to the anti-green rump in today's Tory Party."