Jeremy Clarkson puts the boots to eco-weenies

Jeremy Clarkson goes to town on the anti-nuclear power agitators:

The fact of the matter is this. The decision to go nuclear has exposed the whole environmental cause for what it is: not a well intentioned drive for clean power but a spiteful, mean-spirited drive for less power. Because less power hits richer countries and richer people the hardest.

I've argued time and again that the old trade unionists and CND lesbians didn't go away. They just morphed into environmentalists. The reds become green but the goals remain the same. And there's no better way of achieving those goals than turning the lights out and therefore winding the clock back to the Stone Age. Only when we're all eating leaves under a hammer and sickle will they be happy.

I'm serious. All the harebrained schemes for renewable energy are popular among Britain's beardies only because they don't work. I heard one of them on the radio last week explaining that if he were allowed to build 58,000 islands in the Caribbean he could use steam coming off the sea to make enough power for everyone.

Yeah, right. And then you have their constant claims that the tide can be used to make electricity. Really? If that's so, why am I not writing this on a computer powered by the Severn Bore?

Sure, this summer work will begin on a tidal plant off the coast of Wales. Eight turbines, each 78ft long and 50ft tall, will harness the moon's gravitational pull, and if all goes well it won’t even provide enough electricity to run Chipping Norton. You'd be better off burning tenners.

If you're unfamiliar with Clarkson's, er, energetic style, you might enjoy reading his "election manifesto".