Copenhagen Climate Change Conference

There are many mysteries in the personality of the French people that I do not understand. Many of them are entirely impenetrable to me, but I have raised this point many times in my frequent visits to Brittany. Because the French have not done that, however, there is no reason why we should not. As the paper said yesterday, we have an immense possibility for using tidal power. The paper said that half the opportunities for tidal power in the whole of Europe are around our coasts. They are not all tidal either. There is also the flow of water between Guernsey and France; an immense amount of energy is flowing there 24 hours a day. It will carry on eternally and it is untapped. If we could utilise this power with a range of barrages around our coast—or tidal lagoons, or just simple mills—we could have surges of electricity that would come when the tide flows around our coast at different times. We could tap that, too; when the surge of power comes in the early hours of the morning, we could use it to pump water up to the top of hills and downs and allow electricity to be generated for peak times. The geographical position of these islands presents us with by far the best opportunity, and we should be taking it instead of throwing our money away at the nuclear power industry. Billions upon billions of pounds are being thrown at it—there was another £20 million this morning, just like that. There was also £93 billion for clearing things up, and uncountable billions to build nuclear power stations. In contrast, our investment in tidal energy and other marine energy is in sums of £60 million here and £50 million there. We have a huge opportunity that we are neglecting because of the conversion of both our main parties to supporting nuclear power for no rational reason. We should look at our priorities again, as this is the way to solve our global warming problems, which we all agree it is important to do. We must look at the power of the tide. It will go on for ever. It is clean and does not produce a legacy of poisoned fuel, and it will add greatly to amenity features in the places where it is operated. The future should be tidal. It certainly should not be nuclear.