Lord Frost has claimed that rising temperatures would benefit Britian because seven times more people die from cold than from heat.
According to The Telegraph:
The former Brexit negotiator said the fall in deaths related to cold temperatures had “more than offset any increase in the number of deaths associated with warmer temperatures” since the start of the millennium, calling on the Government to tackle climate change differently.
He told the Lords it was the “rational thing” to “move away from the current high-cost mitigation efforts, efforts which also involve huge investments in unproductive renewables, huge changes in lifestyles as well as crushing economic growth”.
Lord Frost said mitigation should be pursued by “investing in effective energy production, nuclear, gas, other technologies as they emerge, and meanwhile spend the manageable sums that we need to on adaptation so we can adjust to the perfectly manageable consequences of slowly rising temperatures as they emerge”.
He said: “Now, I’m not sceptical about adaptation. I’m sceptical about mitigation.”
His comments come as the Conservative Party becomes engulfed in a row about its net zero commitments.
After Labour failed to win the Uxbridge by-election amid a voter backlash against the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) under Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor, there have been calls from within the Tory party for it to rethink some of its own climate change policies.
In an interview, Rishi Sunak said the Government would “make progress towards net zero” but “in a proportionate and pragmatic way”, declining to explicitly say that a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would go ahead in 2030 as planned.
Campaigners have said it is the wrong time to falter on net zero commitments, pointing to record global temperatures last week and wildfires raging across the Greek island of Rhodes as evidence of the catastrophic consequences of climate change.
Lord Frost said that in the UK “more will need to be spent on things like flood protection and reservoirs”, but added:
“Digging deeper, what are those consequences of the hotter, warmer summers and warmer, wetter winters? At the moment, seven times as many people die from cold as from heat in Britain. Rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial.
“The Government Actuary’s Department, no less, wrote in April this year, and I quote: ‘It is the low winter temperatures that have a greater effect on the number of deaths.’
