A backbench MP has laid into the BBC's criticism of a new coal mine to fuel domestic steel production — and reduce carbon emissions from shipping imports.
On the fringes of the COP26 UN climate change conference in Glasgow, BBC climate editor Justin Rowlatt launched a tirade against Prime Minister Boris Johnson for refusing to block the project in Cumbria in north-west England.
Johnson stressed that the UK's share of energy use from coal had fallen from 80 per cent in his childhood 50 years ago to 1 per cent now, with half that fall coming since he took office as mayor of Greater London in 2008.
But the agitated journalist implied the PM was a hypocrite for urging developing nations including China and India to move away from the abundant fossil fuel while not blocking the development.
"You're going to the developing world, saying 'phase out coal', at the same time as not ruling out a new coal mine in Britain – a new coal mine in Britain!" Rowlatt shouted. "We started the industrial revolution, we should close the mines!”
But Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight Bob Seely criticised the Beeb's "sloppy journalism", pointing out that the mine would be producing coal to be processed into coke for British steel mills — and that the alternative was to import coal from abroad, resulting in several times higher total carbon emissions.
Seely even accused the BBC of wanting to kill off the UK steel industry, which supports 1,100 companies and over 33,000 skilled jobs.
The MP criticised environmentalists for promoting schemes — such as carbon offsets — that he said merely "offshore" emissions to other parts of the world rather than reducing them.
"We need to onshore our own pollution so we can own it, reduce it and fix it, not offshore it to bathe in virtue signalling or sloppy journalism," Seely said.