Extracts from Ofcom Complaint, by Category: Misrepresentation of People’s Views

[Comment 120: By showing at this point a speech by a fringe anti-capitalist, the programme is trying to confuse in viewers’ minds the tiny number of people in the environmental movement who hold extreme views, with the vast majority of people who are simply concerned about the environment.]

(In breach of the 2003 Communications Act Section 265, Ofcom 5.4, 5.5, 5.7, 5.11, 5.12)

[Comment 132: So far as we are aware, nobody other than the narrator and Paul Driessen has ever suggested that “the world’s poorest people should be restricted to using the world’s most expensive and inefficient forms of electrical generation”. See Comment 123, page 104 and Comment 129, page 109 [of the full complaint]. The narrator and Driessen are using the logical fallacy known as a “straw man” argument (see Wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/75l4l) – by pretending that their opponents are taking an absurd position that they are not taking, and then attacking that absurd position. In doing so they are misrepresenting the facts to the public.

There are certainly people who are encouraging developing countries to include alternative energies in a diverse energy mix, and for very good reasons: Africa is still expanding its energy infrastructure, making both grid-connected and decentralized alternative energy options cost-competitive in different situations. Most developed nations planned their infrastructure in an era when fossil fuels were assumed to be endless and benign; and now they have a host of issues because of it.

Most environmentalists accept that coal will continue to be important for India and China, as well as South Africa. But there is large scope for emissions reductions from their coal use: by energy efficiency improvements, and – in time – from the use of carbon capture and storage (if it can be demonstrated to work). For more detail on this, see the International Energy Agency’s series of World Energy Outlook reports at http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org.]

(In breach of the 2003 Communications Act Section 265, Ofcom 5.4, 5.5, 5.7, 5.11, 5.12)