The same mixture of scaremongering and hypocrisy could be found at the trial last week of six Greenpeace activists who scaled a chimney at Kingsnorth power station in Kent.

After days of relentless green propaganda the jury decided that despite causing £30,000 worth of damage and putting lives at risk, the six were justified in breaking the law because they were protesting about global warming.

According to the jury it would seem it is OK to break the law so long as you are sanctimonious enough to believe you are doing it for a higher purpose.

After the case a jubilant Ben Stewart, one of the activists, called for “clean technologies” to be used to generate electricity.

Does he mean clean coal? No, they are against that, even when carbon capture and storage can be used to bury the CO2 emissions.

Nuclear then? No, they oppose that too, even though it is a proven and reliable way of producing carbon-free electricity.

Gas? Bio-mass? No they are out as well.

So that leaves solar, wave and wind power which after years of massive subsidies provide less five per cent of our electricity needs – or they do when the wind is blowing.

The notion that all our coal, gas and nuclear power could be replaced by such renewables in the next 50 years is quite simply nuts.

It would take 400 wind farms the size of Ovenden Moor to replace a single coal-fired plant like Drax. It just isn’t going to happen.

So if Greenpeace gets its way and shuts most of our power stations the result will be even higher energy prices and power cuts – which will hit the most vulnerable in our society.

Not for the first time green polices will hurt the poor.