Six years ago today, an ambitious Labour politician, newly appointed climate change secretary, set Britain on a ruinous path that threatens our energy-dependent civilisation with collapse.

Such is the devastating conclusion of Owen Paterson, the Tory former Environment Secretary, who yesterday joined Lord Lawson among the highest-profile critics of the political consensus on energy policy.

For it was on October 16, 2008, that the new secretary of state – Ed Miliband, by name – set us the legally binding goal of meeting the EU’s wildly ambitious target to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent before 2050 (and how significant that no other country has followed his lead).

Owen Paterson (left), the Tory former Environment Secretary, criticised the energy policy put in place by then secretary of state Ed Miliband (pictured in 2008) to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent before 2050

The country has been blighted by more wind turbines since Ed Miliband's disastrous energy policy in 2008

If Mr Paterson’s frightening analysis is correct, under current policies Mr Miliband’s Climate Change Act will cost us a mind-boggling £1.3trillion over the next 36 years – with low-income families paying inflated energy bills to subsidise wealthy landowners and investors.

Moreover, he says, the course set by the Labour leader and his Lib Dem successors – obsessed by inefficient wind turbines and biomass that causes more pollution than coal – cannot possibly meet the Act’s emissions target, while failing utterly to provide for the UK’s energy requirements.

Braving the fury of the ‘green blob’, Mr Paterson goes on to question climate change zealots’ alarmist forecasts, pointing out there has been little evidence of any atmospheric global warming for 18 years.

Like this paper, he accepts emissions should be cut – though without ruining ourselves in a vain bid to meet EU targets.

Indeed, Mr Paterson sets out alternative means of achieving cleaner energy more cheaply, such as building more and smaller nuclear reactors, exploiting shale gas and making use of the heat produced by power stations.

At the very least, his ideas deserve full examination.

One thing is clear.

When MPs of all parties voted in 2008 to support Mr Miliband’s law, it hardly occurred to them that they were making the most crippling commitment in our peacetime history.

The Climate Change Act must surely be amended or repealed.

As for the Labour leader, if he could pose such a huge threat to our children’s prosperity as a mere climate change secretary, heaven help us if he becomes prime minister.

Recovery’s true heroes

Another month, another hugely encouraging set of employment figures to confound George Osborne’s critics and offer resounding vindication of Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms.

But while nothing can detract from the plaudits due to the Chancellor and the Work and Pensions Secretary, let nobody forget who are the true heroes and heroines of our continuing recovery.

For as these figures show, the people of this country have made huge sacrifices to bring unemployment below two million for the first time in six years, accepting wage cuts rather than jeopardise jobs.

Indeed, with pay rises still lagging behind inflation, the independent Resolution Foundation calculates that real wages are now 7.8 per cent lower than their pre-crisis levels in August 2007.

So, yes, the figures reflect enormous credit on the work ethic and realism of the great majority who understood the depths of the financial crisis.

But don’t they also bring shame on that minority of public sector workers who put their selfish interests first, striking to demand higher pay and pensions, at the expense of those who can only dream of the perks they enjoy?

Yesterday, a civil service union claimed 140,000 of its members joined the latest walkout. But how many of us noticed?