Council climate change resolutions are just a lot of hot air

Our local council has banned us from having double glazing, while insisting on more insulation. What can possibly be the point?
Charles Arthur
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 November 2009 18.15 GMT
We've got the builders in. Yes, we're doing building. And doing building means building inspectors, sent by the council to make sure we aren't building a fire trap in the extension to our house.
They're also very keen to check we're not building something that won't conform to new environmental regulations: the ceiling and walls have to have particular thicknesses of insulating material, which doesn't come cheap, but will – we're assured – save energy.
Though when the inspector called a few days ago, he regretfully had to point out that we needed to add another 4cm of insulation to the sloping ceiling that we'd hoped would house a bedroom and perhaps even a toilet. With the extra insulation, it's starting to look as though we're only going to be inviting very small children to the bedroom.
And for our builder, the extra 4cm was a layer too far. "But you've got us putting that in while you've also insisted that we have single-glazed windows all through!" he blurted, his indignation finally getting the better of him. It's true. Our local council, which recently passed a solemn resolution that it was against climate change and would take it "seriously", has insisted that we may not have double-glazed windows in the new building.
Why? Because the main building is, by virtue of its age, listed – that strange process by which slightly obsessive-compulsive types hope to hang on to the past by pretending that the present isn't happening and that the future won't mind.
Ah, but it gets better. The main building – the one in which we actually, you know, live – isn't a paragon of "listedness" (unless you mean actually physically listing, which the floors do towards one end). In fact, it has a number of double-glazed windows. And who put them in? Why, the council itself, which used to own the property a few decades ago.
Shall we recap? We're building a modern extension in which we're obliged to put energy-leaking windows in order to conform to an historic ideal about our main home that hasn't actually been followed by the organisation now forcing us to put in the inefficient windows.
The whole process is indicative of how utterly our establishment has failed to get to grips with the twin realities of climate change and energy demand, which aren't linked but have similar outcomes: we need to use less fossil fuel energy. (Yes, we could use secondary glazing on the windows, but it's far less effective than real double glazing.)
For years, the Labour government has shied away from making rational – if politically brave – decisions about energy use: we've needed more investment in nuclear power and renewables. Instead, six years ago nuclear was left out of the energy white paper.
That's six years of not building the replacement for fossil fuels we've used (and will in future have to import from countries such as Russia, not known for its helpfulness towards Britain). I wish someone had noticed what Norway was doing – investing its windfall from oil exports in new energy sources. Too late now for North Sea oil. We spent it on … well, possibly the banks.
Meanwhile, our local councils run masterclasses in cognitive dissonance: frowning on climate change, "urging" action, insisting its aim is to "reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the council and the district", while forcing people to do things that will be costly in precisely those terms in the future.
My guess is that a sensible government in the future would drop the whole idea of "listing" buildings. The trouble is that when the energy crunch comes, it will be too late. We'll have been driven down a road wearing the blinkers imposed by the past. Stupidity comes in many forms; and on this occasion, it comes in the form of insulation standing by a single-glazed window.