Published in The Guardian, on 12th November 2003. For many people, the government’s proposal to abolish English Nature (EN) is simply punishment for having done its job too well. As the statutory adviser on biodiversity, it was EN which warned that genetically modified crops might damage the environment. This advice […]
Warning: drugs cost the earth
Published in the New Statesman, on 30th June 2003. The world is at war with terrorism, drugs, poverty, hunger, organised crime, intellectual property piracy and more besides. What these wars have in common is that we are losing them all. The best-known, and longest-fought, is the war on drugs. The […]
Sustainable development – a short history of a big idea
Published by Natural England (then English Nature) in June 2003. Sustainable development is a concept with a huge capacity to induce definitional constipation. Any discussion of it can be brought to an immediate halt by someone in the room asking for a definition. Few ever recover. There are now bibliographies […]
Corporate responsibility and accountability
Published in The Observer, in April 2003. Vultures are ugly birds. A powerful evolutionary logic seems to have ensured that form followed function with an uncanny precision. The sight of a large number of British and American companies squabbling over who will get the choicest pickings from the not quite […]