After you Claude

                    Britons only generate 1.42% of the world’s carbon emissions. No-one else is doing much to reduce their emissions. We are doing a lot and should not do more until everyone else joins in. This is the facile, Treasury inspired, argument […]

Making John Redwood angry – it’s nothing personal

  This article first appeared in Business Green on the 17th February 2014     I recently made John Redwood MP very cross. He was so cross he accused me of making ‘a very unpleasant personal attack’ on him. He was mistaken. I did no such thing. I did, however, […]

Debate on climate change with John Redwood MP – Sky News 11th Feb 2014

  This clip first appeared on Sky News on 11 February with John Redwood MP on climate change.   Tom Burke: “There is no doubt at all that this is exactly what climate scientists and environmentalists have been saying to governments for years would happen if you went on allowing […]

FALLON’S FALLACY

      There is a presentational trick that skilled politicians practice. It grasps that most people are more affected by the tone than the content of a speech. This is an especially important skill to have mastered when you want to want to say something controversial. Then a soft […]

WHAT’S IN A WORD?

    One of the less hysterical criticisms of Ed Miliband’s intention to freeze energy prices for 20 months has been to call it ‘unworkable’. This was the word  used by John Major when he intervened in the debate – ‘a bolt from the grey’ as one journalist called it. […]

It can’t be easy being George Monbiot

  By Jonathon Porritt  5th December 2013   This article first appeared in Jonathon Porritt’s blog and in The Ecologist The Letter referred to in this article is the one that Jonathon Porritt, Tony Juniper, Charles Secrett and I wrote to David Cameron, highlighting the key economic and political issues with pursuing a pro-nuclear […]

Magic and Misdirection

  This article first appeared in the December edition of BusinessGreen magazine                 One of the more stressful moments in Britain’s history occurred in the spring of 1940. Churchill had just become Prime Minister. Rommel’s tanks were at Calais. France was about to […]

Shooting Labour’s energy freeze fox

                    You could not make this up. In order to cut energy bills the government has just announced it will cut one of its top policies to, uh, cut energy bills. Of course, that is not what it is saying. But […]

Remarks by Tom Burke CBE – All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group (APPCCG) – House Of Commons

      REMARKS BY TOM BURKE CBE AT THE ALL PARTY PARLIAMENTARY CLIMATE CHANGE GROUP (APPCCG), COMMITTEE ROOM 12, HOUSE OF COMMONS, WEDNESDAY 27TH NOVEMBER 2013.   There are a number of ways in which climate change is unusual among the problems we face. We know exactly what we need […]

Retrofitting the Green Deal

  What the government needs to do to rescue the Green Deal                 An excerpt from a report written by Nicholas Schoon on behalf of BioRegional and The Association for the Conservation of Energy.   Recommendations Incentives for retrofits and closing the Green Deal funding gap 1. Government needs to […]