Environmentalist
COP26 certainly wasn’t a flop. It didn’t take us to where we need to get to, but it did take us a step forward into the really hard work of delivering on the Paris Agreement. So, I think that it took us somewhere. I think what surprised people was the […]
It is a normal part of trade agreements now, that you agree to stick to the Paris Agreement, you write in the terms of that agreement, and that is what we proposed to do. The UK has been, quite legitimately a leader on climate change, both around the world and […]
It is fifty years since I joined a local group of Friends of the Earth. I started as an environmentalist. What I am going to do is step back a bit and look at both some of the failures and the tensions in a wider context of the development of […]
A 55% carbon cut over the next decade by 2030 in the EU is historic. What this marks is a real acceleration of the progress going forward, and it sets a real benchmark for other countries to step up and increase their commitment in time for the summit in Glasgow […]
I think that BP are right about the future of oil. Amongst the international oil companies, they have put themselves out in front of realising that change is coming. Big change is coming, and they have positioned themselves very well. I noticed that, the other week, BP got praise from […]
Outside of the global wars of the twentieth century humanity has never experienced a shock as sudden or as profound in its implications as that brought to us by the Sars-CoV-2 virus. It surprised everyone bar a very small number of medical and ecological scientists. For them, the canaries had […]
The Mayor of London and Greater London Authority will hold the first-ever London Climate Action Week (LCAW) from 1-8 July 2019. The week aims to highlight London’s unique role as the leading international hub for organisations working globally to tackle climate change. LCAW will also mobilise London-based organisations and local […]
. Staff redeployed as ex-government adviser says Brexit is bad for environment . More than two-thirds of all staff employed directly by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are working on delivering Brexit, according to official figures released by the government. The response to a freedom of […]
. On 22 March, I spoke at the United Nation’s Economic Commission for Europe’s meeting on the Sustainable Development Goals in Geneva, Switzerland. ‘ Thank you for the invitation to share our experience on financing disaster risk reduction in relation to climate change. E3G is a European climate change think […]
The core argument of this lecture is that failure of climate change policy represents an existential threat to civilisation that will destroy the foundations of trust on which democracy depends. Climate change is a unique problem in human history. Climate policy success demands the local, national and geo-political cooperation that […]