Within the EU, Britain can take the lead on tackling climate change

  This piece first appeared in The Guardian       Letter from John Gummer, Chris Huhne, Adair Turner, Craig Bennett, Tom Burke, Amy Cameron, Michael Jacobs, John Sauven, Matthew Spencer, James Thornton and Crispin Tickell       Britain has shown great diplomatic leadership on climate change and successive […]

Hinkley Point C nuclear deal contains £22bn ‘poison pill’ for taxpayer

  ‘If the SoSIA is signed it will change the argument over Hinkley. Instead of being an argument about why we should kill this white elephant – which the government has comprehensively lost –  it will become an argument about not being able to afford the bullets to kill the […]

BBC World News – Is Hinkley dead? – 8 March 16

      BBC: Professor Tom Burke is the chairman of the environmental think tank E3G, he joins me now in the studio, welcome to you. Where do you think this project is floundering? Tom Burke: Well, as I listen to the President and the Prime Minister talk about how […]

Is nuclear power a ticking time bomb? – France24 Debate – 8 Mar 16

                  I think that you really want to consider much more than just the body count of deaths when you look to evaluate a complicated problem like this. This has been a social catastrophe, the people who used to live near Fukushima […]

Tom Burke talks to LBC about nuclear power, Hinkley Point and EDF – 07 Mar 16

            Clive Bull: A top EDF boss has resigned over the company’s plans to build Britain’s first new nuclear power plant for decades. There is an ongoing row over the 18 billion pound cost, part of which China is paying for. The government wants to […]

Letters to PM warned of the risks of going ahead with Hinkley Point

                        In March 2012, on the anniversary of Fukushima, I drafted a letter to the Prime Minister that was signed by myself and three other former Directors of Friends of the Earth. One year later we wrote a second letter […]

Is there really a need for Hinkley Point to be built? – World at One – Radio 4 – 16 Feb 16

    BBC: So Is there a really need for Hinkley Point to be built? Tom Burke: There isn’t actually, there’s lots and lots more things that we can do. There is no need to replace nuclear with nuclear, or indeed with gas. We’ve got so many more options, that […]

OF OIL AND STONES

  This blog first appeared in Business Green                                 Sheikh Yamani, a former Saudi oil minister, is famous for having pointed out that the stone age did not end because we ran out of stones. […]

The End of Oil? – BBC World Service – Newshour Extra – 8 Jan16

                The drop in oil price is not doing something that a lot of people thought that it would do, when it fell that low, which is to create a big stimulus to economic growth. So it’s not succeeded in doing that, and […]

Even if the global warming scare were a hoax, we would still need it – The Telegraph

  This article was first published in The Telegraph   China is the low-carbon superpower and will be the ultimate enforcer of the COP21 climate deal in Paris     By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard   Chinese scientists have published two alarming reports in a matter of weeks. Both conclude that the […]