Listen to the Canaries

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 FUTURE HAS BEEN CANCELLED

This coronavirus has caused three shocks. There is a health shock the worst of which should be behind us by the end of this year if governments manage it well. There is an economic shock which will last for far longer. There is a psychological shock which we will never […]

Covid-19, Climate, Civilization

Civilisation is the thin film of order we build around the chaos of events. Courtesy of a coronavirus we are now getting a chilling reminder of just how thin that film is. It would have been inconceivable a few weeks ago that a microscopic assemblage of lipids, proteins and ribonucleic […]

Who should be running the COP26 summit? – BBC Today

You need to have somebody leading this who is seen to have the ear of the Prime Minister, and speaks with his authority, and I think Claire O’Neil didn’t really have that. So it wasn’t the wrong decision, but the way in which it was done, I don’t think inspires […]

How is the UK handling COP26? – CGTN

I think that the Prime Minister’s announcement this morning was a bit underwhelming, especially given the fact the Britain has actually been a global leader in terms of the legislation it has passed itself on climate change. So I think that we would have expected to see a bit more […]

Are government targets to tackle climate change ambitious enough? – Sky News

I was actually rather disappointed that there weren’t more announcements this morning. It’s very good to be bringing forward getting rid of the vehicle internal combustion engine. But if we are going to ask the rest of the world to do more about climate change, we have got to meet […]

Britain needs to walk its talk if we are going to lead at COP26 – Channel 4 News

I think the issue is that there was a feeling beginning to emerge, both more broadly within Whitehall, but also amongst other governments that we weren’t putting enough oomph into it. And that it needed somebody in charge of the process, leading it, who was seen to have the ear […]

UK’s nuclear future hangs on electricity tax

by Paul Brown The new British prime minister, Boris Johnson, must soon decide whether to save the UK’s nuclear future with an unpopular electricity tax. LONDON, 21 January, 2020 ? Pressure is mounting on the UK’s new Conservative government to rescue its nuclear programme through an electricity tax, to throw […]

What motivates people to act on climate change? – LBC

People really are beginning to get the message that this is serious, and for real, and it will need them to think about how to change. What individuals do will help, but it’s not where the solution lies. Individuals have got to do their bit, and actually, by and large, […]

The Politics of Climate Change

This article was first published by the Oracle Partnership as one of a series of essays on climate change. 2019 is the year the global conversation on the climate changed. The children’s climate strikes, the arrival of Extinction Rebellion, the EU’s Green New Deal and the importance of climate change […]