This article first appeared in the New Statesman September 2013 BY TOM BURKE PUBLISHED 25 SEPTEMBER 2013 16:33 Ed Miliband’s energy price freeze met with a predictable, if not always credible, response from the energy industries. Led by Angela […]
The devil’s in the detail
Published in the New Statesman, on 6th December 2004. The next round of negotiations on climate change, beginning in Buenos Aires on 6 December, takes place amid growing alarm among scientists. Climate change seems to be occurring faster and more dramatically than was previously thought. A new analysis, by 250 […]
Kyoto prospects 1: Russia
Published in the New Statesman, on 17th May 2004. The Prime Minister called climate change “the most important issue that we face as a global community”, in a recent speech. But what really caught the attention of journalists was his deliberate dropping of the word “environment” from his prepared text. […]
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 […]
Uranium dangers
How long have we got?
Published in the New Statesman, on 16th July 2001. The environment ministers and officials who gather in Bonn from 16-27 July for the resumed negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol will not settle the fate of the earth. The more important discussions, where the political heavy lifting will be done, will […]
Prepare for middle-class outrage
Published in the New Statesman, on 25th June 2001. At midday on the day after the election, Jack Straw was still talking to officials in the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) about his impending arrival as secretary of state. By midnight, the department no longer existed […]
Bush makes things hot for Americans
Published in the New Statesman, on 26th March 2001. This month, President Bush declared war on the world’s efforts to tackle the increasingly urgent problem of climate change. Writing to Senator Chuck Hagel, a longtime leading wrecker of US climate change initiatives, Bush not only promised not to impose mandatory […]
Is this the end for the green agenda?
Published in the New Statesman, on 25th September 2000. Tony Blair is not the only senior Labour politician whose carefully manicured image has been somewhat bashed about by the fuel tax protesters. Gordon Brown came into office determined to be the green Chancellor. Within months, he had published a statement […]
Bananas are only the warm-up act
Published in the New Statesman, on 12th March 1999. Miscalculation causes more disasters than malice. The current round of miscalculations on trade and genetically modified (GM) foods on both sides of the Atlantic could, if unchecked, cost the 21st century dearly. The banana wars dominating today’s headlines are only a […]