Environmentalist
The cameras are gone. The tented city on the banks of the Clyde have been dismantled. Political misconduct reoccupies the headlines. COP26 is over and climate change is no longer prominent in the public conversation. Was the UN summit last November, as former US Secretary of State John Kerry claimed, […]
On Tuesday the UK parliament voted in favour of setting out conditions for returning to 0.7 per cent aid target. The tests it agreed make it impossible that the cuts will be reversed ahead of the crucial Cop26 summit. Indeed, the UK has not met the key test of returning […]
Environmentalist Tom Burke considers why undermining the democratic rule of law would be destructive for the environment and all who want to protect it. Joni Mitchell wrote ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ in 1970, the year the first Earth Day launched the modern environment movement. The song’s refrain – Don’t it always […]
This is a speech I gave at the UKELA annual conference 2021. In summary, I argue that the rule of law will not long survive a failure to maintain the ecological foundations of the economy. The climate is the foundation in the most imminent danger. The ecological foundations of the […]
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 […]
Fifty years ago, extending the rule of law over the then wild frontier of the British environment was the main challenge facing environmental campaigners. Post-Brexit, the challenge we now face is protecting the rule of EU environmental law from populist politicians. Environmental law is the tool we use to balance […]
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 […]
By Jocelyn Timperley Hardline brexiteer Dominic Raab, currently fourth of the seven remaining contenders to become the UK’s next prime minister, this week attempted to position himself as a pro-environment candidate. In an apparent attempt to broaden his appeal, the former Brexit secretary on Monday stated his plans to make […]
. 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 […]
Revoke Brexit – that is the single most important thing that a British Government could do to tackle climate change as Brexit is both undermining our ability to make our own low carbon transition but also removes one of the strongest and most influential voices within the EU for higher […]