NO-ONE HOME

  This piece first appeared in BusinessGreen     There is no-one at home in Britain’s political parties. Increasingly they are empty shells with ever fewer members. On a good day less than 400,000 people belong to all our political parties combined. That is about 0.5% per cent of the […]

THE POWER OF DREAMS

    This piece first appeared in The Guardian on Thursday 10th July                 It has always been difficult to see what was attractive about the proposed deal with EDF to build a nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point in Somerset. To bring this […]

SPEECH AT E3G TENTH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION – THE DECK AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE – JULY 2ND 2014.

  REMARKS BY MR TOM BURKE CBE AT THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION FOR E3G, THE DECK AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE, JULY 2ND 2014.                         First of all, let me thank you all for coming this evening. We are celebrating […]

THE FUTURE IS COMING READY OR NOT

  The following speech talks about the looming collision between $6 trillion of investment in oil and gas over the next ten years and the agreement by governments to keep the rise in global temperature below 2°C. This collision will transform the human prospect. It poses a dilemma for governments […]

SPEAKING WITH A FORKED TONGUE

  This article first appeared in Business Green   . Last month, under pressure from activist investors, Exxon issued a report to their shareholders on climate change. To no-one’s surprise they found that “none of our hydrocarbon assets are now or will become ‘stranded’”. Some saw this as an important […]

Why Europe matters and why the European elections matter – E3G

After you Claude

                    Britons only generate 1.42% of the world’s carbon emissions. No-one else is doing much to reduce their emissions. We are doing a lot and should not do more until everyone else joins in. This is the facile, Treasury inspired, argument […]

Discussing Climate Change on the Jeremy Vine show – BBC Radio 2 – 31st March 2014

                “Climate change is happening now, and what we’re seeing is it’s nastier and faster than we thought even ten years ago.” “I think the mood really has changed, not just in Britain but around the world, and people now at least accept […]

‘Events, dear boy, events’ have put climate change back on the agenda

  This article piece first appeared in The Guardian on Wednesday 26 March 2014 The decline of climate change on leaders’ agendas has been reversed – not by new analysis, but two years of extreme weather                   British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, […]

MAKERS AND TAKERS

  This article first appeared in Business Green.        The public discourse on climate policy is asymmetric. It has been dominated by the climate makers. These are the fossil fuel industries and their customers. This has led to a badly distorted portrayal of climate policy risk. As a […]