Trade deal with Australia would weaken UK’s position on climate change ahead of COP26 – Times Radio

It is a normal part of trade agreements now, that you agree to stick to the Paris Agreement, you write in the terms of that agreement, and that is what we proposed to do. The UK has been, quite legitimately a leader on climate change, both around the world and […]

Trade deal between UK and Australia should uphold the Paris Agreement – Sky News

This trade deal with Australia is really putting a nasty stain on Britain’s otherwise legitimate claim to be a climate change leader. We have done more than most of the rest of the world to show that you can decarbonize your economy and still grow it. Here we are giving […]

The Double Jeopardy of the Environment & Democracy – Byline Times

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 […]

DEMOCRACY, LAW AND THE ENVIRONMENT – UKELA ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2021

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 […]

Should the government be charging in on climate change commitments? – Times Radio

Nobody should be under any illusions about how bad it will be for the lives of everybody if climate policy fails. As we have been told repeatedly in the recent days by people from all over the political spectrum, and from outside politics all together, this is the decade in […]

New coal mine in Cumbria makes Boris Johnson look like a hypocrite – Sky News

We have a situation where the prime minister is asking people, as he is at the summit that Britain is hosting today of The Powering Past Coal Alliance, to do more to drive coal out of our economy. At the same time as he is opening a coal mine himself. […]

A carbon club?

Now that it is widely recognised that climate change does indeed pose an existential threat to civilisation, there is an accelerating search for new ideas about how best to respond. Not all of them are good. Many of these ideas are well-intentioned searches for ways to accelerate the agonisingly slow […]

Panel Discussion on Climate Change – LBC

There are quite a small number of big things, like changing the transport system, and changing the energy system, where we need the state and business together to do big things for us. But there are a huge number of small things, none of which on its own makes a […]

Leaders mark 5 years of Paris Agreement with a web summit – France 24

I think the really important thing is that we are beginning to see the restoration of political momentum to the need to tackle climate change. We know what we’ve got to do, we’ve got the technology we need to solve the problem. We know that it won’t damage our economy. […]

A 55% carbon cut by 2030 in the EU, is it historic? – Al Jazeera

A 55% carbon cut over the next decade by 2030 in the EU is historic. What this marks is a real acceleration of the progress going forward, and it sets a real benchmark for other countries to step up and increase their commitment in time for the summit in Glasgow […]