A carbon club?

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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 […]

The Prime Minister is right to recognise the vast potential of offshore wind in the UK – BBC World Service

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I think the Prime Minister is right to recognise the enormous potential of offshore wind in the UK. It will be very good, not just for climate and for consumers, but also for the economy as a whole. But he does need to be careful not to overpromise. The wind […]

REMARKS BY TOM BURKE AT THE LAUNCH OF THE WORLD NUCLEAR INDUSTRY REPORT 2019 – CHATHAM HOUSE

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At a time when truth is under systematic political attack and digital technologies are collapsing the public attention span, the publication of long data series such as the Nuclear Industry Status Report becomes increasingly important. The real world is not a headline; it does not have a half-life of 24 […]

More power in Britain came from renewables than fossil fuels in 2019 – Sky News

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Here are some excerpts of the interview I did for Sky News about the announcement from the National Grid that more power came from renewable sources than from fossil fuels for the first time in Britain in 2019. I think that it is a very important milestone. It means that […]

Will the climate summit fall far short of what is required? – Al Jazeera

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I think that what they have got to do at this round of the Summit is to agree the last bits of the rule book by which they are going to implement the agreement, and they are hung up on a couple of fairly technical points to do with the […]

Greta Thunberg is not being overly pessimistic about the urgency of climate change – Sky News

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Here are some excerpts of the interview with Sky News about whether Greta Thurnberg’s speech about climate change was overly pessimistic: The reality is that climate change is nastier, and is happening faster than we thought it would, the dangers that everybody on the planet are facing are worse than […]

How feasible is the 2050 emissions target set by the UK government? – BBC News

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. . The fastest thing that we can do to get emissions down is to improve the efficiency with which we use energy, and in particular the way in which we provide heat in buildings. So that’s not really a question of people having to change their lifestyles so much […]

Remarks By Tom Burke at The Prospect Trade Union Energy Summit

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. Remarks by Tom Burke at The Prospect Energy Summit, Birdcage Walk, London On April 4th 2019. . Thank you for inviting me to contribute to this panel. As has already become clear, and will become even more so, climate change is one of the most serious threats to the […]

Climate justice and development – The Oxford Forum on International Development

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There are three key points I want to make about climate justice and development. The first is that climate change presents humanity with a unique challenge. We have never before faced a problem like this. There is no other problem that will impact on the security and prosperity of literally […]

Hitachi to Halt Work on Wales Nuclear Plant – BBC World Service

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Japan’s Hitachi is to halt work on a nuclear plant in Wales amid rising cost concerns. Tom Burke is chairman of the environmental research group E3G, and a former UK government advisor on energy policy, and tells us why the company is pulling out. Also in the programme, ahead of […]