Environmentalist
Is it achievable technologically? Yes. We already have the technology we need to get to Net Zero, and there is a lot more to come. There is a lot of research going on that has been triggered by the challenge of reaching net zero. So, we are going to have […]
People are being wound up by a storm in the headlines. There is no call, or discussion going on at COP27 about reparations. There is a discussion going on about loss and damage. As the secretary general said yesterday, we are on a “highway to hell” on climate change, and […]
I think that there are three dimensions to the issue of helping developing countries who are already suffering the impacts of climate change. The first is a moral dimension. Clearly, we are partly responsible, along with other rich countries, for creating the problem. We clearly have some moral responsibility not […]
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, […]
At COP26 I think we did better than I’d expected and nothing like good enough, is my general feeling. I think the tone was interesting, rather than the specifics of the outcome – which everybody’s commentaries focused on – the tone was interesting, because it was a much greater sense […]
To focus on public subsidies for renewables is only telling part of the truth. The rest of the truth is that we also subsidize our existing fossil fuel industries, BP and Shell and others like them around the world still get subsidies. Every nuclear power station on the planet gets […]
COP26 certainly wasn’t a flop. It didn’t take us to where we need to get to, but it did take us a step forward into the really hard work of delivering on the Paris Agreement. So, I think that it took us somewhere. I think what surprised people was the […]
What we have from COP26 so far is another draft, we haven’t actually got an outcome yet. There is another whole period of negotiation going on as we run through the day, which is all pretty normal. I am more hopeful than I was at the beginning of the COP […]
I think that it would be quite wrong to say that COP26 is just another summit that hasn’t led anywhere. It has led somewhere, but it hasn’t led us to where we need to be. I think the ministerial segment at the start gave quite a lot of political impetus […]
COP26 has certainly achieved something, it’s just not achieved enough. I think we are continuing to turn the corner we started turning in Paris. We are moving from a policy where we are trying to constrain things, to one in which were increasingly trying to take the opportunities of solving […]