Environmentalist
We can stop burning fossil fuels. That will stop the climate changing as fast as it is changing. If the climate stopped changing then we would have less of these extreme events taking place. If we continue building houses in coastal zones, and we continue building houses on flood planes, […]
The Saudis, the Russians and others are not willing to agree to a phase out of coal as one of the outcomes of the COP, so we are still fighting that battle. So, what we are seeing in Naples is a small leap for man, and not the giant leap […]
We will know quite soon how much of this extreme weather we are seeing can be attributed to climate change with what scientist call attribution. Our understanding of climate science now is sufficiently good for us to be able to say when there is an event like this, what is […]
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 […]
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 […]
Climate Change is a bit like the virus. If we don’t do enough about it now, we will have to do an awful lot more later, and it will be much more painful. The announcement from China is good, as is the recent announcement from the European Commission, that they […]
Climate change is increasingly making the fires worse. Because in a warmer atmosphere you have more water evaporating from the ocean, and that water gets cycled back, which means the velocity with which the water cycles through the earth’s system increases, and that means that exactly as we are seeing, […]
This article was first published by the Oracle Partnership as one of a series of essays on climate change. 2019 is the year the global conversation on the climate changed. The children’s climate strikes, the arrival of Extinction Rebellion, the EU’s Green New Deal and the importance of climate change […]
Demands for action are outstripping political will. The diplomatic task of bringing the expectations gap falls to the hosts of next year’s climate talks. By Tom Burke This is the year the global conversation on the climate changed. It is no longer a marginal issue but has joined the political […]
This is an excerpt of a short interview I did for LBC, about impacts of climate change, and the record temperatures that have made this the hottest decade on record, and the second or third warmest year ever. What we have seen increasingly coming from scientists, is the message that […]