What Are the Priorities for Environmental Law Following Brexit – PIEL UK 2021

It is fifty years since I joined a local group of Friends of the Earth. I started as an environmentalist. What I am going to do is step back a bit and look at both some of the failures and the tensions in a wider context of the development of […]

How is the UK handling COP26? – CGTN

I think that the Prime Minister’s announcement this morning was a bit underwhelming, especially given the fact the Britain has actually been a global leader in terms of the legislation it has passed itself on climate change. So I think that we would have expected to see a bit more […]

Will the conservative government act on Climate Change? – Sky News

Boris Johnson has already come out, since he got back to Downing Street, and said that this is going to be the greenest government ever. He has recommitted himself to the goal of being carbon neutral by the middle of the century. He has promised a green industrial revolution. So, […]

WHAT THE MID-TERMS MEAN FOR THE CLIMATE

The mid-term elections in the US are widely seen as having been something of a referendum on Trump. If so, despite his protestations to the contrary, he lost. There was much media commentary on election day and immediately after about the non-appearance of the forecast Democratic wave. As is becoming […]

What does Brexit mean for Environmental Legislation in the UK – Guardian Podcast

    One of the things that you get out of our membership of the EU is an enormous amount of regulatory stability. It takes a very long time to create environmental legislation, but then it is very difficult for governments, in a whimsical way, to change it. Now from […]

Sky News – Discussing COP21 and progress so far

      Sky News: Let’s talk to Tom Burke an Environmentalist and former Government advisor. Let’s be blunt. People have been droning on about climate change and global warming for so many years now, but nothing ever gets agreed and nothing ever happens, is that why we’re switching off? […]

CLIMATE: National security concerns could spur Hill action — ex-DOD officials?

        This is a report by Environment & Energy Publishing of the panel I spoke on at the Atlantic Council event Climate Security: The Next ‘Battle Ground’? on June 17, 2015 in Washington DC The reporter misheard what I said about America. What I actually said was: ‘Winston Churchill, who had an American mother, once […]

TTIP: Climate Change Catastrophe? – Speech given at PIEL UK 9th Annual Conference – April 2015

  Here is a video of the speech I gave on TTIP and climate change the PIEL UK 9th Annual Conference.     Speaker: Tom Burke CBE (Chairman, E3G) 26:52 Q&A Moderator: Professor William Howarth (Professor of Environmental Law, Kent Law School)   You can watch the rest of the conference here […]

TROUBLE AHEAD

  This piece first appeared in BusinessGreen       #         The political argument for trade liberalisation has always been that it is good for the economy. This argument was losing traction even when what was good for the economy was good for your wallet. Now that […]

Written evidence submitted to Environmental Audit Committee on Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

                Written evidence submitted by Tom Burke, Chair of E3G   When we met the other week I offered to write to you and set out some of my concerns about the regulatory coherence provisions of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. There […]