ON TURNING GOOD NEWS INTO BAD

                          When it comes to energy policy the Financial Times seems to be suffering the editorial equivalent of a nervous breakdown. Looking back through some of its recent stories I was struck by a headline from a Pilita […]

OF NIGHTMARES AND PARROTS

  This piece was first published in BusinessGreen       Let me introduce you to the mysterious world of triads. This is not, however, an article about the exotic world of Hong Kong’s ill-famed criminal gangs. This is about the much more prosaic world of managing electricity bills. Triads […]

STANDING OUR GROUND

  This piece was first published by Friends Of The Earth here       On a very cold morning forty years ago I got into a bright red Mini outside the FoE offices in Poland Street. Together with John Price, an Australian physics PhD, I was about to set […]

THE POWER OF DREAMS

    This piece first appeared in The Guardian on Thursday 10th July                 It has always been difficult to see what was attractive about the proposed deal with EDF to build a nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point in Somerset. To bring this […]

CHINA NIGHTMARE

  This piece first appeared in Business Green                   The prospect of the Chinese becoming owners, managers and even constructors of nuclear power stations in Britain has caused anxiety in some unexpected places. Both the right and the left, united in their […]

Making John Redwood angry – it’s nothing personal

  This article first appeared in Business Green on the 17th February 2014     I recently made John Redwood MP very cross. He was so cross he accused me of making ‘a very unpleasant personal attack’ on him. He was mistaken. I did no such thing. I did, however, […]

FALLON’S FALLACY

      There is a presentational trick that skilled politicians practice. It grasps that most people are more affected by the tone than the content of a speech. This is an especially important skill to have mastered when you want to want to say something controversial. Then a soft […]

It can’t be easy being George Monbiot

  By Jonathon Porritt  5th December 2013   This article first appeared in Jonathon Porritt’s blog and in The Ecologist The Letter referred to in this article is the one that Jonathon Porritt, Tony Juniper, Charles Secrett and I wrote to David Cameron, highlighting the key economic and political issues with pursuing a pro-nuclear […]

On Killing Dragons

  This article first appeared in the November Issue of The Ends Report                             Consistency is becoming the rarest of phenomena in public discourse. We have a government that is simultaneously increasing the planning constraints on wind […]

Viewpoint: Can we risk another Fukushima?

  This article first appeared as a guest post for Greenpeace Energydesk By Tom Burke, Founding director of E3G 21ST NOV 2013 This article also appeared in The Ecologist   One of the more opportunistic responses to the meltdown at Fukushima was that of nuclear advocates claiming  that since there were […]