ISIS AND OIL

      As an environmentalist for more than forty years I have got used to the spasm of rage when I read of another act of wanton destruction of an irreplaceable natural treasure. Like professionals in the emergency services you have to protect yourself from your feelings or you […]

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

  This essay argues that the oil industry will lose the battle for the future. The growth it expects will not occur. The key issue is whether the world makes an orderly or disorderly transition to a carbon neutral energy system. An orderly transition preserves both the economy and the […]

THE FOSSIL FUEL PARADOX

  This blog  was first published by BusinessGreen                   A debate over the real value of investment in fossil fuels has raged all summer. September’s climate summit in New York brought it into sharp focus. There, Anthony Hobley of the Carbon Tracker Initiative […]

‘IT’S THE ECONOMY STUPID’

                    When the debate on the Fourth Carbon Budget began in Whitehall in 2012 the Treasury had a clear view. No. Meeting its requirements would be too damaging to Britain’s economy. How did they know this? Their model of the economy […]

THE FUTURE IS COMING READY OR NOT

  The following speech talks about the looming collision between $6 trillion of investment in oil and gas over the next ten years and the agreement by governments to keep the rise in global temperature below 2°C. This collision will transform the human prospect. It poses a dilemma for governments […]

MAKERS AND TAKERS

  This article first appeared in Business Green.        The public discourse on climate policy is asymmetric. It has been dominated by the climate makers. These are the fossil fuel industries and their customers. This has led to a badly distorted portrayal of climate policy risk. As a […]

FUTURE IMPERFECT: THE COLLISION OF CLIMATE AND CARBON

  BY TOM BURKE This article first appeared in the Montrose Journal September 2013 Two epochal forces are shaping this century. One is economic, the $6 trillion dollar investment that will be made in developing fossil fuel assets over the next decade. The other is physical, the immutable behaviour of carbon […]

Locked into business as usual in a changing world – ENDS Report August 2013

  This column was first published in the ENDS Report August 2013                 Conservative Party leaders believe declaring war on the environment and aggressively promoting fracking for shale gas is to their advantage. But it is bad for business and the economy. We […]