Should we be debating paying loss and damage for climate change impacts at COP27? – Good Morning Britain

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 […]

DEMOCRACY, LAW AND THE ENVIRONMENT – UKELA ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2021

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 […]

The Politics of Climate Change

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 […]

Speaking at the UN Economic Commission for Europe meeting on Sustainable Development Goals

. On 22 March, I spoke at the United Nation’s Economic Commission for Europe’s meeting on the Sustainable Development Goals in Geneva, Switzerland. ‘ Thank you for the invitation to share our experience on financing disaster risk reduction in relation to climate change. E3G is a European climate change think […]

HOW TO DEAL WITH A CLIMATE EMERGENCY – IN ADMIRATION OF THE CLIMATE STRIKERS.

Revoke Brexit – that is the single most important thing that a British Government could do to tackle climate change as Brexit is both undermining our ability to make our own low carbon transition but also removes one of the strongest and most influential voices within the EU for higher […]

A CLIMATE OF TRUST

The core argument of this lecture is that failure of climate change policy represents an existential threat to civilisation that will destroy the foundations of trust on which democracy depends. Climate change is a unique problem in human history. Climate policy success demands the local, national and geo-political cooperation that […]

Climate justice and development – The Oxford Forum on International Development

There are three key points I want to make about climate justice and development. The first is that climate change presents humanity with a unique challenge. We have never before faced a problem like this. There is no other problem that will impact on the security and prosperity of literally […]

Prosperity, Security, Stability

  These are anxious times. Much that we take for granted in the way the world is ordered is in flux. The brief moment when scholars talked confidently of the ‘End of History’ has passed. Change is no longer an option, to be welcomed or resisted, as a matter of […]

China’s increased emissions – BBC World News Business Report – 15 Nov 17

    I think what matters about the suggested increase in emissions this year, is whether it is a blip, or whether it is an actual change in the trajectory. The trajectory has been ahead of what is needed to get us on to the right path, to stay below […]