Environmentalist
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 […]
I think that there are three dimensions to the issue of helping developing countries who are already suffering the impacts of climate change. The first is a moral dimension. Clearly, we are partly responsible, along with other rich countries, for creating the problem. We clearly have some moral responsibility not […]
A conversation with Stephen Colegrave of Byline Times, discussing what consequences climate policy success or failure will have on democratic systems. Without democracy, climate policy will fail. If climate policy fails democracy will die. To stay in power despots have to destroy all the machinery societies have ever invented to […]
At COP26 I think we did better than I’d expected and nothing like good enough, is my general feeling. I think the tone was interesting, rather than the specifics of the outcome – which everybody’s commentaries focused on – the tone was interesting, because it was a much greater sense […]
To focus on public subsidies for renewables is only telling part of the truth. The rest of the truth is that we also subsidize our existing fossil fuel industries, BP and Shell and others like them around the world still get subsidies. Every nuclear power station on the planet gets […]
COP26 certainly wasn’t a flop. It didn’t take us to where we need to get to, but it did take us a step forward into the really hard work of delivering on the Paris Agreement. So, I think that it took us somewhere. I think what surprised people was the […]
We live in turbulent times. Some eight billion of us live in an increasingly connected world. The pace of technology-enabled change is accelerating. This can be both exhilarating, as new opportunities and experiences become accessible, and intimidating, as familiar places and relationships are transformed beyond recognition. This accelerating pace of […]
COP26 is very serious, and we had better hope it gets somewhere because if it doesn’t get somewhere, then we are all going to be in a lot of trouble. I think three things need to come out of it. The first thing that we need to do is deliver […]
The fate of the climate and the future of the law are intimately entangled. The rule of law is a crucial precondition for the success of climate policy. Climate policy failure is not inevitable but it is imminent. Avoiding failure means an end to the burning of fossil fuels by […]
This announcement by China, that it will no longer finance coal projects abroad, is certainly a very important development, even more so because it was a bit unexpected. I think is has helped to change the tone of the conversation ahead pf COP26. It was getting to be a bit […]