PARIS – WHAT REALLY MATTERS?

        Today Paris will again be the focus of world attention. 150 world leaders, including Presidents Obama, Xi, and Putin, Chancellor Merkel and Indian Premier Modi will be there. They will attend the most important meeting on climate change since the Copenhagen summit ended in chaos in […]

Why nuclear is a bad deal for Britain – BBC Politics Today – 21 October 15

    Nuclear is the cuckoo in the nest it squeezes the others out of the energy market.  The reason why we are doing what we are doing, making so many policy changes in energy efficiency and renewables, and eliminating billions of pounds of investment, is to make sure that there […]

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 […]

If there is the will, there is a way – Sky News – 02 November 14

        Here is an interview I did for Sky News discussing the draft IPCC ‘synthesis’ report, why this report is different, and what difference it could make.   “I think there are two things that are different about this report, first of all this report is not just […]

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 […]

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 […]

Renewables threaten fossil fuel interests

  This article was first published in the September edition of the ENDS Report.     A good 93% of Britons think the climate is changing. Such was the finding of a recent pollby the blog Carbon Brief. This is as close as polling can ever get to ‘everyone’. Nor […]

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 […]