Published on Spiked-Online at http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/8508/ Despite the apparent central position of science in debates and policymaking around climate change, more often than not policy responses are tempered by politics first, and science second....
Let’s pick apart this politics of doom
Published on Spiked-Online at http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/debates/copenhagen_article/8057 A sixth of the world’s population – the billion or so people who live downstream of Himalayan glaciers and depend on them for water – must surely be relieved. Just a...
Why Copenhagen was bound to fail
Published on Spiked-Online at http://www.spiked-online.com/debates/copenhagen_article/7912/ December’s Copenhagen climate summit was supposed to be the moment at which nations came together to save the planet. But the attempt to produce an international, legally...
Greenpeace: putting trees before people
At the end of last month, the Guardian’s environment correspondent, David Adam, reported from Brazil on Greenpeace’s allegation that illegal deforestation in the Amazon Basin was linked to a number of giant UK food firms. But were Greenpeace’s claims all that they...
What would you pay for 400,000 new green jobs?
Good news emerged from the recent Low Carbon Summit hosted by bailed-out £10bn loss-making bank, RBS. Peter Mandelson got covered in custard, and the government announced a new industrial strategy. Apparently 400,000 new "environmental sector" jobs will be created by...
‘We have an extremely selfish population’
In November 2008, the UK’s Climate Change Act was passed, committing the country to an 80 per cent cut in CO2 emissions by 2050. Politicians, NGOs, journalists and activists welcomed the target, but to meet it many far-reaching changes in our working- and day-to-day...
How you pay for tomorrow's scares, today
In a remarkably gullible news item, the BBC reported that 2008 was a ‘huge year for natural disasters’. "The past year has been one of the most devastating ever in terms of natural disasters... climate change [is] boosting the destructive power of disasters like...
There’s gold in green: profiting from climate change
Imagine an unpopular, impotent, and fragile UK Government, trying to make political capital out of a looming crisis. To avoid being embarrassed by criticism of its shallow policies, it appoints an independent panel of experts, to which it defers controversial...
The New Green Aristocracy: They don’t work for you
An aristocracy is a form of government by an elite that considers itself to possess greater virtues than the hoi polloi, giving it the right to rule in its own interests. Aristocrats were referred to as 'the nobility', or 'nobs'. These days we prefer decisions to be...
Going over the top in the ‘climate war’
'Anyone who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand. The evidence is clear – the long-term trend in global temperatures is rising, and humans are largely responsible for this rise.’ (1) This emphatic statement from the UK Met Office yesterday is...