Blog


Eric Pickles: Arch Enemy of Sustainability

I’ve come to the conclusion that of all the Enemies of Sustainability in this wretched Government, Eric Pickles may well be the worst of the lot. I’ve been tracking his increasingly hostile, irrational interventions over a number of years, and I’m forced to conclude that our Secretary of State at…

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Shell’s Moral Muddles

My friend Jeremy Leggett caused a bit of a stir recently by predicting that one of the big oil majors would, before the end of the year, ‘do an E.ON’, imitating what E.ON did by splitting itself into ‘LegacyOilCo’ – with a portfolio of gradually wasting hydrocarbon assets – and ‘BeyondOilCo’ – with…

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Pope’s Words the Height of Irresponsibility

Pity poor old Ryan MacDonald, a 21-year-old Masters student from Derby. On hearing that he’d been selected as one of five Brits to go through to the next stage of selecting the team to go to Mars in 2024, Ryan MacDonald said: “The most important thing to do in life is to leave a legacy. A lot of…

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Naomi Klein: This Changes Everything

his is one of the most important books I’ve read for a long time. It’s authoritatively researched, absolutely ‘on the front line’ of the politics of climate change today, profound in its analysis of contemporary capitalism, and hugely impactful in terms of laying out the implications of that kind…

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Shock Horror! Tories and Lib Dems Don’t Agree about the Economy

I can’t deny that it’s highly entertaining watching the Coalition Government energetically tearing itself to pieces over the future of the economy. You’ve just got to laugh out loud at the wounded indignation of Danny Alexander suddenly waking up to the fact that his ‘close colleague’ at the…

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Some friendly advice for the Secretary of State

Summon into your mind, for a moment, the image of a deeply perplexed Ed Davey, late at night, deep in thought, sitting there behind his Secretary of State’s desk in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, staring down at a single large number in a memo from his Permanent Secretary. Strictly…

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