Blog and Latest Articles

Here’s a statistic worth dwelling on: at least 80,000 lives a year have been saved because of the higher air quality standards imposed by the EU, often in the teeth of strong opposition from individual Member States. In my personal view, it’s that sort of insight that makes the vast majority of…

No sooner had I finished off the blog posted earlier today, than I heard from Friends of the Earth that the Charity Commission had decided to reissue its guidance to charities on campaigning around the EU Referendum. Instead of trying to bully them into remaining silent through the campaign, the…

Even for a sympathetic observer from the UK, the politics of climate change in Australia is, to say the least, vexatious. But it’s now entering a more critical phase than ever before. The mismatch between the conclusions of the Paris Agreement in December last year and the failure of Australia’s…

Bit by bit, the true authoritarianism of this Government is revealing itself. Way back in 2011, in what now feels like the good old days, myself and Bethan Harris (a colleague in Forum for the Future) did some serious research into what we described as ‘the creeping illiberalism’ of the Coalition…

Predictably, the Referendum campaign so far has been much more about instinct than it has about reasoned debate. And that’s true in the environment space as much as anywhere else. Which is why we can all welcome a really helpful new report from the Institute for European Environmental Policy…

I feel duty bound to keep loyal readers of the blog completely up to date with the slowly unfolding Hinkley Point meltdown – spasm by agonising spasm. Three important updates: 1. Jean-Bernard Lévy throws a wobbly Jean-Bernard Lévy, CEO of EdF, has just threatened to cancel the Hinkley Point deal…