Blog


Do you want the good news? Or the bad?

Six months into the pandemic, it’s anybody’s guess whether: 1. Governments are effectively using their massive recovery programmes to address the Climate and Biodiversity Emergencies; 2. Businesses are effectively using their voice (and backing words with actions) to encourage governments to seize…

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Citizens Assemble – Government Stumbles!

Frankly, it’s been humiliating watching our Prime Minister make such a pig’s ear of hosting this year’s Conference of the Parties in Glasgow in November. This is by far and away the most important Conference since Paris in 2015; the challenge of securing a good outcome from it (let alone the kind…

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Our Next PM: a Guaranteed Climate Emergency in the Making!

This is going to be my last word on climate matters for a while – and only because I can’t stop myself thinking about what this country’s next Prime Minister will be doing to respond to Parliament’s newly-declared climate emergency. Worth dwelling on that: it’s our Parliament that declared the…

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Natural Capital: New Zealand Raises the Bar

I had a rather wonderful experience on Friday, listening to three Ministers in the New Zealand Government, and a handful of New Zealand business leaders, helping to launch a new initiative called the Aotearoa Circle, a coalition of public and private sector leaders committed to reversing the…

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‘A Green Future’: Another 25 Years of Bland Platitudes?

So what are we to make of the lionising of Michael Gove by a host of people who really should know better? His speech to the Oxford Farming Conference, and his scripting of Theresa May’s speech to launch the new 25-year Plan to Improve the Environment, have persuaded large numbers of my colleagues…

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The State of American Democracy

How often have you heard something like this: ‘Well, the situation here in the UK may be dire, but things aren’t half as bad as they are in America!’ I’ve said it myself, mostly in jest, sometimes in near despair. But I had absolutely no idea how terrifyingly true that throw-away comment really is…

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