Discussing a tendency in contemporary politics to reduce issues to questions of scientific measures of climate change, Mike Hulme argues for more diverse understandings of climate and change and its impacts on society. I discussed these ideas in my lecture at the London School of Economics, ‘Epistemic Pluralism and Climate Change’ on 10 March 2025, […]
Essays & Blog Posts
The Tyndall Centre at 25 Years: Bidding for the Contract
Twenty-five years ago today – on Wednesday 22 March 2000 – I arrived at the Institute of Directors at 116 Pall Mall, London, at 10.30am in the morning prepared to deliver the most important presentation of my life. I was to defend our proposal for establishing a new national climate change research centre in front […]
‘Profiles in Sustainability’, an interview with Mike Hulme
The journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development centers on sustainability science and its contribution to guiding policy and practice. To this end, the journal is exploring the device of interviews to enable conversations to flourish. In this...
Geopolitics, History and Climate Change: A Personal View
“To think that we can draw some useful analogies from history dramatically underestimates the novelty and scale of the climate challenge.”[2] “In the contest between geopolitics and sustainable climate policies, the former takes precedence.”[3] Starting in the early 1980s,...
Climatism and Its Discontents: Why Net-Zero Obsession is Unfair to the World’s Poor
The ideology of climatism has dangerous implications for societies, especially for countries such as India whose development trajectory and ambition requires them to pursue a plurality of goals. You can read here my op-ed for India’s OutlookBusiness, an abridged...
‘The dangerous obsession with Net-Zero’
Despite a heated debate at COP28 over whether the world should be phasing-out fossil fuels altogether, the governmental delegates in the end agreeing rather to “transition away from fossil fuels”, Net Zero remains the collectively agreed target. But as I argue in this post for the Institute of Arts and Ideas, Net Zero is both […]
Learning to Disagree Well
In her first Annual Address to Senate House since her inauguration in July as Cambridge Vice-Chancellor, Deborah Prentice highlighted the imperative for university students to learn to “disagree well” on difficult subjects. To facilitate this learning, Prentice intends to...
Review: “Inside the World of Climate Change Sceptics”
Read here my review, to appear in Public Understanding of Science, of Kristin Haltinner and Dilshani Sarathchandra’s new book. As I conclude my review … “[T]he art of politics is not to get everyone to agree with you, but...
“We Need Scientific Dissidents Now More Than Ever”
This brilliant short essay, posted on The Chronicle of Higher Education website two days ago, is written by Eric Winsberg is a professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida and a visiting professor of history and philosophy...
‘Stop blaming everything on climate change’
An abridged extract from my new book ‘Climate Change Isn’t Everything’ was published in today’s issue of The Mail on Sunday. Not my usual venue for publication of course, but the 2,000 word essay captures the broad thrust of...
