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 […]
Essays
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...
In Defence of the ‘Centre for Policy Research’, New Delhi
24 March 2023 I have lent my name to the following open letter, in which professors from universities in the USA, UK, Europe and Australia state why we are “shocked and dismayed” at the Government of India action against...
The Most Important Book of 2023
Those readers who followed my blog posts during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 will know I became increasingly frustrated and bewildered, then angry, and finally depressed, about the institutionalized responses to the COVID pandemic, which in my...
Meeting Vivienne Westwood
Vivienne Westwood died on the 29 December 2022. A larger than life character, I once had the opportunity to meet her – at her suggestion – to discuss her thoughts about climate change and a campaigning TV series, to...
The 2022 UK Summer In Long-Term Perspective
With the summer season in the UK now over, it is instructive to place the hot, dry summer we have experienced into the longest possible historical perspective. How hot was the summer of 2022 as a whole? How dry...
Has the latest climate change issue-attention cycle peaked?
Last month, Sky News moved its flagship daily climate show from its primetime slot of 8.30pm into the dead of the afternoon, a 15-minute weekday airing at 3.30pm. (It also announced that a new in-depth weekend programme would be...
Why Closing Schools During The Pandemic Was Child Abuse
The Spectator this week ran the story I reproduce below, in which journalist Ross Clark asked the question ‘How much did the pandemic harm children?’ Actually the question being answered by Clark really is, ‘How much did Governments’ closures...
‘Classics in human geography’: The science and politics of climate change
In 2001, David Demeritt published an article in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers titled, ‘The construction of global warming and the politics of science‘. It has been cited nearly 1000 times (Google Scholar). Now, more than two decades later, I and Rebecca Lave offer short retrospectives on the significance of Demeritt’s article […]