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For all sorts of reasons, UK politicians do at last seem to have grasped that we are in the midst of an out-and-out Climate Emergency. Despite people’s worst fears that the whole climate agenda would be sidelined by the pandemic over the course of the last year, that just didn’t happen. Indeed, the…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…