There was more bad news for George – “I forgot to mend the roof when the sun was shining” – Osborne today as North Sea tax receipts plummeted. North Sea oil and gas have been the backbone of the UK economy for the last three decades.  But production peaked in …

The age-old belief that economic growth – as measured by Gross Domestic Product – is the answer to our social ills is becoming untenable. The pursuit of GDP growth on a global scale led to the massive financial crash of 2008; the growing crisis in the energy sector; and a …

In 1969, the Club of Rome commissioned a group of scientists from a range of disciplines to generate a computer model of what would happen to humanity if we continued with business as usual.  The result was the publication of The Limits to Growth in 1972.  It’s conclusions made for …

Efforts to tackle climate change have been hamstrung by a disconnect between national and international policy-making bodies and citizens.  This often results in governments adopting unrealistic targets that they have no idea how to achieve, while individual citizens are left wondering what, if anything, we should be doing. Perhaps the …

A fifth of global energy generation came from renewables in 2012 according to the International Energy Agency.  But which countries use the highest proportion of renewables in their energy mix?  Perhaps it is the hi-tech Germans?  Or maybe it is the fast-expanding Chinese? Not even close!  Only two European countries …

Government responses to the crisis of 2008 and its continuing fallout have left Europe with too many bloated and inefficient ‘too big to fail’ banks according to UBS boss Axel Weber in an interview for Business Insider: “Europe is over-banked so you would expect to see the demise of some weak …

Failure to make big shifts fast would amount to putting our children and grandchildren in the path of a speeding bus according to Laurie Goering at Reuters. According to experts at a meeting of the Thomson Reuters Foundation: “Meeting the goals of a new global agreement to tackle climate change …

The global energy system is set to undergo a revolution similar in magnitude to that experienced by the communications and computing industry, according to the former CEO of SSE, Ian Marchant: “Now there are already one million small generators from community-owned wind, small scale biomass, rooftop wind and solar, and …

The collapse of Peabody – the world’s largest private coal corporation – may speed the transition to renewable electricity generation according to Claudia Assis at Market Watch: “Since 2010, more than a third of coal-fueled power plants have been retired or are scheduled to be retired, and the market for …

Oliver Milman at the Guardian has seen evidence that: “The oil industry’s knowledge of dangerous climate change stretches back to the 1960s, with unearthed documents showing that it was warned of “serious worldwide environmental changes” more than 45 years ago.” The evidence flies in the face of the energy industry’s …