Environment

Section 18 of Ireland’s Electricity Regulation Act 1999 forbids the building of nuclear power stations.  This apparently “environmental” measure hides a multitude of sins.  Most notably, as Germany has recently discovered, banning a low-carbon source of electricity without dramatically lowering demand tends to result in the use of high-carbon electricity …

This morning’s news was a perfect example of media reporting priorities. War – or at least the rather unlikely prospect of a war between Iran and the USA – has always been the media’s favourite topic.  Not least because they no longer need to pretend that they are not engaged …

In many ways, this month’s Extinction Rebellion protests – which have brought city centres around the world to a standstill – are to be welcomed and supported; not least because they have made a huge contribution to raising public awareness of what they call the “climate emergency” (or what I …

Every action has an opposite and equal reaction.  In the case of the debate around climate change, the reaction to the new movements around Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and the Green New Deal will be based on several inconvenient truths that many on the green side of things have chosen …

We learned yesterday that a British university had made a small contribution to addressing a climate emergency that its spokespeople argue is going to kill us all just 12 years from now.  As Katherine Sellgren at the BBC reports: “A university is banning the sale of [beef] burgers to try …

A couple of weeks ago, Nick Butler at the Financial Times opined about the uselessness of various campaigns to address climate change: “When companies fail to deliver, managers and investors are forced to change their strategies. The process is often difficult, but always essential. Non-governmental and campaigning organisations are not …

Climate change was meant to be a central plank of the US Democrat Party’s plan to unseat Trump in next year’s presidential election.  Instead, there is broad agreement – even among the left-leaning media – that climate change turned into a train wreck for would-be candidates in last week’s debates.  …

The BBC’s latest contribution to the green energy fantasy turned out to be largely the usual mix of techno-utopian hopium and green energy industry PR.  Amid the bullshit, however, was a repeat of a key piece of propaganda by a spokeswoman from the UK’s Committee on Climate Change.  This was …

You wait centuries for an apocalyptic horseman to arrive and then two of them appear at once.  I refer, of course, to two of humanity’s oldest foes; famine and pestilence – both of which are in the news this month. Famine comes in the form of the unfolding calamity across …

Rising food prices were a major contributor to the recession in 2010-11. Climate variation across Eurasia had resulted in a poor grain harvest that produced shortages around the planet.  As Troy Sternberg noted: “In 2010, the world wheat harvest was affected by changing weather patterns that led to shortages. Production …