Environment

People hit by flooding in the north of England and in southern Scotland in December 2015 don’t need to be told that “1 in 100 year floods” seem to be happening a lot more often these days.  Coming just two years after a similar series of storms flooded swathes of …

A report by Ceres consultancy and Bloomberg New Energy Finance has found that $12.5 trillion of investment – 75 percent more than envisaged in the COP21 agreement – will be needed to meet the proposed emissions targets. With global government debt currently running at more than $57 trillion, and private …

In recent years it has become fashionable for governments to declare war on things that simply cannot be defeated.  First we had the “War on Want” (i.e. poverty).  Then came the “War on Drugs”.  And in 2001 we had the start of the “War on Terror”.  In each case, the …

Steffen Böhm, University of Essex Even if the world celebrates a Paris climate deal on December 11, the process will still have to be regarded as failure. Let me explain why. The basic reason is that the unequal distribution of carbon emissions is not even on its agenda. The historical …

The Volkswagen emissions scandal looks like becoming the car industry equivalent of the Libor and Forex scandals in banking.  According to European campaign group Transport and Environment, cheating on emissions tests is widespread across the car industry and applies to both petrol and diesel engines.  The group claim that there …