Environment

One of the most seductive flaws in modern thinking is that we can persuade people to do something unpleasant today in order to avoid something even more unpleasant in the future.  The trouble is, humans are not wired that way.  As the “marshmallow experiment” has shown time and again, around …

There is a Faragesque/Trumpian line of reasoning that goes something like this: you can tell climate change is a hoax because the establishment/deep state is doing nothing about it. Sure, they’ve closed down the coal mines and steelworks that used to provide working people with well-paid jobs.  And they’ve bunged …

David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II is one of those popular science documentaries that occasionally capture the public imagination.  Among the various harms documented, examples of the impact of plastic on the marine environment have helped spur a wave of public indignation of the “something must be done” type.  Among the …

Last year saw public authorities and environmental groups heading for the courts in an attempt to hold oil companies accountable for climate change.  The law suits allege that – like big tobacco and big sugar – before it, big oil deliberately hid research that pointed to the impact of its …

With new oil discoveries failing to keep pace with consumption, and the cost of recovering the oil that remains increasing dramatically, the big oil companies have turned away from their traditional role of fuelling the global economy.  Instead, they have turned to petrochemicals – especially plastics – as the best …

Let’s talk about “the politician’s fallacy.”  This is a line of thinking that assumes that the more you know about something, the easier it will be to do something about it.  For politicians, it works like this: the state is (among other things) a giant data gathering apparatus.  In addition …

One reason for why so many people still do not believe climate change is real is that people who identify as “greens” behave as if they are also in denial. This manifests in two ways.  First, there is so-called “Al Gore syndrome” – the practice of flying around the world …

It is a fairly safe bet that Britain’s Chancellor will stick to the failing Tory plan to cut the deficit by the mid-2020s, and to run a balanced budget thereafter.  It is an equally safe bet that the Leader of the Opposition will respond by calling on the government to …

Just weeks after UK Transport Minister was condemned for making the ludicrous claim that UK farmers could make up the shortfall in food imports in the event of Britain crashing out of the EU without a trade deal, UN climate scientists have produced even more bad news.  This is because …

There is no obvious reason why climate change should be so politically charged.  After all, atmospheric carbon rises and polar ice melts irrespective of what colour rosette a particular president or prime minister happens to wear.  As Doctor Marshall Shepherd in Forbes writes: “I too have been surprised by why …