Editor of @Incisive BusinessGreen.com - tweeting in a personal capacity, check out @BusinessGreen for the official feed
Cambridgeshire
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Climate change isn't woke. Or rather, it's a bit woke and there's nothing wrong with that, but that's not all it is. Political and business leaders urgently need to reject the lazy thinking that is trying to paint climate action as an elite endeavour. businessgreen.com/blog-post/…
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Your periodic reminder that 15 years ago the entire global financial system nearly collapsed cos of a relatively small number of mortgage defaults in the US. This is what people mean when they talk about climate change being a systemic risk.
Number of Florida houses for sale just skyrocketed.
What are the odds these are all Airbnb rentals with owners who are about to declare bankruptcy?
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The thing that interests me most about the Harry and Megan documentary is THE GOVERNMENT JUST APPROVED A NEW COAL MINE OFF THE BACK OF THE HOTTEST SUMMER EVER AND WHILE TELLING THE REST OF THE WORLD TO PHASE DOWN THE USE OF COAL AND IT CAN'T EVEN SEE WHY THAT'S A PROBLEM.
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Putin’s economic power is built on the West’s reliance on oil and gas. Launching a campaign to increase that reliance is quite the look.
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Mocking a man with a high profile job for saying he tries to spend one uninterrupted evening a week with his kids is one of the many, many reasons everything is such a broken mess.
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Your annual reminder that not going through with this cursed clocks charade could save households an estimated £400 a year on their energy bills, save the UK a projected 450,000 tonnes of CO2, and save parents of young children weeks of sleep deprived agony.
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The thing that bothers me most about the moving of Margaret Thatcher's portrait is that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are at their highest level in 3m years, temperature records keep being toppled, and our food systems and infrastructure are not prepared for what comes next.
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It barely featured in the campaign, but it looks like the world’s most powerful economy is about to elect a climate denying authoritarian who hates clean technology. The chances of global temperatures spiralling out of control just increased substantially.
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It’s 38C in the Arctic Circle and the only way to stop it getting ever hotter everywhere is to somehow convince a species that won’t even wear masks for a bit when faced with a highly contagious deadly virus to act in its own long term self interest.
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Regardless of what you think about COP, in fact regardless of what you think about climate change, Sunak not attending COP26 is very bad politics.
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A thought this morning for the inspirational @CarolineLucas who spent over a decade working hard to establish the Greens as a viable Parliamentary Party. She now steps down by handing over to four Green MPs who not only won, but won comfortably.
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Very serious people: 'People should vote tactically if they want Labour to win'
* Millions of people vote tactically *
Very serious people: 'How can Labour claim a mandate if it got less than 40% of the vote? There's no enthusiasm here.'
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A Prime Minister who puts an avowed climate sceptic in charge of energy and climate policy does not take climate change, or indeed anything, seriously. It is ridiculous to be asked to pretend otherwise.
The Rt Hon Jacob Rees-Mogg MP @Jacob_Rees_Mogg has been appointed Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy @BEISGovUK.
#Reshuffle
ALT Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg
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45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C. 45C.
Actually take a second to think about that.
45C. In the Arctic Circle. 45C
#ImageOfTheDay #ArcticHeatWave #ClimateAction #EUSpace
Many air 🌡️ records have recently been broken in #Siberia
On 19 June Land Surface Temperature (LST) reached 45°C at several locations in the #Arctic Circle
Data retrieved by #Sentinel3 🇪🇺🛰️
Check the 2019-2020 comparison ⬇️
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Truss, Kwarteng, and Clarke doubling down on their ‘small state’ ideology and rolling the pitch for spending cuts is totally detached from reality on at least three fronts:
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Just watch how fast the narrative on both sides develops towards we won/lost the north so we must ditch this 'green crap'. Because people in the north apparently love dirty air, declining 20th century industry, and their county being underwater once or twice a year.
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Absolutely mad that the world’s governments are meeting this week to negotiate how to maintain a habitable biosphere and practically no one is paying any attention.
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Gonna write a piece today on how the approval of the Cumbrian coal mine is one of the worst climate and infrastructure policy decisions, not just in the UK, but globally and historically. And that’s not entirely hyperbolic.
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Another day, another major bank says it doesn't want to support new oil and gas projects any more. businessgreen.com/news/40742…
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Ed Miliband just living his best life right now. We have a mandate, we’re not going to leave the UK exposed to the ‘gyrations’ of the fossil fuel market, we’re going to build ‘quite a lot’ of wind farms and share the benefits with communities.
Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺
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For a period last Friday nearly 90 per cent of UK electricity came from low and zero carbon sources. Absolutely staggering new figures, and this revolution has barely started. businessgreen.com/news/40621…
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Will never not be weird how little pick up the stories on record-breaking temperatures now get. We've just totally normalised one of the most abnormal things to happen in the history of human civilisation. businessgreen.com/news/43556…
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This is a campaign to keep the UK hooked on the fossil fuels that empower tyrants, make the British public poorer and colder in the long run, and condemn world to 3C+ of warming. It’s the dumbest and most dangerous thing Farage has done in a career of dumb and dangerous things.
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Just so we're clear:
Using advanced psychological techniques to convince people to buy things they don't need = not political
Trying to show them the environmental consequences of their choices = political
businessgreen.com/bg/news/30…
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We're going to get through an entire conference season without the slightest inquiry as to how over 100,000 people died and the UK experienced one of the worst death rates of any developed nation, aren't we? The learning lessons phase was basically measured in microseconds.
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Starting to understand how pensioners kept the triple lock and a universal winter fuel allowance throughout 14 years of austerity even as every other demographic was hit repeatedly.
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It’s official. The UK has gone two whole months without coal power and there is no immediate end in sight to the coal free run. Renewables have provided more power than fossil fuels this year. People said this couldn’t be done. And yet, it’s happening. businessgreen.com/news/40162…
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For everyone attacking XR this morning, you are right that it’s tactics are controversial and often flawed. But what are your more effective tactics for putting us properly on track for net zero emissions within 30 years? Because nothing’s worked so far.
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What fresh hell is this? For the avoidance of doubt, anyone arguing against solar farms on food security grounds who is not also arguing against golf courses, bioenergy crops, and meat intensive diets is fundamentally unserious.
New story from me: ‘Detached from reality’: anger as Rishi Sunak plans to restrict solar panels theguardian.com/environment/…
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It may be lack of sleep talking, but this really could be an historic turning point for climate action. A major economy saying it will end new drilling for fossil fuels and align its economic strategy with rapid decarbonisation is a 'big fucking deal'. businessgreen.com/blog-post/…
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This is just very good news. Absolutely mad the cheapest form of energy generation was effectively banned in the UK and a genuine dereliction of duty the ban was not lifted within days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggering a full blown energy crisis. businessgreen.com/news/43328…
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It may seem counterintuitive, but in fact fairly obvious that solar farms that are not doused in pesticides, aren't ploughed up annually, and are full of wildflowers and hedges are in fact pretty good for wildlife. businessgreen.com/news/41173…
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For those who make policy based on myths and emotion, rather than reality: solar farms are rarely, if ever, sited in high value agricultural land, they take up a tiny fraction of the land used by golf courses, they are already subject to planning rules… businessgreen.com/news/40542…
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There’s still nearly not awareness that something has gone catastrophically wrong with our economy, nor sufficient attempts to work out what that something was.
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Those radical hippy, lentil-weaving, eco-commies at the *checks notes* Office for Budgetary Responsibility have concluded it'll cost a lot more to remain reliant on fossil fuels than it'll cost to decarbonise. businessgreen.com/news/41201…
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I dunno, man, I just think continually drilling for more fossil fuels when we know burning them is pushing temperatures beyond anything human civilisation has ever experienced might not end well.
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In a little over 70 days the US will return to the Paris Agreement and once again every nation of Earth will be publicly committed to averting a climate catastrophe and building a net zero emission economy this century. businessgreen.com/news/40229…
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It really is hard to get across quite how bad this is. We’re on track for 3C of warming, which could easily result in catastrophic cascading risks to human civilisation. And emissions are still rising. businessgreen.com/news/43727…
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The coal mine approval is the worst climate policy decision of modern times. Haven't written anything this angry in a long time. businessgreen.com/blog-post/…
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24 hours after signing G7 text pledging to accelerate climate action, the PM appears to have agreed a trade deal with a carbon intensive economy that has no net zero strategy, while imposing no carbon border tariffs and granting access to a hugely high impact agricultural sector.
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What these critiques never explain is what happens to UK industry if you do what they say and abandon net zero. The answer is you get a few more years selling 20th century tech (and higher emissions with it) and then your industrial base gets destroyed by clean tech imports.
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This is why climate activists get so frustrated with the 'let's just adapt', 'climate risk is survivable' arguments. These kind of impacts, which we are already seeing at 1.1C of warming are near impossible to adapt to. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
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What fresh hell is this? We’ve stumbled across something that actually helps tackle air pollution, emissions, and work-life balance for millions, so let’s tax it... theguardian.com/business/202…
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The response to @GeorgeMonbiot here is a complete strawman argument. Most of those speaking for dark money think tanks no doubt believe what they say. The point is the dark money think tanks provide the funding and influence that means they can say it on national platforms.
George Monbiot(Guardian) rips into Reem Ibrahim(Institute for Economic Affairs) over their funding.
"You're from the Institute for Economic Affairs, which is funded by oligarchs & cooperations... & the BBC says the funding should be revealed... "
#PoliticsLive
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Volvo Trucks debuts a new model that can travel 600km, carry 44 tonnes, and charge up in around 40 minutes. It'll take time to play out, but the internal combustion engine is done. businessgreen.com/news/44113…
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Heat pumps are going to destroy a lot of fossil gas demand a lot quicker than many people expect. businessgreen.com/news/40609…
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This is, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking terrifying. businessgreen.com/news/40560…
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There’s a legitimate debate over how to pay for climate action, but ‘can we afford it’ is the most absurdly reductive question. Might as well ask can we afford to educate our kids, treat our sick, and employ an army?
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No10: 'Children should not protest for a habitable planet on a Friday because they should be in formal education.'
Also No10: 'About that. We can't afford to provide children with formal education on Fridays. Please make your own arrangements.'
theguardian.com/education/20…
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So the King can’t go to COP27 because the government thinks it’s too political and the PM won’t go to COP27 because the government thinks it’s not political enough.
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Leaving aside environmental implications, reviving fracking makes little political sense. There are hugely popular options available and yet the govt is choosing to prioritise and promote what is literally the least popular and least effective way to enhance energy security.
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If this is true it is not just morally shameful, it would also amount to the dumbest diplomatic failure in decades. Just a staggering act of self harm. theguardian.com/environment/…
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If you're looking for #COP26 upsides it's notable no one is arguing about the science, no one is arguing about whether climate change is a crisis, and no one is arguing whether we need to get to net zero emissions or not. The disagreements are all about precisely how we deliver.
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The Climate Change Act was backed by David Cameron, the net zero target was adopted under Theresa May, the Net Zero Strategy was delivered under Boris Johnson, and the updated Net Zero Strategy was delivered this March under Rishi Sunak.
Energy Secretary @ClaireCoutinho: “Labour are the the party of tax and condemn. We are the party of aspiration and the environment…for them net zero has become a religion.”
Calls some climate change groups“zealots.”
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Pedestrianising Oxford Street is so obviously one of those things where once it is done everyone will wonder why it was not done years earlier. businessgreen.com/news/43606…
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Sunak clearly going to run on the idea he’s the responsible adult who does not want to pass debt on to our children. Worth noting he repeatedly blocked bolder investment in climate action and green infrastructure that could help tackle the biggest debt our children will face.
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Genuinely staggering that we are nearly a month into a full blown energy price crisis and virtually no one in a position of influence is talking seriously about a major energy efficiency improvement programme.
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A genuinely historic day for Britain and the world. The crucible of the Industrial Revolution halting the use of coal power once and for all, and proving it is possible for an advanced economy to end its reliance on coal inside a decade or so. businessgreen.com/news/43646…
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UK government now just actively pursuing plans to stifle productivity. theguardian.com/business/202…
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Supremely bleak news from the Met Office this morning, confirming atmospheric concentrations of CO2 jumped by more than expected last year as emissions continued to rise and natural carbon sinks performed worse than expected. businessgreen.com/news/43967…
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Do any of the Ministers attacking Sadiq Khan today have an alternative plan to improve air quality in line with their own government’s Air Quality Plan? Because without that these attacks would amount to little beyond reductive, populist, performative politicking.
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All credit to the Guardian for running this front page, but it also highlights how difficult it is to get across the immensely complex nature of the crisis. The headline is record heat, but the story is what that means for food security, extreme weather, migration, geopolitics.
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Don't. Accept. The. Premise. Of. The. Attack. Net zero is *not* the reason people are worried about their energy bills. Gas has driven energy price inflation. Gas prices would not be meaningfully lower if we'd fracked more. Making us more reliant on gas would send bills higher.
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The Very Serious People criticising the School Strikes, including the PM, need to address three questions:
1. Do you accept scientists' warnings?
2. Are global emissions still rising?
3. What if you are wrong and the kids are right and it is an emergency?
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3. Which brings us to the government’s last holiday from reality, which could yet catch up with it fast.
There’s no mandate for this. None. They can’t pretend there is.
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Imagine spending £130bn to freeze energy bills and then not doing anything new to improve the most inefficient homes in Europe.
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Well, this is going to make a lot of people, including a lot of businesses, very, very angry. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-6…
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Yay - there's a very good chance death rates will spike, crops will die, and we can say with great scientific certainty that this is the new normal and we are leaving the climate in which human civilisation was born and prospered. TODAY'S THE DAY!
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Nigel Lawson should be remembered as he would surely want to be remembered: as a man who did huge damage to attempts to tackle climate change, helped enable the privatisation of our brilliantly performing utilities, and provided the intellectual foundations for Brexit.
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Not a new point, but the near complete decarbonisation of the economy is very popular. Turns out people like cleaner air, a stable climate, lower energy bills, and a country investing in 21st century industries. businessgreen.com/news/41217…
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If it really wants to do austerity all over again it’s impossible to envisage what the argument is for doing it without an election.
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Could just one journalist, any one will do, ask the Conservatives, ‘if you don’t like the ULEZ scheme your mayor developed what would you do instead to tackle dangerous air pollution?’
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Imagine where we'd be if political leaders spent even half the amount of time, energy, and capital on responding to the threat of climate change as they've spent trying to reform arcane but largely functional trading arrangements with our largest trading partner.
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1. The UK does not have an unusually large state compared to its peers. If the size of the state is the problem how come they are doing better?
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Huge, genuinely era-shaping news out today. The Paris Agreement is working. Latest pledges would put world on track for 2.1C of warming. Five years ago the trajectory was 2.7C to 3.7C. businessgreen.com/news/40242…
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And yet, once again, after a decade of economic failure, our Conservative government wants to experiment and make the UK an outlier. It’s rolling the dice with all our futures, and doing it without the slightest pretence of a mandate.
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Maybe the reason it has received remarkably little coverage is that it’s - wait for it - not fucking true.
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What spending do you cut given those challenges? Defence? Healthcare? Pensions? R&D? Climate resilient and net zero infrastructure? To cut in these areas in the 21st century is to undermine your economic and national security?
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The government was elected on a pretty explicit promise austerity was over. Levelling up and net zero were the defining economic projects. Boris was a ‘Brexity Hezza’. There would be new hospitals and roads and homes. There was no sense government would be shrunk still further.
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Sunak keeps saying households were facing £10k-20k bills, primarily because of the cost of moving to a heat pump. Here’s the second major energy company inside a month announcing a heat pump at a cost that is comparable and even lower than a gas boiler. businessgreen.com/news/41310…
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Those lentil-weaving eco-loons at *checks notes* the IMF want a global carbon tax, stringent environmental standards, and new carbon dividends for citizens. businessgreen.com/bg/news/30…
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2. We are in a highly volatile age. Russia, China, covid, an ageing population, technology, and, of course, the climate crisis. How, practically, does a smaller state fit with that context?
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This is quite simply false from Kemi Badenoch. It's climate sceptic mythologising masquerading as serious analysis.
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New poll confirms climate change and the environment is the British public's top concern. businessgreen.com/news-analy…
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The ‘if we have another lockdown it’s all your fault’ narrative is straight from the ‘check your own carbon footprint’ playbook.
Yes, personal responsibility has a role, but in dealing with big, complex, systemic problems the primary responsibility is always with government.
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Your periodic reminder that as the climate crisis escalates direct action protests were always inevitable. What exactly did you think would happen? That the entirety of society would quietly acquiesce to such an escalating and era-defining threat in perpetuity?
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Your periodic reminder that climate change means we’re entering an era of increasing migration and we either work out humane ways to manage that reality or we engage in ever worsening forms of performative hostility and cruelty that can never actually work. Thems the choices.
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It is disgraceful the Conservative London Mayoral candidate has falsely accused the Mayor of planning a pay per mile charge for two reasons. First, it’s a blatant falsehood. Mayor Sadiq Khan has repeatedly ruled out a pay per mile scheme.
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I understand the impulse to condemn the proposed COP26 agreement as inadequate given the scale of the crisis, but it really is a lot better than its critics are claiming.
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Yesterday Theresa May said the UK had a 'fine record' on climate change when ducking a @CarolineLucas invite to meet @GretaThunberg.
Today it emerged the UK is on track to miss its legal carbon targets by an even larger margin than previously expected. businessgreen.com/bg/news/30…
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Yet more evidence heat pumps are so efficient they can prove cheaper to run than gas boilers (and would be a lot cheaper still if the government delivered long-awaited energy market reforms). businessgreen.com/news/41214…
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I dunno man, maybe there’s a difference between the world’s richest man with his own media platform, the ear of the US President, and a penchant for fascist style salutes and a school girl with a placard.
"If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg scolding, you can survive a few months of Elon Musk." - JD Vance
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