Climate change.

I have not been following this debate as obsessively as I once did. I haven't added many posts on the subject since early 2014. I'm a climate change sceptic: I think there are huge uncertainties (good and bad) about the phenomenon of anthropogenic global warming but above all about what policy - inevitably quite weak - will likely achieve.

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Undercover cops and protest

The case against six protestors collapsed today in the wake of an extraordinary saga involving an erstwhile undercover policeman. Even now, early in the story's unfolding, it is worth saying that in principle the police are probably right to operate undercover amongst protestors, even at considerable expense. Read more...

Published

10 January 2011

Two cheers for Stephen Fry on BP’s spill

Stephen Fry has visited the coastline and the waters of the US's Gulf of Mexico and declared them to be, well, what? The victims of a spill, obviously. Maybe even the victim of the clean-up, for all we know. But not, he feels, the victim of any obvious post-accident wickedness or folly on BP's part. That was, I think, the take-away message of Stephen Fry and the Great American Oil Spill (BBC2, 7 November 2010). But the interest of the programme is not limited to Fry's being fairly sensible. Read more...

Published

08 November 2010

Bjorn Lomborg’s game-changing “volte face”

Climate change politics is creeping into a kind of inevitable realism. (If you will forgive me, I'll mention that I have argued for nearly 25 years that it would, sooner or later.) It is becoming clearer that it is now legitimate and necessary to say that there will be no silver bullet. Bjorn Lomborg's new book (discussed in 2 new Guardian prepublication pieces, here and here) looks like helping quite a bit. Read more...

Published

03 September 2010

Will the BP spill transform the oil business?

I was asked to appear on Radio 4's special programme BP: Beyond the horizon and the Macondo disaster. Would it transform the firm and the oil business? I'm clinging to the idea that it won't much, but with one big caveat. Here's the crib I prepared.... Read more...

Published

25 July 2010

BP oil spill update, 15 June 2010

It's been a spectacularly bad few days for BP. Things looks set to get a bit worse. But they may yet turn out less than apocalyptic. Without shouting the odds, here're some thoughts. Read more...

Published

15 June 2010
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