Last week Labour promised to make Britain a clean energy superpower, but they will need to do a lot more if they are to be credible on climate. Their much-trailed proposals have been backwards and forwards on the details for …
Big oil and the energy transition
UN Secretary General António Guterres has stepped up his challenge to the oil companies to stop blocking action on climate change, accusing them of trying to “knee-cap” climate progress. Earlier this year, Mr Guterres used the launch of the latest …
Return to sender
The DRS is (almost) dead, long live the DRS. Deposit Return Schemes exist in many countries and are almost universally popular but Scotland’s perfectly sensible scheme has twice been a political football and is now destined to sit on hold …
Critical materials and the energy transition
Nothing in life is free and the transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles comes with human and environmental costs. A new report from Friends of the Earth Scotland called ‘Unearthing injustice’ looks at the human rights abuses and environmental destruction currently caused …
Wildfires and Big Oil
New science linking fossil fuel companies to wildfires could lead to massive damage claims. The science of attribution of major weather events to climate change has come on leaps and bounds in recent years. Instead of always having to say “of …
Sewage overflows and climate change
The crisis of sewage in rivers and at beaches was entirely predictable, with overflowing sewers designed into the system while ignoring coming climate change. In the late 1990s I helped persuade the Scottish Government to increase the number of official …
Legal challenges push governments on climate
From the Netherlands to the United States, more and more legal actions are being brought to try to force governments to do the right thing on climate change. The same kind of scrutiny might be about to be turned upon Scotland’s …
Climate change accelerates
The world’s climate scientist recently warned that the predicted impacts of climate change are happening faster and more strongly than previously expected. Tumbling weather records around the world do indeed show climate change accelerating. It’s not even mid-May but we already …
Communities and offshore wind
The Belgian government have just agreed to encourage citizens’ co-operatives to have a stake in major offshore windfarm projects. In Scotland, communities are already losing out. Having lots of sea and lots of wind, Scotland has massive plans for the development of offshore …
Oily influence vs fossil-free politics
As a hundred thousand people on the streets of London for Extinction Rebellion’s Big One have been reminding us of the existential threat of climate change and 1,300 oil workers have gone on strike because oil companies aren’t sharing their record profits, …
German nuclear phaseout signals the end for nuclear in Europe
Future generations will look back at our flirtation with the most unsustainable and most expensive form of energy production – nuclear power – and curse us for the mess we have left them. But the end is beginning to be in sight …
Electric vehicles – coming quicker than you think
Electric vehicles are not the answer to all our transport woes but they are a big part of the change we need on transport, and they are coming quicker than you might think. Watch any city street and you cannot …