The BBC’s climate change u-turn

The BBC’s decision to cancel its plans for a day-long special on climate change is fascinating. Earlier this year, I took part in a seminar at Television Centre led off by Al Gore, who delivered the slide show now immortalised in An Inconvenient Truth. The former Vice-President then disappeared, partly, it emerged, because he will not share a platform with Bjorn Lomborg, the environmentalist who has cast doubt on some of the more dramatic claims made by the green lobby. Ian McEwan, Zac Goldsmith and I all made contributions to the debate – my own point being that the BBC should not exclude those who dissented from the now-orthodox position on climate change, even if they did not give their arguments equal time on air. At any rate, the management, right up to the very top, seemed very committed to the cause, and seemed to me to start from the proposition that the science was now sufficiently settled to impose a moral duty upon the Corporation to go green. The fact that the Beeb has now cancelled its Planet Relief day shows how jittery the Corporation is right now: this is, in fact, a serious U-turn, at a time when broadcasters are desperate to avoid controversy. So if the planet does in fact die, blame all those phone in frauds and fake noddies.