Climate change

Is Iceland on the global warming front line? You’d be forgiven for thinking so. We’ve all seen the documentaries where teary-eyed reporters stand perilously close to melting glaciers. In August, a funeral was even held for the first Icelandic glacier ‘lost to climate change’. Foreign dignitaries now hardly visit my country without taking a trip to witness the ‘horror’ of what is unfolding. They return home telling stories of how they have seen for themselves the effects of climate change. But the truth is this: Iceland’s melting glaciers are nothing to panic about. No, I’m not a climate change ‘denier’. It’s clear to me that rising carbon dioxide levels are

So is it good news that Citizens’ Assemblies are to sit to decide on how best to address the issue of climate change, one of the most contentious on the political agenda? The BBC observed this morning that this was something that Extinction Rebellion had been calling for. And that this had already been used in Ireland to determine the abortion issue and in Australia and the Netherlands on electoral reforms. The proposal which was made by half-a-dozen select parliamentary commissions, will work in the usual way for these things: the organisers will send out letters to 30,000 people to invite them to take part. From the people who accept,

It’s tempting to laugh at Extinction Rebellion. I do it myself frequently. Those yoga sessions on Westminster Bridge. The amateur dramatics of wandering around in naff crimson-red outfits to symbolise ‘the common blood we share with all species’. That lame rave-style dancing they do as some bloke in an overlong beard plays the drums while his parents in the Home Counties wonder when he’s going to come to his senses and join his dad’s law firm. It’s all so ridiculous. They fancy themselves as revolutionaries but really this is just Hampstead and Homerton, the posh and the hip, descending on Westminster for a few days to wail about how howwible

On the face of it, the Labour party conference commitment to bring forward Britain’s net zero greenhouse gas emission target to 2030 is nothing short of reckless. ‘We need zero emissions,’ the economist Paul Johnson and member of the Committee on Climate Change tweeted. ‘Getting there by 2050 is tough and expensive but feasible and consistent with avoiding most damaging climate change. Aiming for zero emissions by 2030 is almost certainly impossible, hugely disruptive and risks undermining consensus.’ The GMB, the union representing what remains of Britain’s industrial workers, warned that it could lead to widespread job losses. The GMB is right. Accelerated decarbonisation is a formula for rapid de-industrialisation.

Students went on strike today worldwide to protest against climate change. Luckily, the London protest took place only a stone’s throw away from the Spectator office so Steerpike went down to Parliament Square to see what action the eco-protesters want taken as a country. Only, with signs ranging from ‘F–k Boris’ to ‘Defy Tory Rule’, and Palestinian and communist flags flying, the event could easily have been mistaken as a pre-party for Labour’s conference this weekend. Jeremy Corbyn and a slightly hoarse Owen Jones showed up to lend their support. It turns out that if you want to make a point on the environment, it’s best to use plenty of expletives

There’s a lot of anger about — and it’s not pleasant. But at least it means people are engaged as well as enraged. What’s more worrying and increasingly irritating is the negativity, the drip-drip of despondency that’s been allowed to seep into so much of daily life. Everything is broken! All is lost! The end is nigh! Which is fine if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness or believe that the eschatological prophecies of the Bible have pretty much all come to pass. Every day we are told repeatedly that ‘catastrophe’ awaits. It will be ‘-catastrophic’ if we leave the EU without a deal, ‘catastrophic’ if America withdraws from the Paris Agreement

Why are MPs so pathetically in thrall to Extinction Rebellion? This morning, while the world was focused on the Conservative leadership campaign six Commons select committees (Treasury, BEIS, Environmental Audit, Housing, Communities and Local Government, Science and Technology, and Transport) jointly launched a ‘Citizens’ Assembly’ on climate change. If you think you have heard that term before, it was one of the central demands of the climate change activists who occupied Oxford Circus for two weeks in April. One by one, they seem to be having their demands met as if they were a conquering army as opposed to a ragbag of anti-capitalist protesters. They demanded that Parliament declare a