Environment

Blair is right on climate change

Ahead of Tony Blair’s launch of a report on climate change, he’s given an interview to The Sunday Times. The interviewer Jonathan Leake is highly sceptical of Blair and takes particular issue with this statement from him: “The answer to climate change,” he says solemnly, “is the development of science and technology. Yes, we will get changes in the way we consume but we will be consuming differently, not necessarily less. People are not going to return to the 19th century. The critical thing is to use the technologies we have and to incentivise the development of new ones. That is the only practical way we will make this thing

A load of hot air | 29 April 2009

As a general rule, I do not believe in reviewing bad books. Review space is limited, and the many good books that are published deserve first claim on it. But climate change is such an important subject, and — thanks to heavy promotion by that great publicist, Tony Blair — the Stern Review of the economics of climate change has become so well known (not least to the vast majority who have never read it, among whom in all probability is Mr Blair), that anything from Lord Stern deserves some attention. However, anyone looking for anything new in this rather arrogant book — all those who dissent from Stern’s analysis,

Barking up the wrong tree?

The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning, by James Lovelock He Knew He Was Right: The Irrepressible Life of James Lovelock and Gaia, by John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin James Lovelock is an English scientist, recip- ient of many awards, and he is a pleasant writer, moderate in tone and conciliatory towards his critics. In the late 1960s he became famous in New Age circles for his Gaia theory. The name, which is that of the old Greek goddess of Earth, was suggested to him by William Golding, his neighbour and pub companion in their Wiltshire village. It was immediately popular, and so was the image that Lovelock attached