Pick your climate gurus with care
My regular paper is The Guardian, somewhat under sufferance ever since my previous favourite The Independent started to shrink in size and quality about a decade...
Optimism, Pessimism and Sustainability
Jul 1, 2016
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill I was at a meeting of...
Can we save the planet?
Mar 28, 2016
Over the Easter weekend we made one of our regular pilgrimages to Washington Wildfowl & Wetland Trust. Added to the exciting wild birds (we saw...
Turning ‘OR’ into ‘AND’ for sustainability
Mar 7, 2016
Years ago I was at a regional sustainability workshop and the facilitators made the mistake of giving each table a blank flipchart to list our...
Engineering the (low carbon) future
Dec 16, 2015
Last night I was the speaker at the Chartered Institute of Building Service Engineers (CIBSE) North East branch. Doing a last minute piece of homework...
So is the Paris climate deal any COP?
Dec 14, 2015
It's the Monday after the week before. They did it in Paris, signing an international treaty to tackle climate change, the world is rejoicing and...
We’re not going to save the planet…
Dec 11, 2015
...because, in geological timescales, the earth is quite capable of looking after itself. The question is whether the human race is part of the equation at...
Hopes for Paris
Nov 30, 2015
Yesterday, I threw off my cynicism about such things and went on the Climate March in Newcastle, taking the little one with me (right). All...
The last thing the planet needs is conspiracy theories
Nov 23, 2015
I've had it up to here (holds hand above head) with climate conspiracy theories. First it was claims that the group behind the Paris attacks...
The climate doesn’t care if you’re left or right
Nov 13, 2015
In the Telegraph this week, some sad sack 'controversialist' did a hatchet job on the talented comedian David Mitchell for being a "uniform Lefty bore"....