Climate change

Given the power that the daily statistics of Covid deaths have exerted over us this year, it was only a matter of time before we started being bamboozled with terrifying figures of the estimated death toll from climate change. Sure enough, the latest issue of Nature Climate Change contains a widely-reported paper by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Bern, which attempts to quantify the death toll from higher global temperatures. The scientists ran a simulation which they claim predicted what the weather would have been like in recent years had it not been for man-made climate change. They then reached the conclusion that

As his tweed jacket flapped open to one side of his stomach, my husband stood up unsteadily and arched his arm, jabbing his finger towards me and chanting: ‘Shame on you! Shame on you!’ It didn’t work, because I’ve been living with him so long that, as Berowne says in Love’s Labour’s Lost, ‘We are shame-proof’. His little performance was in response to some news item about Tell the Truth, a spin-off of Extinction Rebellion. Its members don’t actually want journalists to tell the truth, but to do as they say. Their first ‘demand’ is that the climate crisis ‘must be front-page news every single day’. They also demand we

Emmanuel Macron won’t forget the Yellow Vest movement in a hurry. The ragtag army that recruited regardless of sex, age, region and political persuasions, seriously rattled the president of France in the winter of 2018-19. Never in his wildest dreams could Macron have imagined, when he signed off his fuel tax rise, that within weeks he would be barricaded inside the Élysée as outside heavily-armed police faced down furious protestors. Still, it taught Macron one thing: that those in the provinces see the world differently to the progressive political and media class in Paris. That’s why Macron has prioritised combating Islamism and uncontrolled immigration over the environment in the lead

As I watch the snow blow past my window, it’s hard not to scoff at the idea of a ‘climate emergency’. However, I’m probably in a minority. The idea that we are currently experiencing a dangerous deterioration in our weather has been pushed so hard, and for so long, that the man in the Clapham Uber is now thoroughly convinced. Those of us who have the time and inclination to look at the evidence for such claims, on the other hand, realise that they are largely overblown. The Global Warming Policy Foundation, where I work, has just published a review of the impacts of climate change and it’s a valuable

There’s a movement in the UK that is trying to block the building of essential new council housing. It is also agitating to stop the opening of a new coal mine, which would deprive working men and women of a good, honest way to make a living. What is this movement? A neo-Thatcherite organisation, perhaps, hell-bent on finishing Maggie’s task of putting coal miners out of work and shrinking social housing? A bunch of aristocrats and toffs, maybe, who are sick of their leafy living areas being swarmed by council-house residents and the precious countryside being blighted by such ghastly things as mines and factories? Nope, it’s environmentalists. It’s greens. It’s

‘What if every single one of us was a raindrop?’  I have no idea what goes into the Californian drinking water, but the Duke formerly known as Prince Harry seems to have been knocking it back. We are fortunate indeed that, despite having fled State-side to secure greater privacy, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex continue to send us regular character-improving missives. This week sees Harry return to a favourite theme: climate change. Speaking at an online event to mark the launch of WaterBear, a new subscription television platform for environmental and conservation documentaries, Harry pondered: ‘Every single raindrop that falls from the sky relieves the parched ground. What if

Welsh hill farmers are a hardy lot. Despite the almost mystical and romantic images that come to mind when you think of a Welsh hill farm, the truth is a far soggier affair. People have struggled to eke a living out of what is an extremely difficult terrain for generations, which has, in turn, created the communities and the culture we enjoy in rural Wales today. Such is the case where I live: a small parcel of land stretching from the river Dee and up the slopes of the Berwyn mountains in the north of Wales. My father-in-law is the third generation to farm this land. He and those that

It is a particular pleasure to be returning to the columns of The Spectator, more than half a century after I became editor. The paper has been part of my life for a very long time. When I was at school, more than 70 years ago, we were all told to read Harold Nicolson’s column every week, to learn the art of essay-writing. I like to think that it was still a good paper in my time, but it is a much better one now. Fraser Nelson and his team are doing an excellent job. Our lives remain dominated by the plague, aka Covid-19. The government’s handling of it —

This article was originally published on Forbes website, but subsequently taken down.  On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologise for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening, it’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30, so I may seem like a strange person to be saying this. But as an energy expert asked by the US Congress to provide objective expert testimony and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as an Expert

I write this on Easter Sunday, sitting comfortably at home, recovering from my brush with Covid-19. I was hospitalised for 12 days, of which five were in intensive care fighting for my life. While the experience is still fresh — I came out of hospital nine days ago — I thought it may be useful to share some aspects of my journey. They can be divided, I think, into three themes: faith, hope and charity. To begin with, faith. Of all the images that came to me in intensive care, the strongest of all was that of Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee. At the time, if

As we contemplate the havoc being wrought by coronavirus, most of us see mainly sickness, death and economic ruin. Dr Rupert Read, spokesman for the climate protest group Extinction Rebellion — plus sometime Green party candidate, and associate professor of philosophy at the University of East Anglia — has rather a different view. In this pandemic, he writes, ‘there is a huge opportunity for XR… It is essential that we do not let this crisis go to waste.’ Read’s thoughts are set out in a paper entitled ‘Some strategic scenario-scoping of the coronavirus-XR nexus.’ The paper is not meant to be widely read. ‘NB, this is a confidential document for