In Saturday’s Financial Times the chancellor, Sajid Javid, made it clear that the UK is going to diverge from EU rules: “There will not be alignment, we will not be a ruletaker, we will not be in the single market and we will not be in the customs union — and we will do this by the end of the year.” Read more
This post is by Georgina Collins of Hope for the Future
In the aftermath of a draining election period, there can be a tendency to assume the hard work is done and the result is set. The winning party is free to implement the policies they choose; in essence, the role of the electorate is over until the next election in four years’ time. This tendency ignores a key tenet of parliamentary democracy: ongoing political participation and discussion. In fact, the aftermath of an election is when the hard work should begin. Read more
This post is by Tony Juniper CBE, chair of Natural England and Emma Howard Boyd, chair of the Environment Agency.
As we start the New Year, it’s clear that 2020 is our last chance to bring the world together to take decisive action on climate change, to protect our communities and reverse the alarming loss of wildlife we have witnessed in recent years. Read more
This post is by Greg Archer, UK director at Transport and Environment
Dear Boris,
Now that you can finally “Get Brexit Done”, please could you also quickly sort out the appalling emissions from transport? It’s the UK’s biggest source of CO2 and causes 98 per cent of the country’s toxic air hotspots. Read more
After over two years of uncertainty and growing political paralysis, we have a government with a clear mandate “to get Brexit done so that we can get on with… the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on earth”. So what can environmentalists hope to see? Read more
The Brexit process has had a major impact on the way government is organised, and it has transformed one department, Defra. While much of this change has been beneficial, the pace of it has brought a number of challenges which should be addressed. Read more
This post is by Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, director general at CBI. It is one of six essays taken from our publication Countdown to COP26.
Public demand for action on climate change is clear. Climate strikes and protests throughout the year have made this an issue global leaders cannot ignore. But it is not a problem for governments to solve alone. Read more
This post is by Jim Skea, professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College. It is one of six essays taken from our publication Countdown to COP26,
Three decades after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established and preparations started for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), there are encouraging signs that action is finally picking up pace. Read more
This post is by Ian Christie, Green Alliance associate and senior lecturer at the Centre for Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey.
My fellow Green Alliance associate and former director Rebecca Willis spoke on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this week about the state of environmental politics and climate action as the UK general election approaches. She said, “these are the best of times – and the worst of times.” Best, because finally there seems to have been a breakthrough in political consciousness and sense of urgency concerning the climate crisis. Read more
Green Alliance and I grew up together. We’re both children of the 1970s, a decade which, according to the New Economics Foundation’s happiness index, included Britain’s happiest year, 1976. Though incomes have risen since then, so have environmental impacts and social inequality, hence their argument that Britain peaked in the mid-seventies. Read more
