2017: turning the tide on green crap?

Eco-miserabilism suffered some welcome setbacks this year. Nothing vexed greens across the world in 2017 more than Donald Trump’s inauguration. Before Trump, climate change seemed to have been cemented into American and global political life. It was central to...

Beware greens’ scaremongering

Extreme weather is less of a threat than it ever has been. When Hurricane Harvey landed on Texas, it marked the end of a 12-year lull in major hurricanes hitting the US. This period – which also featured a long ‘hiatus’ in global warming, the failure of ice-free...

Diesel charges: pushing poor drivers off the road

London mayor Sadiq Khan is waging war on diesel. His latest move is an exclusion of certain diesel cars from London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ). From April 2019, drivers of diesel cars built before September 2015 must pay an additional charge to use the roads...

How the pollution panic hurts the poor

London's air isn't shortening people's lives – poverty is. This month, cold, windless weather helped trap vehicle exhaust within London’s narrow streets, and story after story appeared in the media, declaring the city’s air to be worse than Beijing’s. Read more at...

London is not bound in toxic smog

The scaremongering about air pollution is blighting innovation in the capital. Earlier this month, a spate of news stories suggested that London was experiencing an air-pollution crisis. Just one week into 2017, for instance, the Guardian reported that ‘Brixton Road...