'Fuel Poverty' or Fool's Poverty?

The recent high oil price created a lot of discussion about 'fuel poverty'. A Guardian article reported yesterday that, Campaigners failed today in a high court bid to force the government to spend more to end fuel poverty. Mr Justice McCombe, sitting in London,...

Slaves to Bad Analogies

Given the occasional inability of environmentalists to resist the temptation of equating those who challenge the political orthodoxy on climate change with those who opposed the end of slavery, it was only a matter of time before someone would liken the reduction of...

"NO TO DEBATE! NO TO DEMOCRACY!"

On Friday, we wrote about the US 'Friends of the Earth', who have enlisted James Hansen in their campaign to censor a book on American politics because it might give the impression that there's something to discuss. Somehow we managed to miss this gem of a page on the...

A Textbook Case of Politics

You can say whatever you like about climate change, just as long as it doesn't appear to undermine political action to 'save the planet'. You can, for example, be the billionaire founder of the world's first international, 24-hour TV news channel, and claim that in...

Friend (of Democracy) or FoE?

A single press release; double standards. Yesterday, in response to the UK's proposed climate change bill, Friends of the Earth UK director, Tony Juniper said: We’re delighted that the UK is set to become the first nation to introduce legislation to cut its...

Is Juniper on the Gin?

When environmentalists aren't aping the war on terror ('you're either with us or against us', not to mention sexing up documents to generate an unwarranted sense of urgency) they can sometimes sound uncannily like the lunatic extremists that the war on terror is...