Andrew Simms's Blog, page 16

75 months and counting ... | Andrew Simms

Quarter of the way in, we are perhaps further from holding back the warming tide than when we began. But there is still time

Twenty five months ago, working with my colleague, a climate scientist, Dr Victoria Johnson, and others, I decided to find out how long it would take before, on the best data available, we would begin to cross red lines where climatic instability and extremes were concerned. A quarter of that time has now passed.

To minimise the danger of alarmism, but without hiding...

We've gone into the ecological red | Andrew Simms

On 21 August our environmental resource budget ran out. Now we're living beyond the planet's means to support us

At the weekend, Saturday 21 August to be precise, the world as a whole went into "ecological debt".

That means in effect that from now until the end of the year, humanity will be consuming more natural resources and producing more waste than the forests, fields and fisheries of the world can replace and absorb. By doing so, the life -support systems that we all depend on are worn...

76 months and counting ... | Andrew Simms

Why is the 'greenest government ever' slashing environmental bodies instead of pursuing tax avoiders to raise funds?

A bonfire of the environment is being stoked methodically along government corridors. Yet, simultaneously, banks still refuse to renounce the bonus culture that blinded our financial system and created the conditions for cuts.

As expensive City PR firms brace to defend this year's anticipated banker's bonus trough, key offices and departments vital to intelligent, joined-up...

77 months and counting … | Andrew Simms

To avert climate change we need to engage the ambitious impulse that has been brilliantly co-opted by the sellers of disposable consumer goods

"If you want to build a ship, don't call together some men just to gather wood, prepare tools and distribute tasks," proclaimed the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Instead, teach them the longing for the endless sea."

The evidence of the recent budget, in which the environment was like a salad leaf abandoned to wilt in the June sun, suggests...

The rise and fall of BP

In its 100-year history, BP has been dogged by appalling accidents and an absence of diplomacy. Can it ever reinvent itself? Andrew Simms reports

As names go, the First Exploitation Company sounds like an inspired slight dreamed up by an angry anti-oil campaigner. In fact, it was the original title, coined in 1903, of the troubled company we now know as BP. But then, public relations have never been its strong point.

Over the course of a century BP, in its various guises, has managed to...

Response: Supermarkets don't regenerate communities – they hoover money out

These big stores destroy local economies, and hit the poorest especially hard

You report the claims of a new study from Demos that "big supermarket chains have a key role to play in regenerating Britain's poorest communities" (Supermarket chains can transform poor areas, says thinktank, 7 June).

But evidence from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation of a Tesco-led regeneration scheme in Leeds concluded that it was disastrous for the local economy and destroyed the existing retail base.

Big...

79 months and counting ... | Andrew Simms

We have the lifetime of this parliament to get money out of oil and into renewables or face more disasters like the BP spill

We may be in the grip of the worst economic upheaval for half a century, but the UK is still at heart a forward-looking, modern economy, isn't it? Smogs and satanic mills are things of the past and we have a model that is resource-light and service driven, don't we?

Perhaps not. In the UK for the first quarter of this year, £1 in every £4 paid in dividends to...

Time is running out to build an oil-free future | Andrew Simms

In 78 months climatic instability will worsen. We have the lifetime of this parliament to get money out of oil and into renewables

We may be in the grip of the worst economic upheaval for half a century, but the UK is still at heart a forward-looking, modern economy, isn't it? Smogs and satanic mills are things of the past and we have a model that is resource-light and service driven, don't we?

Perhaps not. In the UK for the first quarter of this year, £1 in every £4 paid in dividends to...

79 months and counting ... | Andrew Simms

Eyjafjallajökull provided a glimpse of a possible future in which the aviation industry's wings have been clipped

It's always hard to imagine a world fundamentally different to the one we encounter everyday. Even when the balance shifts deeply between established political forces, it feels like there might be a new DJ playing different songs but that you're still at the same party. The days press in on us with familiar routines, demands and a storm force gale of unchanging multimedia...

80 months and counting ... | Andrew Simms

In the odd ecosystem of politics, Obama's healthcare victory has direct implications for the viability of action on climate change

At the turn of the 1900s in the US there was a progressive campaign to establish a shorter, eight-hour working day. It was opposed by the National Association of Manufacturers (Nam) as potentially ruinous to the economy – on much the same grounds that the abolition of slavery, the introduction of the maximum load line in shipping and most other progressive reforms ...