How will Barack Obama tackle climate change? Getty Images
The comments in President Obama’s second inaugural speech on climate change have encouraged campaigners to think that something substantive is about to happen. It is always good to be optimistic, but the hard question is what exactly is he going to do and what will it achieve. Read more
The World Economic forum is getting underway in Davos, Switzerland. Getty Images
Fashions come and go and the agenda for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos is usually a pretty good guide as to whether skirts are long or short this year. This year’s title for the meeting is “Resilient Dynamism”, which is very cool. But the issues that have slipped down the agenda are energy security and climate change.
There are a few odd sessions, but the focus has shifted and apart from one brief reference to natural resources, neither energy nor climate are mentioned on the web page setting out this year’s themes. This is a very big change from only four or five years ago, when both were prominent topics at every meeting. Read more
The growth of wind farms and other renewable energy projects is heading for a sharp slowdown after 2020 according to official forecasts, despite ministers’ claims they want the UK to become a global centre of green power.
Figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change predict a tenfold increase in the amount of new renewable power capacity added between 2012 and 2020.
The UK’s Department for Energy and Climate Change has a new permanent secretary, as predicted before Christmas. The elegantly orchestrated process, along with a comparable process at the Home Office has reasserted the independence of the civil service appointments process. Sir David Normington, the first civil service commissioner is providing to be more than a match for Francis Maude, Theresa May and the others who want to make senior civil servants political appointees.
Stephen Lovegrove, the new man at the DECC, has a number of challenges to overcome. Read more
In the real world, disputes over natural gas production often pit billion-dollar companies against individual landowners. In films, it is the industry’s opponents that command the big battalions.
Promised Land , a fictional account of a gas company’s nefarious tactics, stars and is co-written by Hollywood A-lister Matt Damon, and the supporting cast includes the reliably excellent Frances McDormand and John Krasinski. Read more
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