I have previously written about The Power of Emergency . It seems it never goes away – after all, it is a very useful tool.

Some time ago I joined the Oxford Climate Alumni Network (OxCAN). Its “Director Communications and External Liaison UK” (Andrew Lee) attended my old college four years after I left, so a sense of nostalgia impelled me to join. I realised, given its name, that it was likely to be concerned about climate change, and I joined because I reasoned that it was important to discover what fellow Oxonians were saying regarding this topic. I also assumed – naively, as it turns out – that as an organisation that emanates from the University where I gained a profound lesson in the importance of intellectual challenge, questioning everything, and thinking for oneself, would issue newsletters that contained at least a few items debating and questioning the severity of the “climate crisis”. Perhaps the occasional challenge to the disaster narrative? Maybe a few suggestions that there might be up-sides as well as down-sides? Possibly even someone brave enough to contemplate that UK net zero policies might be more harmful than beneficial? As it turns out – not a chance.

Periodically I receive updates in the form of emails. The most recent one arrived over a week ago, and I thought I would share some of its contents.

The National Emergency Briefing

It commenced with an editorial telling me that we all need to know about this:

The National Emergency Briefing is a UK-wide initiative which aims to communicate the latest scientific evidence on the climate and nature crisis directly to politicians, civic leaders, businesses, faith groups and the wider public. It was organised by the National Emergency Briefing project and brought together experts to clearly present the risks that climate and ecological breakdown pose to: food security, health, national security, infrastructure and the economy.

I was curious, so I checked out the website. Natually it is endorsed, inter alia, by Lord Deben (“The National Emergency Briefing could not be more timely. The science is moving fast, and every year the risks become clearer. Britain has led before, and we must lead again – not with words, but with action to protect our people, our prosperity and our children’s future. But first, all policymakers must ensure they are fully informed”) and by Michael Mann (“I urge all policymakers to engage with this critically important scientific advice. I’d like to see a National Emergency Briefing in every country”). Equally inevitably, the new film is presented by Chris Packham. The objective?

We are calling on the UK Government to stage a prime-time, multi-channel televised national emergency briefing to the nation, launching a major public engagement plan to communicate the scale and immediacy of the risks we face, combat rising disinformation – an essential step in building support for the wartime-scale response now needed.

That’s not all:

The briefing should be: Introduced by the Prime Minister – to signal the highest level of national importance and responsibility….Broadcast at prime time on multiple channels – TV, radio, online, billboards, leaflets, subtitles/translations to maximise reach…Clear about solutions and choices, including the many benefits of acting decisively including warmer homes, lower bills, better health, stronger energy and food security, restored nature and economic resilience….Explicit about lower-likelihood but very high-impact risks, including potential AMOC collapse and other systemic threats….Seriously staged and presented, with a setting that conveys gravity, credibility and national purpose…Trailed in advance, for example: “The Prime Minister will address the nation…”, to build anticipation and legitimacy….Accompanied by a commitment to provide regular updates on emerging risks and progress in managing them.

OxCAN is actively promoting this (“We all need to know about the National Emergency Briefing“). We are told that:

The objective of the briefing has been to create what organisers describe as a “societal tipping point” by presenting an evidence-led case for a televised national emergency briefing and a rapid, large-scale response to the climate and nature crisis, comparable in urgency and coordination to major national mobilisations seen during wartime or the COVID emergency.

The wisdom or necessity of this isn’t questioned – it’s taken as written. As is the by now standard linking of the very real nature crisis with the illusory climate crisis. This is despite the fact that in the UK our futile attempts to “deal with” the so-called climate crisis (in the form of massive renewable energy developments and related infrastructure) is hugely damaging to the environment.

More than 70 MPs have signed the call, as have numerous members of the (unelected) House of Lords and the UK’s devolved legislatures.

But back to Oxford University. Speakers at the Westminster event (opened and fronted by Chris Packham) included a couple of Oxford academics – Nathalie Seddon (Oxford biodiversity professor and nature-based solutions expert) and Paul Behrens (Oxford environmental scientist focused on food systems and sustainability). The summary of Nathalie Seddon’s comments in the OxCAN newsletter is not something likely to raise the hackles of Clisceppers, and the same is pretty much true of Paul Behrens. Nowhere, however, is there any explanation as to why the possible impacts of climate change with regard to nature and food, for those of us in the UK, requires a wartime-like response from the UK, given how insignificant are the UK’s emissions as a proportion of the global whole, especially while most of the rest of the world simply watches from the sidelines while the UK destroys its industry, economy, environment and security in a futile attempt to persuade the rest of the world to follow.

London Climate Action Week (LCAW) 2026

Next up on the newsletter is LCAW. Touted as “Europe’s largest city-wide climate festival”, it is scheduled for June 20th–28th 2026. “It will gather thousands of leaders, experts, and citizens for over 700 events focused on accelerating global climate action, decarbonisation, and urban resilience, with key themes including finance, AI, and food systems.” Who needs COPs?

I do wonder what the point is. The talking points are the same as always. Nothing concrete is ever achieved, but the bandwagon rolls on, and plenty of people seem to be making a comfortable living out of it all. It includes a Climate Innovation Forum which will bring together “2,000+ industry, finance, and policy leaders.” At it “discussions will cover carbon accounting, energy system modernization, sustainable finance, critical minerals, and artificial intelligence for climate technology.” Don’t they always? “The week serves as a hub for cross-sector collaboration to turn climate commitments into real-world progress.” Well, that will be a first.

Report Launch – How Can the UK Adapt to Climate Risks?
Oxford launch of the Climate Change Committee’s Well Adapted UK report

I’m afraid I’m a bit late to report on this event, which took place on 1st June. It featured Dr Richard Millar, Head of Adaptation at the Climate Change Committee, and was described as offering “an opportunity to engage directly with leading experts on climate adaptation at a time when resilience is becoming an increasingly urgent policy priority.” We sceptics should welcome an increasing focus on the need for adaptation, if only there would be some recognition that attempted expensive mitigation measures in the UK are pointless (and also wasteful of vast sums of money that would be better spent on adaptation).

Seminar – Rethinking Methodologies in Epistemology: A Decolonial Approach Through the Lens of Medicinal Cape Plants

I’m afraid I’m too late with this one too – it took place on 4th June.

Drawing on the concept of Ausi—a Khoekhoegowab term meaning ‘older sister’ and referring to a respected holder of community knowledge—Professor Bam examines how intergenerational understandings of landscape, soil, plants, and cultural heritage have endured despite colonial disruption. The session considers how ‘deep listening’ to Ausi knowledge may challenge the limitations of conventional Western archives and open new pathways for understanding history, memory, and place.

Possibly very interesting, but what it has to do with OxCAN, I’m not sure.

Symposium – Climate Crisis, Learning, and Epistemic Plurality
University of Helsinki

4th June again, I’m afraid.

How should education respond to climate change in a world shaped by diverse ways of knowing? This cross-disciplinary symposium brings together international scholars to explore learning, climate justice, and educational transformation through decolonial, Indigenous, and plural knowledge traditions.

The event focuses on the challenges and opportunities created by climate transformations across different cultural and epistemic contexts. Discussions will examine how alternative knowledge systems can contribute to more just and effective responses to the climate crisis, while challenging assumptions embedded within dominant educational frameworks.

The programme includes a keynote address by Marcellus Mbah, who will speak on Epistemic Plurality in the Climate Crisis: African Indigenous Ontologies and Decolonial Education.

Make of that what you will. It’s certainly in line with UN COP agendas.

Global Youth Climate Summit
Right Here, Right Now Global Youth Climate Summit

This was on the 5th June, and apparently was to run continuously for 24 hours. The days of the all-nighter preparing an essay for the following day’s tutorial are long behind me now, so I could have dipped in and out of this at best. It was probably not for me anyway:

The summit aims to amplify youth voices, encourage collaboration across sectors, and showcase practical ideas and solutions for addressing climate challenges through innovation, education and human rights-based approaches.

Climate Tech Hackathon

This was a two-day event, spanning 5th & 6th June.

Participants will work in teams on climate-focused challenges, receive mentoring from industry experts, and hear from climate-tech founders. The event begins with welcome drinks and a founders’ panel on Friday evening before a full day of collaborative problem-solving on Saturday.

The Economics of Net Zero – ZERO Institute Summer Reception

Held yesterday, this might have been a great opportunity to have a deep and detailed debate about the pros and cons (because there are cons) related to the economic impact of aggressive net zero policies. Instead:

The event provides an opportunity to explore the economic dimensions of the net zero transition while connecting with members of Oxford’s growing climate research community.

Note that the climate research “community” is “growing”. Of course it is.

Networking Event – Oxford Energy Lunch
ZERO Institute and Oxford Energy Network

If you’re part of a growing community, I suppose networking is pretty important, especially when there’s so much money in play, and 15th June is your opportunity.

Hosted by the ZERO Institute and the Oxford Energy Network, the event will showcase current initiatives and provide an informal forum for discussion, collaboration and networking. An open-mic session will allow attendees to share announcements, opportunities and questions with colleagues working across energy and climate-related disciplines.

Webinar – The Anthropocene in the Language Classroom
Regenerating Futures, Deakin University

Obviously, it’s not enough to be convinced of the climate crisis. Proselytisation is vital too. Attend this free webinar on 18th June, and learn “how undergraduate communication skills courses for engineering students can become powerful spaces for climate dialogue and future-oriented learning. Draw… on classroom experiments involving discussion, reflective writing, visual provocations, and oral communication tasks, [to see] how language education can support students in interpreting uncertainty, engaging with socio-ecological challenges, and imagining collective futures.”

Presentation – Climate Change Education
Victorian Teaching and Learning Academy

This is one for our Antipodean contributor, Tony Thomas. It’s a presentation on 29th July by Peta White, “widely recognised for her work in science and sustainability education and has been a leading voice in advancing climate change education in Australia.”

The session will examine practical strategies for embedding sustainability within school settings while supporting learners to engage critically and constructively with climate-related challenges. It is aimed at educators, school leaders, and others interested in strengthening climate literacy and sustainability across the curriculum.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Truth? Is AI thinking what I’m thinking?

This is a thought-provoking piece by Andrew Lee, my fellow Hertfordian, and it’s nice to see some questioning of part, at least, of the usual narrative. He references a ship he saw with “LNG powered – think green” plastered across its side, and decided to ask AI what it made of the claimed green credentials. He and I liked the same irony identified by GPT:

many of these giant PCTCs are carrying exported vehicles globally, including EVs from China
the transport itself still consumes huge amounts of energy …

Your photo also nicely captures one of the strange features of modern shipping: a vessel moving thousands of cars while presenting itself as environmentally progressive.

There’s more, but that’s enough for today, and it would be good to end on a positive note. However, don’t expect OxCAN to start questioning the climate crisis narrative any time soon. Universities, it seems, have stopped teaching young adults how to think and are more interested in telling them what to think.

21 Comments

  1. The National Emergency Briefing film of yet more climate fearmongering propaganda hosted by Chris Packham is guaranteed to be a total flop. They know they have lost the argument with the general public. Note how they don’t dare allow comments under the YouTube version of the trailer.

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  2. Doug Brodie,

    You can find out if the film is to be shown anywhere near you, by checking here:

    https://www.nebriefing.org/screening-map

    For instance I find that it is to be shown at Keswick, near me, a week on Friday. Sadly, I learn that “MP Markus Campbell-Savours will be joining us for this important discussion about our future.” Just when I was giving him credit for not being one of the MPs who has signed the Emergency Briefing’s call for action. It’s being hosted by “Sustainable Keswick”:

    https://sustainablekeswick.org.uk/

    (tagline: “Tackling the Climate Crisis from Keswick first”). SInce Sustainable Keswick’s website is shy about telling us the sources of its funding, I aksed AI:

    Sustainable Keswick (SusKes), a registered charity (No. 1204429), operates on a mix of government grants, local community funds, and private sponsorships to drive its climate and nature projects. The group recently reported an annual income of roughly £16,000, heavily supported by government grants.

    The funding structure for Sustainable Keswick relies on several key pillars [including]

    Local Government & Councils: They receive substantial backing from Cumberland Council (via Community Panels for climate and nature actions) and the Lake District National Park Authority, which have funded initiatives such as tree planting and local footpath/cycling upgrades.

    Energy Redress & Trust Grants: The charity has historically utilized project-specific grants from the Energy Redress Scheme to support initiatives such as their Keswick Eco Car Club and home energy-saving advice. They also previously received funding from the Rural Community Energy Fund (RCEF) for community solar studies

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  3. Mark, it looks like they only started up as a ‘charity’ in 2024 and by 2025 they had managed to swindle a massive £15k from local authority taxpayers – constituting virtually all their income – to promote their anti-science BS. How they can be awarded ‘charitable’ status when they are essentially sponging off the taxpayer I don’t know.

    https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/charity-search/-/charity-details/5211852/full-print

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  4. Sad to see the reference there to “climate and ecological breakdown.” An emotive phrase, meaning nothing. They are quite unaware, it seems, of the hostility that such a briefing would engender. We’ve done Covid. I don’t think the public are willing to go down that road again. How can smart people be so stupid?

    I do have sympathy for the young ‘uns, and must imagine that these climate networking events are the closest thing there is to a jobs fair these days. It’s a hard choice. Priest of the new religion, or no job. Or perhaps I should say “new green industry”: the UK’s last industry left is going to be the manufacture of climate alarm.

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  5. Sometimes in our work we meet a climate change sceptic, and occasionally an outright denier. And when we do, we are always a little perplexed, given the weight of scientific evidence for humancaused [sic] climate change. That – together with what is actually happening across the world with more frequent and increasingly catastrophic weather events. 

    My initial reaction to sceptics and deniers is to ask myself, ‘What planet are they living on?’ But this  will not do. It is really important that we dig a little deeper into the psychology of climate change cepticism [sic] and denial. This article sets out in brief what makes it difficult for some people to accept reality.

    Not, you notice, engage with the substance of the sceptic or ‘denier’s’ argument, i.e. the actual science or practicality or effectiveness of their so called ‘sustainable’ solutions, but immediately pivot to psychoanalysis of the person questioning the ‘irrefutable’ science and evidence. I would give them a piece of my mind for having the arrogance and audacity to spout this crap whilst they are subsisting on MY taxes, but they are on Facebook sadly, not Elon’s X.

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  6. We have ongoing discussions with our local MPs on how to tackle these problems in detail and the Keswick Town Council, which since 2019 have a Climate Emergency Committee to address these issues in Keswick.

    We are now going down the rabbit hole opened up by Sustainable Keswick, swapping the dreaming spires for the Lake District, but that’s fine. I am struggling to get my head round the idea that Keswick Town Council, for 6 or 7 years, has had a Climate Emergency Committee.

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  7. I am contemplating a trip to Keswick on the evening of the 19th to watch the film, so I re-visited Sustainable Keswick’s website to see how I go about it. It turns out I have to register in advance (small venue, with limited seating – probably wise). I was rather surprised to read this:

    Bring a friend, neighbour or family member: everyone is welcome however we are advised on an age limit of 16 plus.

    What on earth is in the film that is unsuitable for under-16s? After all, they’re quite happy to scare them half to death with climate crisis propaganda in school lessons

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  8. My guess is that they probably don’t want the unwelcome interruption of unruly, bored and unimpressed teenagers saying loudly to their parents: ‘Mum/Dad, are you serious? This is all just total BS! Middle class, adult, middle-aged, old-aged [evidence the photo on SK’s website], climate alarmist wannabes want to be able to enjoy their slickly produced on screen confirmation bias in peace! Less and less teenagers are succumbing to the relentless climate change propaganda spewed out by a failing ‘education’ system. Kids are smarter than we give them credit for.

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  9. I was a founder member of OxCAN (in 2021) and in the early days it was essentially a lively forum for intelligent discussion about climate issues. I took a major part in these and must have made an impact as I was chosen for their first Alumni Spotlight: (https://web.archive.org/web/20201020201817/https://www.oxfordclimatealumni.com/post/robin-guenier-retired-writer-speaker-and-business-consultant – the photo used showed me looking absurdly young even then). But somehow the OxCAN powers-that-be began to find all this uncontrolled discussion rather embarrassing and put an end to it. Nonetheless it was still possible to publish articles – a freedom of which I took full advantage. But about two years ago they decided that their role was ‘to accelerate progress on solving the climate crisis‘ and my views came to be regarded as unhelpful. So I was cancelled. And everything on their website that I’d written or that referred to me was deleted, including the profile linked above – recovered via Wayback.

    However they started a ‘Slack’ ‘workspace’ facility that, via a ‘discussion-board’, albeit clumsily made comment on climate possible. And I wasn’t prevented from commenting there. So (very rarely) I’ve done so – and unsurprisingly my efforts, although allowed, have not been welcome.

    And by an interesting coincidence on the same day that Mark published the above article, I published a link to my Case Against Net Zero (15th update) on Slack only yesterday: https://app.slack.com/client/T01F3QGM6NR/C01FD2KAXTN (possibly only Mark, an OxCAN member, will be able to open this). It was of course immediately pounced on by someone asserting: ‘I’m sorry for Robin Guenier. Just about everything he says is wrong.’ I’ve replied, but I don’t suppose it will get me anywhere.

    It’s a sad and worrying tale. Like Mark I thought one of the prime lessons of an Oxford education was ‘the importance of intellectual challenge, questioning everything, and thinking for oneself‘. No longer it seems.

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  10. Robin,

    Thanks for that. I have availed myself of my OxCAN membership to see the discussion on its “Slack” workspace. The commenter you referred to followed up with “But there have been all kinds of exciting developments in the technology of renewables. Wave power, wind power, storage batteries, geothermal, hydrogen… I haven’t time – he must inform himself!“

    I find this deeply depressing. You have tried to engage with him on the substance, but he won’t (or can’t) respond on point. Instead we get what I regard as a child-like re-iteration of the Holy Grail. What has become of Oxford? Discussion discouraged. Intellectual and good-faith debate closed down. It seems to be in thrall to a cult. I despair.

    My only consolation is that no OxCAN member (other than you) is likely to read this piece. If any of them do, I am likely to join you in being defenestrated!

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  11. I’ve just been looking through the OxCAN discussion boards. Apart from Robin’s valiant battle with one particularly determined individual (with whom I too have crossed swords in the past) there is very little of interest. There are things such as this, though:

    Hi, anyone has a list of funding opportunities (e.g. grants/donations/accelerators) for non-for-profit organizations, especially in climate and sustainability fields? Thank you!

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  12. Robin, Mark,

    By coincidence, I just posted this comment on X re. a seemingly unconnected issue, i.e. the views of a Professor of Political Economy at University College Dublin on the recent Belfast protests/riots.

    https://x.com/Janine511484078/status/2065324871710622069

    “It erodes trust in the very institution you represent.” Too late. That horse has bolted. Academia is packed to the gills with rabid left wing ideologues just like Regan, who put political posturing before reasoned debate and analysis – always. The Long March is complete.

    It was in response to this very good comment from Christopher Talbot:

    Professor Regan, this is an extraordinarily unfit comment from someone who holds a chair in Political Economy at UCD. Reducing complex, high-stakes social unrest to “It has f**k all to do with immigration” and “violent racist fascist thugs. Simple as.” is not scholarship. It is crude partisan sloganeering. A professor’s role is to analyse causes, present evidence, examine data on migration, integration, crime, housing, welfare, and cultural cohesion, and model reasoned debate. Blanket dismissal plus schoolyard name-calling does the opposite: it shuts down inquiry and signals that certain public concerns are beneath serious discussion. You are free to hold strong views. You are not free to pretend that crude, evidence-free invective meets the standards expected of a university professor. It doesn’t. It erodes trust in the very institution you represent.

    I’m afraid Oxford, just like Dublin, is gone, irrecoverable. So called ‘academics’ are no longer interested in healthy debate and analysis. They are 100% captured by a left wing globalist political ideology, which includes open borders, plus the uncritical, irrational and unscientific acceptance of the existence of a ‘climate crisis’ and the imperative to address said non-existent climate crisis, chiefly via the proliferation of so called ‘clean’ renewables.

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  13. Jaime,

    Robin’s interlocutor at OxCAN appeals to authority to suggest that Robin must be wrong. That is the last thing that anyone associated with Oxford University should be doing.

    I have told this story here before, but in this context I hope it’s worth repetition. During my first term as a somewhat naive but very keen law student from a working-class background, somewhat overwhelmed by my surroundings, but nevertheless very enthusiastic, I attended a law tutorial, to be given an early lesson in what it meant (then) to be at Oxford University.

    Turning to me, my tutor asked me to summarise what a top Law Lord had said in his speech in one of the leading cases on the topic we were studying that week. I had been diligent, had completed the reading list, and had prepared carefully for the tutorial. I proudly summarised it, knowing I had it right. Feeling pleased, I leaned back and started to relax. My tutor nodded approvingly, then delivered his bombshell:

    “Was he right?”

    I was severely taken aback. I was a tyro law student. How could I possibly say that a top judge with decades of experience at the pinnacle of his career was wrong? What did I know? I was about to learn an important lesson. My tutor led me through the reasoning deployed by the Law Lord and by the end of the tutorial I was persuaded that he may, after all, have been wrong. May have been, not definitely was. But I was starting to learn to question, to analyse, to think for myself. It was a lesson I have never forgot.

    I don’t suppose students at Oxford University have that experience now.

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  15. Regrettably, the latest from Tilak Doshi at the Daily Sceptic is behind a paywall, so I can offer no more than a taster:

    “The Oxford Institute Letting Climate Ideology Bias its Research

    A commitment to the ‘energy transition’ is overriding the facts”

    https://www.climateskeptic.org/p/the-oxford-institute-letting-climate

    The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES) is one of the world’s most respected institutions in applied energy economics. Its researchers have produced decades of authoritative work on oil and gas markets, LNG pricing and the geopolitics of energy supply. For oil and gas industry analysts, the OIES offers keen insights.

    Which makes it all the more telling — and dispiriting — that OIES has chosen to hitch its wagon so firmly to the ‘energy transition’ bandwagon. The institute’s recent special edition of the Oxford Energy Forum on the Hormuz Crisis, published in late May 2026 and posted on LinkedIn on Tuesday, illustrates this contradiction. Here is an institute that simultaneously commands respect for its empirical rigour on fossil fuel markets and yet, when it comes to the ‘energy transition’, reliably produces analysis shaped by the prevailing academic and institutional orthodoxy rather than by hard-nosed economic analysis.

    This is of course no surprise. Oxford University boasts the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment which is explicitly committed to “the green transition to achieve Net Zero emissions and sustainable development”. The school’s ‘experts’ recently came out with a report that found it a “sheer fantasy” that utilising the remaining North Sea reserves of oil and gas would make UK energy more secure or that it would make valuable contribution to the economy and its households. It also claimed that renewables have become cheaper than natural gas-fired generation.

    The contrast with what an independent Oxford mind can do when liberated from institutional groupthink is instructive. Sir Dieter Helm, Professor of Economic Policy at Oxford and one of Britain’s foremost energy economists, has spent years making the unfashionable but essential point that the costs of Net Zero are steep. In a recent podcast discussion and on his own website, Helm has repeatedly argued that “it is important to tell the public the truth, that it’s going to cost you” to decarbonise. An individual of Helm’s stature can afford intellectual honesty. An institution with funding streams, conference participation and reputational stakes in the ‘Net Zero consensus’ is in a far more constrained position….

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  16. I have just been “cordially invited to join for OxCAN’s London Climate Action Week Event“.

    Against the backdrop of the Santa Marta conference, it seems that, in many respects, the climate conversation has now moved beyond whether the transition should happen, towards how it can be financed, governed, and implemented equitably at speed.

    ​The event will take the form of facilitated dialogue beginning with a brief keynote address to frame the conversation followed by a fireside chat, bringing together alumni and other guests, for both strategic perspective and practical insight to the conversation.

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  17. “Beccles mayor to host screening of climate change film“

    May be paywalled. (It doesn’t say much.) The People’s Emergency Briefing is coming to a small market town in Suffolk.

    Hosted by the town’s mayor Joe Athorn, numerous of the town’s councillors will attend the event along with Lowestoft MP Jess Asato.

    My guess is it’s horse apples, but I would sit through it to find out.

    Mark, since you’ve been cordially invited to Climate Action Week, perhaps you should go. I appreciate that it wouldn’t be a nice experience, and that you have a wall that you would like to apply paint to and set up a deckchair in the vicinity of. A quote from Orwell comes to mind for the likely contributors and their faith in Net Zero.

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  18. Jit,

    The film is being shown almost everywhere – they’re determined to give it maximum publicity. Its showing often seems to be accompanied by the presence of a local MP (they’ve learned nothing). I didn’t go to the showing in Keswick. If and when (as seems inevitable – Cockermouth has its own “green” group) it comes to Cockermouth, I may wander down on foot (greener that way) to see it.

    You surmise rightly that I won’t be going to London for Oxford Climate Week….

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  20. Beyond a paywall, unfortunately. By Ben Pile, once of this parish:

    “London’s Climate Action Week: A Festival of Intransigence on an Island of Hypocrisy in a Sea of Political Chaos”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2026/06/23/londons-climate-action-week-a-festival-of-intransigence-on-an-island-of-hypocrisy-in-a-sea-of-political-chaos/

    London Climate Action Week (LCAW) is an annual event, the eighth of which kicked off on Sunday. With the intention of “harnessing the power of London for global and local climate action” the week is to climate Blobbers as Easter is to Christians. It’s a festival packed full of events, from litter picking through wine-tasting networking to boring lectures about the global economy, all in the service of the green agenda. But LCAW had barely opened when news arrived that Britain was to get its seventh Prime Minister in a decade.

    The link between Keir Starmer’s exit and a Green Blob Fest may not be immediately obvious. But to those of us who believe that climate policy is a lens through which today’s politics can be understood it is straightforward. The Green Blob will admit that climate change requires dramatic changes to society. But debate about those deep changes has been absent from British politics this century, and the terms of the transformation have never been put to the voter in a meaningful contest of ideas. Since the consequences of such policies have been increasingly felt as deindustrialisation and economic stagnation, so a democratic deficit has broadened and deepened, and is now a schism running through global, European and British politics. It doesn’t matter what promises are made about the benefits of green policy, they cannot be delivered. And so the inadequacy of any Prime Minister who stands on such promises is going to be revealed in short order.

    LCAW, then, might be seen as a festival of fiddling in Rome on fire, with Nero giving its keynote address. The great and good will swan about stages and dinners, patting each other on the back about how they are saving the planet. But the stark facts evident in just that city is that its population, and the wider public of the country, are sick to the back teeth of such self-serving hypocrisy and intransigence.

    The convenor of the festival is the strange little outfit known as ‘E3G’ (Third Generation Environmentalism Limited), which purports to be “a climate change think tank with a global outlook”. Don’t they all? Either way, they certainly all have the same funders, which as I’ve argued here often, makes a mockery of the entire concept of ‘civil society’: if there are just a handful of billionaire philanthropists funding all of green ‘civil society’, to what extent does ‘civil society’ even exist? It doesn’t exist. It’s just a lobbying front, taking the styles of charities, think tanks and even academic research, but all of which are strategically coordinated as a condition of their funding by about four philanthropic grant-making bodies. There might just as well be one green ‘NGO’, but financing a constellation of them gives the appearance of a social movement, supported by a public. This, sadly, is a fact of contemporary politics that even its major victim, and latterly Net Zero policy-sceptic, the Conservative Party, has yet to understand. Or, rather, admit to. For it too was led up the garden path by the lure of Green Blob billions, only to be cut loose….

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  21. “MPs call on UK government to host televised emergency briefing on climate crisis

    As UK swelters in another heatwave, 50-minute Chris Packham film outlines threats to security, economy and health”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/10/mps-government-televised-emergency-briefing-climate-emergency

    …The film, hosted by the TV presenter and environmentalist Chris Packham, calls on the government to stage a prime-time, televised emergency briefing on the climate and nature crisis. So far, 91 cross-party MPs and peers and members of the UK’s devolved legislatures have signed a parliamentary call urging the government to host this briefing. Signatories include the peer Rosie Boycott and Tim Farron, a former leader of the Liberal Democrat party….

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