Climate Change

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): In a tremendous Guardian column today, George Monbiot calls on everyone who can to stop the new coal-fired plant planned for Kingsnorth Kent, by joining the climate camp "Everything now hinges on stopping coal". He quotes one quite extraordinary episode, which it seems to me shows we have barely any government worth the name at all:

In January, Gary Mohammed, a civil servant at the Department for Business, emailed E.ON to ask whether he should include CCS [Carbon Capture and Storage] as a condition for approving its new coal plant. (This gives a fascinating insight into how government works: companies are asked to write their own rules.) E.ON replied that the government "has no right to withhold approval for a conventional plant". Six minutes later Mohammed answered thus: "Thanks. I won't include. Hope to get the set of draft conditions out today or tomorrow."

It seems to me that both the civil servant and the person from E.ON who wrote the reply should be charged with treason for subverting the fundamentals of democracy. I don't agree with Solzhenitsyn on the Enlightenment (though I do agree that a person's life should be judged by their moral growth not their accumulation of wealth, I don't see this as anti-Enlightement). However, reading the extracts from the Russian writer's Harvard address printed in openDemocracy, it is hard not to reflect on this passage:

Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.

Monbiot complains about the lack of courage in the government. It is not just about individuals, even if no one resigned over 42 days. There is a larger subservience to what is believed to be the "new thinking" of corporate globalisation which turns them into angels of destruction.

Neena Gill (West Midlands, Labour MEP): The financial crisis in the US will have a serious impact on Britain and Europe's economic outlook for years to come. Unsustainable dependence on the world's number one economy, which now faces the threat of a recession as grave as that of the 1930s, brings with it a risk of job losses across Britain and Europe.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Recently I made a joke about a boring headline on Tom Nairn's speech on how globalisation now favours countries like Scotland. This time, the killingly dull headline was at the top of the page, in London's Evening Standard.

Jon Bright (London, OK): Was toying with an Anthony the Great metaphor ("And when Tony looked at the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more high profile international jobs to apply for") but have gone with Flash Blair instead ("I love you Tony - but we've only got 14 hours left to save the Earth!") for the latest installment in TB's post-PM attempts to achieve omnipresence.

Katrina Forrester (London, Plane Stupid): On Wednesday five climate activists from the direct action group Plane Stupid took democracy to the rooftops of Parliament. The banners they erected highlighted the collusion between the British Airport Authority (BAA) and the Department for Transport. The 27^th February marked the end of the public consultation period within which opinions could be voiced about the construction of the Third Runway at Heathrow - a period which should have been a chance for the public to engage with the democratic process and to make clear their objections to the Heathrow expansion plans. The reality is a different story, and Plane Stupid wanted not only to expose the farcical nature of the Heathrow consultation, but also to draw attention to the failings of our so-called democracy.

Andrew Blick reviews An Uncertain Future: Law Enforcement, National Security and Climate Change by Chris Abbott, ORG.

This report recommends a preventative security policy in the face of climate change.