Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Keystone COPout
Britain doesn’t lack options for the radical decarbonisation of its economy, we just lack the leadership and vision to deliver it, argues ALAN SIMPSON

SOMETIMES there are events that make you rail in anger. Others make you weep. Reading the government’s plethora of “net-zero” policy papers ahead of November’s Cop26 climate conference, I could barely hold back the tears.

It wasn’t their lack of ambition but the absence of a route map (with sufficient resources and urgency) that made the proclamations such a painful read. 

We were asked to ignore huge rafts of policies that will make the crisis worse, in exchange for promises that might make it manageable.

 

Governed by pygmies

 

Rail and regionalisation

 

Swapping and sharing

 

Obsessions with growth

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Workers pack orders on the warehouse floor at the Amazon UK Fulfilment Centre in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
Features / 22 July 2025
22 July 2025

From Amazon’s monitored warehouse hell to delivery workers being paid per package, exploitative work destroys collaborative relationships young people need — more screen time and 12 new AI ‘friends’ will only make things worse, writes ALAN SIMPSON

Prime Minister Keir Starmer leaves the end of a press conference on the Immigration White Paper in the Downing Street Briefing Room in London, May 12, 2025
Features / 19 May 2025
19 May 2025

ALAN SIMPSON warns that Starmer’s triangulation strategy will fail just as New Labour’s did, with each rightward move by Labour pushing Tories further right

Franklyn Roosevelt, November 1932
The Futurue / 2 May 2025
2 May 2025

ALAN SIMPSON warns of a dystopian crossroads where Trump’s wrecking ball meets AI-driven alienation, and argues only a Green New Deal can repair our fractured society before techno-feudalism consumes us all

US President Donald Trump stands in the presidential box as
Features / 20 March 2025
20 March 2025
As the ‘NRx movement’ plots to replace democracy with corporate-feudal dictatorship, Britain must pursue a radical alternative of local food security and genuine wealth redistribution to withstand the coming upheaval, writes ALAN SIMPSON
Similar stories
MODERN FEUDALISM:
New US President Donald
Trump
Features / 30 January 2025
30 January 2025
Some hard political choices must be made in Trump’s post-truth era – starting by abandoning any illusions about the ‘special relationship’ and waking up to the need for bold policy-making on the climate, argues ALAN SIMPSON
Shadow Energy Secretary Ed Miliband on board the jack-up bar
Features / 10 October 2024
10 October 2024
The government’s reliance on unproven and short-termist technology won’t deliver answers to today’s energy crisis, warns MARK MASLIN
The Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station which is to shut at the
Britain / 27 September 2024
27 September 2024