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Gifts from The Morning Star
No more climate cranks on our screens
IAN SINCLAIR relays how one man's stand on climate change forced the BBC to admit the truth
This summer was one of the hottest on record which saw forrest fires spread all across the world

A COMMON, dispiriting problem activists often face is the difficulty in discerning any direct effects of all their hard work. This does not apply to Dr Rupert Read’s latest action on climate change.

On August 1 Read, who is chair of the Green House think tank and a lecturer in philosophy at the University of East Anglia, tweeted that he decided to turn down an invitation from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire to debate with a climate change denier.

“When the call came through, my initial instinct was to say ‘Yes’, just because it is a media opportunity”, he tells me. “But before the word ‘Yes’ left my mouth, something deep inside me made me hesitate – and say ‘No’. I couldn’t stomach it any more. I couldn’t see how, in the midst of a summer of climate chaos, it made any sense to be debating whether this was really happening.”

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