30/10/2021
30 Oct 2021

Cop out

30 Oct 2021

Cop out

Featured articles

Features
Fraser NelsonFraser Nelson
Cop out: Boris’s battle to save the climate summit

As so often, the Queen put it best. While opening the Welsh parliament a couple of weeks ago, she was caught on microphone discussing the COP26 summit and its frustrations. ‘Still don’t know who is coming,’ she told the Duchess of Cornwall. ‘It’s really irritating when they talk, but don’t do.’ In just a few words, she perfectly summed up the challenges facing Boris Johnson in Glasgow. The PM wants to get countries to commit to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Cop out: Boris’s battle to save the climate summit
Katy Balls
The Tory blame game over COP26 has already started

Just a few months ago, the view inside Downing Street was that the COP26 summit would be a national morale booster. The Coldplay singer Chris Martin was mentioned as a potential headline act and there were excited discussions about giving the event a cute mascot. Now, the headlines are about rail strikes, bin men running away from rats on rubbish-strewn streets in Glasgow and the Prime Minister declaring that recycling doesn’t work.

The Tory blame game over COP26 has already started
Linden Kemkaran
My family and the scars of forced adoption

I was nearly 40 when I discovered that I had an older brother. My lifelong family position as the eldest of four evaporated in a flash one Sunday afternoon in 2008 when my mother called us all together at her house, saying she had something she needed to tell us. She opened a box file and with trembling fingers pulled out a black and white photo of a baby. It turned out that my mum, who died suddenly and unexpectedly of Covid in February of this year, had been one of a number of unmarried women — there could be as many as 250,000 — forced to give up their babies for adoption between the 1950s and 1970s.

My family and the scars of forced adoption
James Lovelock
Why are we so afraid of nuclear power?

The climate change summit in Glasgow will have one important part of the discussion missing: the role of nuclear power. It seems the government is in no mood for a discussion with the nuclear industry — every one of its applications to exhibit at the COP26 summit has been rejected. That’s a shame, because there are plenty of myths to be addressed. We could discuss the lessons from the plant at Fukushima, seriously harmed by a tsunami in March 2011.

Why are we so afraid of nuclear power?
Ross Clark
What’s really behind the net-zero zealotry of big businesses?

Boris Johnson’s biggest challenge at COP26 doesn’t lie in avoiding a finger-wagging from Greta Thunberg, who won’t be going. Neither will it be in preventing the party being spoiled by Insulate Britain holding up the limousines of the great and good. Nor will Johnson have to struggle too hard to persuade his fellow world leaders to sign some kind of declaration strong enough to be spun as a triumph but anodyne enough to allow China, Russia and others to ignore it.

What’s really behind the net-zero zealotry of big businesses?
Max Jeffery
In Israel, there’s never an easy fix

From an Israeli army base on the border with Lebanon, I can see the village of Maroun al-Ras. An Iranian flag flies from the dome of the mosque. Nearby, strapped to a post, is a 20ft cutout of the late Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, which was put there earlier this year by Hezbollah after he was killed by an American air strike. His right arm and index finger are stretched out, pointing menacingly over the valley at Israel.

In Israel, there’s never an easy fix
Elisa Segrave
Fight club: when book groups turn nasty

‘Small friendly village book club is looking for three or four new members.’ I was infuriated to read this in our village newsletter, an alternative to the parish magazine. I had just been ‘cancelled’ by this ‘friendly’ club from featuring at one of their evenings. A text, sent by a hitherto pleasant woman who’d liked my last book, explained: ‘There are many hurt feelings in the village. We in the book group believe that your email, put on the parish council notice board, was hurtful and upsetting.

Fight club: when book groups turn nasty
Theo Hobson
Why I’m paying my daughter to go to church

It would be weird if my 13-year-old daughter didn’t say she was an atheist. It’s what you say in our culture when you’re that age. To be honest it would creep me out a bit if she was all pious. But she is getting confirmed into the Anglican faith. This is a piece of hoop-jumping that her parents have decided to require of their children. I went for coffee with the vicar to ask if my daughter could join the classes. I admitted that she was a bit reluctant.

Why I’m paying my daughter to go to church
Next up: Columnists