Guest post by Mike Hulme
The UK energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne was on national radio this morning speaking about Cancun etc. ...
An interesting mixture. He could not bring himself to ditch the rhetoric of an (urgent) all-embracing legally-binding climate change UN agreement, and yet when pushed he conceded – de facto - much of the Hartwell thinking: small incremental initial steps, clean energy innovation, tackling issues on their own terms rather than as ones stitched into the fabric of climate change, etc. It’s as if he – and others – are now trying to speak the new language, but deeply frightened to let go of the perceived safety of an outdated orthodoxy.