orn in Essex, raised in Canada, and resident in Suffolk for the past 18 years, I turned to the Greens in desperation over the failure of other parties to take climate change seriously.
Twice I stood in local elections as a Green before success in 2023. During a long career in science journalism, I’ve written about many promising alternative energy technologies only to see them flounder from lack of funding.
The success of solar and wind energy shows what a little government funding can do to get technologies off the ground. If a tiny fraction of what the fossil fuel industry pays its shareholders were diverted to energy research, we would be in a much better position to tackle the climate crisis with the help of working tidal and wave energy, grid storage, superconducting transmission lines, and even solar power stations in space (yes, I’m serious).
As a regular writer about astronomy, I wonder at the fact that, despite decades of trying, we have not found any signs of life elsewhere in the universe. It suggests that habitable planets may be rare.We should treat ours with more care and respect.