Confessions of an inkoholic

My name is Geoff, and I’m an inkoholic.

I’ve been addicted to newspapers for almost half a century. I have loved working for them for all that time -with only a  few brief unhappy periods under hostile editors -  and have been known to spend entire weekends reading them (yes, I know – as my children would say - that’s pretty sad).

I still think print is better than electronic media. It can broaden minds, while the internet tends to narrow them. People usually look online for things that already interest them, and for views that they already hold, reinforcing prejudices. Newspapers, at their best, surprise you as you turn their pages, catching your eye with – and tempting you to read about – new subjects and differing opinions.

The trouble is that they are increasingly failing. Not just commercially, with circulations - and advertising revenues – declining, but in their old mind-broadening mission, at least in Britain. There are, let me quickly say, remarkable exceptions but, by and large, newspapers seem to be becoming more uniform in their views, and less tolerant of dissenting voices.

In few fields is is this more true than over global warming. Rejection of the seriousness of climate change  (I won’t call it  denial, but scepticism is too mild a word) is growing in the comment pages of British newspapers even as it is retreating everywhere else.

The governments of Canada and Australia, which until a few months ago led the rejectionist forces, have abruptly turned round 180 degrees– in the latter case with the same party still in power. In the United States polls show that even a majority of conservative Republicans accept climate change and - I was told while in Washington last month - some ten to twelve GOP senators are trying to find their way back to the solid shore of scientific reality “across the breaking ice” of unsustainable rejectionism.

In the British press, however, there, in my estimation, some ten columnists who reject or underplay the dangers of global warming, with precious few columnar voices on the other side. I write with feeling, and declare an interest. Until recently I was perhaps one of such voice but in the summer I lost my half page column in the Daily Telegraph, - while rejectionist columnists across a whole range of newspapers have retained theirs – and I am now being pushed out altogether. It is, however also true that not enough space was given to genuine, questioning scepticism some seven or eight years ago when acceptance of the scientific consensus dominated.

When one view goes almost entirely unchallenged, new facts are created. It now seems to be widely accepted that the Redcar steel plant closed last month, with the loss of 1,200 jobs, because high prices for renewable electricity pushed up the cost of its power. But in fact, analysis suggests that this was responsible for only 1 to 2 per cent  of  much of the steel industry’s production costs, and that extra compensation due to be brought in in April will bring it down to just 0.3 per cent. By contrast the price of steel, the real cause of the crisis, has dropped by 60 per cent in four years.

Similarly it is now widely believed that axing subsidies for renewable power will make a big difference household electricity bills. In fact, effectively ending them for onshore wind will save just 30p on a average £1,200 dual fuel annual bill; dramatically slashing feed in tariffs for solar power will save another £1.20. Peddling this misleading stuff in turns lets the Big Six – who have hiked their prices, and failed to bring them down adequately when wholesale costs fell – off the hook.

Losing my column and now, it appears,  my job – and thus the chance to put the record straight on things like this, not to speak of the ability to report on the many hopeful developments round the world - has sometimes felt like a bereavement. But I am determined not to be silenced. Hence this blog. I am launching it at the crucial COP 21 climate summit which opens in Paris today, and which I am attending at my own expense (rather scarily as my main income has ceased) , I hope to report new facts and insights not available elsewhere, Please give it a try  - and, if you like it, recommend it to your friends and contacts: the more people read it regularly the more effective it will be and the more likely that I will be able to afford to continue writing it. Please do send me your comments.

Of course I also hope to write for newspapers; indeed here is a piece the Evening Standard ran on Friday on the summit. I’m still an inkoholic, after all