If CO2 was purple, we’d all be scared sh*tless

I’ve just returned from the Aspen Institute’s Environmental Forum in Colorado, where hundreds of experts on climate change gathered to talk about the future of electric cars, photovoltaic cells and worried over the melting arctic and the death of the world’s tallest trees.

One of the most fascinating discussions was about how – outside of that select group (and, of course, members of Do The Green Thing) – Climate Change has a massive communication problem. As one speaker pointed out, “99% of the world’s population doesn’t care about it because, frankly, global warming is dull and people don’t understand it.”

This was written for Do the green thing

Can justice be a matter of profit and loss?

Spectator Business

April 2009

Edie Lush visits a private prison, and wonders whether there should be limits to the involvement of shareholder-owned businesses in the provision of such sensitive public services

There’s something unnerving about the idea of a private prison. When you drive up to the gates of HMP Dovegate, the first thing you notice is the Serco sign – it has friendly round letters with a little red line under the ‘o’. It’s a little weird to walk into a Category B prison, filled with rapists and murderers, that’s run by the same FTSE 100 company I noticed cleaning my London street this morning.

But once you’re inside Dovegate, it is recognisably prison-like. Many of the cells were empty because inmates were busy in the workshops, including one which produces lights for Cooper Lighting that end up in hotels in Dubai. Director Wyn Jones told me that employment levels are above 90 per cent in the prison. I spoke to one prisoner who was doing a degree in sociology and another who had completed three National Vocational Qualifications. Both these prisoners represent their wings in weekly meetings with prison management. Top of their list this week is the issue of whether ‘older chaps’ with little prison income should pay less for their television rental than the £1 a week paid by those with jobs. Prisoners use an ATM to order from the prison shop and top up their phone call entitlements – eventually they’ll be able to book visits and doctors’ appointments through them as well.

This was written for Spectator Business