DECC HULK SMASH DEFICIT MODEL

The Guardian have a big splash today asking questions about climate change minister Greg Barker’s links to the energy industry, based on freedom of information requests. They also found some documents on climate communications which Leo Hickman posted links from his twitter account on Monday night. Amongst them was this speech from an unnamed DECC official.

It’s brilliant. I want to print it out and stick bits of it all around my office/ on tshirts/ stapled to students faces. It’s written in capslock, presumably to help the speaker see their points while delivering the speech, but just makes me think of the Feminist Hulk, especially how direct the speech is. Personal favourite lines include CLIMATE SCIENTISTS NEED TO GET OUT MORE and THE DEFICIT MODEL DOES NOT WORK (as well as REDACTED REDACTED GEORGE MONBIOT HEAD ON A PLATE, not that I want Monbiot’s head on a plate, it’s just the imagery…). It’s a lucid and clever overview of climate science communication in the UK. I cannot recommend it enough.

Freedom of information laws are largely used to catch public officials out, so it’s nice to, on occasion, find that at least a few of them are quietly brilliant (which makes me wish, not for the first time that they were just more routinely open; they could show off).

Anyway, read the Guardian’s story asking questions over climate change minister’s links to his adviser. Read other documents Hickman’s found through FOI, like this list of meetings between Office for Nuclear Development and nuclear energy industry reps and ask questions (as Sam Geall points out, a stakeholder roundtable on green activism, containing no green activists, only government, police and industry…). But read this great speech too and celebrate.

And if the DECC Hulk is reading this, I’ll buy you a drink sometime.

EDIT (30th September 2012): the identity has been revealed, but Martin Rosenbaum at the BBC. And apparently George Monbiot is “saintly” which, as Rosenbaum points out is an odd thing to have redacted.