In our weekend review, the redoubtable broadsheet columnists grapple with the pending green fatigue by talking about the most practical thing they can think of: energy production.


Nick Cohen in the Observer accuses the green hardline of imperilling our energy supply and increasing the risk of a green backlash while economic conditions worsen. While some environmentalists gleefully urge a recession on, he reminds us that the lesson of history is that when growth goes, altruism goes with it.

Talking to Oliver Burkeman, Sir David King in the Guardian is inclined to agree. The former chief science adviser to the government has a sneaking suspicion that certain sectors of the movement would like to take society back to the '18th or even the 17th century.'

The Independent's Gordon MacKerron fingers the Government for neither investing properly in renewables nor in a sensible alternative: nothing has stopped it from building nuclear power stations hitherto apart from the fact that they are a huge financial risk.

The Telegraph section is having none of it, goes way beyond the rhetoric and examines the benefits of installing a ground-source heat pump into your home.

For more detail and other topics including: minimizing that quick trip guilt, reading the small print on eco-labels and the late Sir Edmund Hillary's requests to save the mountain he conquered, visit the zerochampion blog.

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