The greening of Boris Johnson

WHEN DECIDING which side to support in the Brexit referendum Boris Johnson famously wrote two columns—one for and the other against—and chose the argument he found most convincing. Over the years he has adopted a similar endorse-both-sides approach to greenery. As a student politician and as mayor of London, he branded himself a “green Tory”; as a fire-breathing Daily Telegraph columnist, he denounced the green blob. In January 2013, for instance, he wrote a column speculating that the world was entering “a mini ice-age”, quoting no less an authority than the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s brother, Piers, an eccentric weather forecaster and anti-vaxxer, and pointing to the evidence that it was snowing outside. “If the climate can change”, he now says in self-justification, “I don’t see why my mind can’t.”