Ian Johnston

Climate change is making wildfires more severe by producing warmer, drier summers and wetter winters that increase vegetation fuel, with southern Europe, Scotland, the United States and Canada facing growing risks. The United States has already recorded substantially more burned acreage than its recent annual average, while experts warn that fires are increasingly threatening populated areas. Donald Trump attributes worsening fires and smoke to inadequate forest clearing and has threatened tariffs against Canada, but the commentary argues that this explanation contradicts scientific evidence and could lead to unjustified trade penalties.

AI tools increasingly influence how people write and communicate, often favoring concise, direct language over politeness and nuance. Drawing on concerns raised by Ada Palmer and Bruce Schneier, the column argues that widespread exposure to AI-generated text could lead people to adopt machine-like linguistic patterns and potentially alter how they think. It supports harnessing AI's benefits while resisting its authority over human expression and remaining alert to ethical risks, illustrated by a simulated blackmail scenario involving Anthropic's Claude. An AI-generated rewrite of the column demonstrates the author's concern by making the argument more sanitized and sympathetic to AI.

Warnings from former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull are used to argue that the UK Conservative Party is undermining itself by echoing Reform UK’s anti‑immigration rhetoric, which risks legitimising right‑wing populism and driving voters toward its rivals. The article links anti‑immigration policies to weak economic performance, demographic decline and rising xenophobia, urging Conservatives to refocus on economic competence rather than culture‑war politics. Turnbull’s comparison to Australia suggests that abandoning the political centre damages centre‑right parties, while continuing hostility to immigration could worsen Britain’s fiscal and demographic outlook. The piece concludes that this strategy threatens not only the Conservatives’ future but the country’s broader political and economic stability.