Mat Hope

About

Mat was DeSmog’s Special Projects and Investigations Editor, and Operations Director for DeSmog UK Ltd. He was DeSmog UK’s Editor from October 2017 to March 2021. He began working with DeSmog as the UK’s Deputy Editor in October 2016, having previously been an editor at Nature Climate Change and analyst at Carbon Brief. He completed his PhD on political communication strategies in US Congressional climate change debates at the University of Bristol in 2012, which won the Hilary Hartley prize as the best thesis in his department’s graduating class. Mat is a member of the National Union of Journalists.

onJul 11, 2019 @ 13:32 PDT

We’ve all heard the dodgy arguments: ‘the science is uncertain’, ‘climate change is natural, not down to humans’, ‘science has been hijacked by politics’… Now a new cache of documents sheds light o...
onJun 14, 2019 @ 07:20 PDT

Do you believe the world is facing a climate crisis? Do you think those responsible for it should be held to account? If so, support DeSmog UK today! Over the past few years, our small, dedicated...
onMay 1, 2019 @ 23:17 PDT

The UK parliament has declared a “climate emergency”, though the legislative and policy implications of the indicative motion remain unclear. Westminster became the third of the UK’s legislatures ...
onApr 25, 2019 @ 06:32 PDT

For a sunny fortnight in Spring 2019, you couldn’t scroll through a newsfeed without seeing the words “Extinction Rebellion”. Thousands of protestors occupied five sites in London over the Easter ...
onApr 24, 2019 @ 23:12 PDT

A secretive fossil fuel lobby group undertook a decades-long campaign to undermine mainstream climate science while spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to try and influence major scientific r...
onApr 16, 2019 @ 07:09 PDT

Polly Higgins is a woman on the hunt. And you get the sense that, after decades of working towards holding powerful polluters to account, her prey may finally be in sight. “When you're looking at ...
onApr 9, 2019 @ 04:01 PDT

Image: Kristian Buus © Simon Roscoe Blevins swears softly, compulsively, and often. The criminal justice system is “shit”, he says. Fracking? It’s “fucked”. He’s a man familiar with both. Last ...
onApr 7, 2019 @ 04:01 PDT

Police have been criticised for repeatedly delaying a review of official guidance for policing fracking protests after a cache of leaked correspondence highlighted ongoing problems with the consult...
onApr 1, 2019 @ 00:25 PDT

30 years after he first graced the Sunday Telegraph’s comment pages, Christopher Booker has at last put down his pen. With the death of his column goes one of the last remaining regular outlets for...
onMar 6, 2019 @ 05:20 PST

A failure to recognise the latest science around the negative climate impacts of fracking means the government may now have to revise some parts of its national planning policy. A judge has ruled ...