The riots and their fallout will eat up all the political oxygen for months, if not years to come. A party conference season that should have seen at least some debate on the grave threat posed by climate change and the huge opportunity presented by the low carbon economy will now be dominated by much hand-wringing and political jostling over "the state of modern Britain". The riots have undoubtedly emboldened those Conservative backbenchers who are at best indifferent to environmental issues and at worst openly hostile to green policies.
Significantly, they are supported by a similarly emboldened right-wing media that has in recent months cranked up its opposition to environmental initiatives, most notably through the Daily Mail's increasingly overt climate scepticism and repeated attacks on green energy policies. --James Murray, Business Green, 15 August 2011
