There was a time – long, long ago – when all food was organic, local, fair trade and pesticide-free. Of course, that era was also the time of the Black Plague, the Spanish Inquisition and an average life span of 42 years, so don’t get too nostalgic. Today, we humans […]
I’ve got a proposal to end the chronic culture of short-termism that we have in our politics, our electoral cycles, our business and economics. Because when one is trying to think on a timescale of hundreds of years or thousands of years or hundreds of thousands of years – which […]
Our legal system is failing the 99%. Within this term coined by the Occupy movement I include the myriad of non-human species humanity has co-evolved with over millennia. Injustice for the Earth has become the norm as the legal system in most Western societies consistently prioritises the growth of the […]
We are sawing off the branch on which we are sitting: our own economic activities are threatening the very support systems upon which human and non-human life depends. Some people think that the scientific facts about climate change are simply too complicated or else too depressing for ordinary people […]
On 9 December 2011 we came, we saw, and although we didn’t conquer the United Nations, for two hours it felt as if we had. Towards the end of last year I travelled to the United Nations climate talks in South Africa. I had received funding from people in my […]
While corporations are busy marketing themselves as environmentally responsible global citizens, scientists warn that global ecological systems are severely destabilised. The confusion created by the gap between frightening scientific reports and reassuring messages from advertising and corporate media provides an excuse to continue shopping, watching TV and generally ignoring escalating […]
2011 was the International Year of Forests, with the theme ‘Forests for People’. I think more and more people are coming to understand the role that forests play in the health of our planet, but I am not convinced that the threats are abating yet. At the beginning of 2011, […]
To many, Occupy is primarily a movement that fights economic inequality. “I am all against bankers, but not an environmentalist!” – this quote of a man passing by the Environment Info Tent last week seemed to sum up the reservations some people have against linking economic critiques to environmental critiques […]
This week the Energy Working Group is expecting triplets. We’ll soon be caring for three brand new shiny solar panels. It sounds simple enough but the gestation has been lengthy and at times difficult. Some of the difficulties have been technical – which panels, what voltage, how many charge controllers […]
It happened with the dotcom bubble, then, more tragically, with the subprime mortgage crisis, and soon after, most lethally, with the global food crisis. The extreme boom and bust of markets, force-fed and distended by the financial sector. After each crash, financial speculators have sought new arenas in which to […]