In late 1989 there was a book published in Australia called "Living in the Greenhouse." Six months later, in June 1990, there was a book published in England called.... wait for it... wait for it... "Living in the Greenhouse." Here we are, having not done anything other than (checks notes)... make the problem much much worse.... Continue Reading →
Validation!
At time of writing there are breathless/shell-shocked accounts on the BBC World Service from Dubai, where the 28th "Conference of the Parties" to the UN Climate Convention is entering overtime (they almost always do). It turns out that - despite literally decades of denial and predatory delay - people are still surprised that the oil... Continue Reading →
Red Pepper is a full-colour quarterly (now) magazine for and by the extra-parliamentary green/left. The following two statements about it are true a) it is a useful source of information and perspectives about what is happening in the world and some of the things that might be done to make it a less dreadful place... Continue Reading →
Will admit that I am losing the will to ... write the same thing over and over. This occurring long after others have lost the will to read the same thing over and over. And yet we plod on (or I do). There's a two page comment in the latest Nature Climate Change (an academic... Continue Reading →
So, one thing the Bad Guys do is set up fake "consultation" processes where a few voices, who are saying the right things, are amplified and other more problematic ones marginalised ("we're outa time..." etc etc) And so in an hour and a half (felt longer) webinar about precisely this - the Bad Guys and... Continue Reading →
There is abyss-staring and then there is abyss-staring. I am struggling to finish an overdue book. It's running in quicksand. And part (only part) of the problem is I just want to say "why are ANY OF US taking this seriously?" I mean, you really have to be very wilfully and enthusiastically ignorant to believe... Continue Reading →
Someone, with good intentions, DMEd me this clip from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I think in response to my "what's beyond the edge of tomorrow?" post. https://twitter.com/RealTadzioM/status/1723347798324642139 The thing that enrages and exhausts me is that the repertoires of what counts as "fighting" are so narrow and (usually) doomed to failure. And that there is... Continue Reading →
Whoop! Another letter in the Financial Times. Your editorial "The Science of Successful Succession" (FT 4 November) ponders the possibility of digital overlords running companies. In 1984 James Cameron's film "The Terminator" gave us "Skynet", a sentient computer that started World War 3 rather than be switched off. Eleven years earlier the BBC's Time Lord Doctor Who... Continue Reading →
Private Eye is a UK publication that doesn't really have, to my knowledge, any exact replica elsewhere, at least in the English-speaking world (in France there's La Canard Enchaine, and to a lesser extent Charlie Hebdo). I didn't buy it in 1988 - I wouldn't have "got" it. By 1995 I was though, and have... Continue Reading →
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