The year is 2048. COP46, delayed twice already because of the ongoing Covid-43 pandemic, is due to take place in the Dutch archipelago. Activists are encouraging everyone to join in a canoe flotilla to shout at the plutocrats and securocrats as they meet to discuss who is going to get what compensation (nobody and nothing)... Continue Reading →
Benny Rothman was a mensch. This I knew. What I didn't know was that his son, Harry Rothman, was an academic at University of Manchester. In 1972 a book of his was published- "Murderous providence : a study of pollution in industrial societies" According to one blurb- "The author argues that pollution is basically a... Continue Reading →
I find the whole Malthusian Moment (roughly 1969-1973) fascinating. I guess because I grew up in its aftermath, where it was still resonating, there were aftershocks. (This is partly because I mostly grew up in Australia, which was then even more of a backwater than it is now. I'd see movies from the era (The... Continue Reading →
tl;dr We use "nature" to justify whatever we want to justify. A couple of days ago Kevin Anderson (the climate professor, not the South African tennis player) tweeted about a new paper which shows just how rubbish the Dasgupta review was. https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1397891825260769282 [I could go on about how aggravating it is when people retweet bits... Continue Reading →
ONLY one member of the public attended Annual Council today. That's probably good, because outrageous contempt for democratic norms and conventions was on full horrible display. New councillors (there are 10) usually get their first choice of which of the six scrutiny committees to sit on. Scrutiny is vital to try to stop the Executive... Continue Reading →
Kenneth Rexroth was a poet, translator, thinker. Wikipedia page here. I have been reading his essays in "The Elastic Retort" and enjoying them enough to have bought another earlier collection (please don't tell Dr Wifey - she thinks I am addicted to books). There's also a bunch of Rexroth's essays online, and this one, from... Continue Reading →
We need to put front and centre the fact that we've blown our (carbon) budget. “We're massively off target we're massively behind.” We know that those who run official events are not going to say it front and centre (at absolute best they might mutter it under their breath while making sure that their microphone... Continue Reading →
Two of my favourite mental tools are OODA loops and the fable of cat belling. I'm going to describe both and then put them together as best I can. Why? Because I think it reveals something useful about "activism", such as it is. OODA loops are an insight developed by an American fighter pilot, John... Continue Reading →
In the same way that when you enter a prison as a cop, you have to give up your weapon. Well, when you enter the prison of the institutions, you have to give up your memory, as well as your spine. Or you can keep the memory but people will look askance and be a... Continue Reading →
Somewhere along the line I learnt that metaphors are very powerful things, in shaping/directing/preventing thought. So a for instance – if you frame a crime as a virus or crime as beast, it leads people to support different sets of responses. Autocrats and demagogues know this, instinctively, of course, and those of us who think... Continue Reading →
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