The wonderful news and analysis source Reneweconomy pubilshed this piece below on Wednesday 23rd September. The Czech writer Milan Kundera once observed that “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” The same goes for the struggle for adequate climate and energy policy in Australia. The first instinct is always... Continue Reading →
On #climate bullshit – interview with Dr Hayley Stevenson
A couple of weeks ago the academic journal Globalizations published a new article. "Reforming global climate governance in an age of bullshit" by Dr Hayley Stevenson. I'm the social media editor of another academic journal, Environmental Politics, and I tweeted it from @Env_Pol. It got a lot of Twitter love... I asked Dr Stevenson, who... Continue Reading →
Academic article on social tipping dynamics – or “Oh for cockpity’s sake…”
Ignore my snark later on - this is a good article, that you should take the time to read. Crucially though, understand that the authors - like most academics - are addicted to trying to play what Haraway calls "the God Trick" and has also been called "cockpitism". To be expected, I guess, since the... Continue Reading →
“Social innovation” acceleration and the belling of cats
So, my intellectual energies have been mostly devoted to the Active Citizenship Toolkit, which is a project of the group I am part of - Climate Emergency Manchester. I've researched and written a couple of novice's guides - to Manchester City Council's budget process, and to the thorny question of allyship. Other two page guides... Continue Reading →
Online meetings as skeuomorphs – the old pathologies imported, affordances not afforded (cyber)space
If you suck at designing and facilitating meatspace meetings, then - everything else being equal - you are probably going to suck big hairy dog's balls at online meetings. Is it just me? (1) Am I the only one who has been in several really painfully bad online meetings during this lockdown? Where the organisers... Continue Reading →
On the tribal barriers to cat-belling
Think in systems, dammit. When I am frustrated (i.e. always) with the "left" endlessly reheating and repeating the same things ("wasn't 1970s social democracy great?", "the main problem is we don't have enough diverse voices" (1) ) through truly wretched online events that are every bit as stultifying and wrist-slashingly excruciating as their meatspace equivalents,... Continue Reading →
Of activist self-care and the need to think in systems and #Freud #Darwin etc
I attended portions of a zoom seminar this morning on "activist self-care." Portions not because I flounced (this, as those who know me will attest, does happen) but because of technological issues and my steam-powered laptop not letting me into the break-out groups. So my "criticism" of the seminar (which was on the whole good!)... Continue Reading →
Economists, the post-coronavirus world and that cat in need of belling.
Let’s start with the joke. No, I don’t mean the last 10 years of non-dealing with climate change at a local authority level. That’s not funny. Let’s start with this: A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on a desert island, with a large can of soup. The physicist says “We could drop... Continue Reading →
Interview with Rosemary Randall, psychoanalyst and author of brilliant #climate novel “Transgression”
A superb novel about climate activism (and much more) was released earlier this year. It is by Rosemary Randall, a retired psychoanalyst who has written a great deal (of extremely useful) work on the psychodynamics of meetings, and on climate change. You can read a 2013 interview I conducted with her for Manchester Climate Monthly.... Continue Reading →
Whatever happens to the people who give a damn? Abeyance, activism, academia
First, listen to this very cool song by Gil Scott Heron With one exception (1), what goes up, must come down. The big (2) wave of climate concern was, I thought, gonna crest and break in November-December 2020. But COVID-19 has pushed the Glasgow climate meeting into the long-ish grass of next year, and XR's... Continue Reading →
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