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 →
Videos abt useful concepts: Biographical Availability
Gonna make videos about "useful" concepts - the ones that I seem to come back to time and again. Have downloaded Openshot, am gonna fire up my Paint skills (and maybe some Gimping). This one is as rough as a badger's arse, but so what? Biographical availability. Others to follow - emotacycles, legitimate peripheral... Continue Reading →
The four Cs- Coronavirus, Capitalism, Climate and Cats (“belling of”)
Another hot take about what may be coming. The USP for this one is that It tries to use some academic theories but in plain English It admits up front - “who the hell knows?” It actually foregrounds the crucial question other posts (e.g. this otherwise interesting one) ignore - “who is going to bell... Continue Reading →
White Saviour Complex, COP26 and #climate activism – my two cents
I was sat recently in a room as white as Cumbria. It was full (80ish) of white people who sincerely believe that the revolution will only come when the last capitalist is strangled with the intestines of the last racist. There were three women of colour present. I was sat next to one, a friend,... Continue Reading →
Asking the wrong people the wrong questions in the wrong way: WW2 bombers and social movements
Those who know me will put two and two together, but the rest of you can wonder why and what. This. There's a story about the beginnings of Operations Research, I think from De Landa's War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, which goes like this: trying to figure out what bits of bombers required... Continue Reading →
Oh god, how hard IS IT, really? Meetings that don’t suck. #oldfartclimateadvice
Hi everyone, there's a lot of us in this room, and the tables aren't really helping. I know it is gonna take a minute, and the "Elf and Safety" types may be upset, but I want to spend one of our precious 57 remaining minutes stacking the tables against the wall and making a circle... Continue Reading →
Sucking on the hopium pipe
In 2002 I got some weird-ass bug, probably from having been in Cambodia. I ended up in a lot of pain (probably as much as in my life) and on a hospital gurney. And then they gave me some morphine. Holy mother of God that stuff is the shit. You just... the pain just... you... Continue Reading →
What next for XR? Gazing dimly into my crystal balls #oldfartclimateadvice
Tl:dr Hard to see radical granular climate action in the UK continuing beyond early 2021 at the latest. But I could be wrong. Firstly the disclaimers: Disclaimer the first: Who the hell knows? Who the hell knows anything anymore? Disclaimer the second: In cosmic scheme of things it doesn’t matter- we are a dead species... Continue Reading →
This time it’s different? Of #climatebreakdown, issue attention cycles, social movements and other natural disasters….
Lunch with a smart friend with whom I often disagree (politiely). This time it is different, maybe, he says (in response to my point that we've known about the essential unsustainability of techno-accelerationist consumerism since the late 1960s - Earth Day, The Limits to Growth, Blueprint for Survival in 1970, 1972 and 1972: I can... Continue Reading →
Of cargo cults, social movements and accelerating transitions. #magicalthinking
Imagine tribespeople in the South Pacific. Sure, lots of trading, and contact with Europeans (good and bad). But what happened in 1942 and 1943 must have blown their minds. Giant white men who could fly arrived in big metal birds, with chewing gum and coca cola. And then, as quickly as they came (with the... Continue Reading →
