Here’s the gist of a very long blog post. A senior academic (Professor Karin Bäckstrand) gave a very clear summation of the relative importance of the Paris Agreement, the distinctions between ecological democracy and environmental democracy and the (possible) path of transformation that Swedish society is undergoing. She did this in the context of an... Continue Reading →
One of the ways we fail (and there are many) is when we don't understand/contain our emotions around failure. Yesterday at the training session for 'Brilliant Club' (a very cool charity which aims to get students who wouldn't otherwise go to 'top' universities, the trainer said at one point 'get a piece of A4 paper,... Continue Reading →
On the Chaos of the Disciplines and the disciples Academic stars, they flash like a comet As the mangy dog returns to its vomit Deja vu - nihil novi sub sole We lie and die in a darkening hole.
What next? Not next week, or next month, but in the coming years? These are the questions our media pundits, caught up in the merry-go-round of faces are not asking, at least, not in public (e.g. Insiders was pretty vapid on Sunday 26th August). There are several good reasons for this present-ism, not least that... Continue Reading →
Australian content alert: Yeah, this is a bit of geekery. There's a Sunday morning politics show called Insiders, which is a ritual thing I do with my mum and her next door neighbour. The format is solid (stolid?)- a host (usually Barrie Cassidy) and three hacks, sorry, journalists. There's a long interview with a pollie,... Continue Reading →
My new earworm is Joey by Concrete Blonde. It's a brilliant song, with astonishing vocals from Johnette Napolitano. It sits alongside other songs of mourning for lost friendships, lost loves (something Paul Kelly and Billy Bragg do well). That sense of hoping to reconnect with someone who has their own battles to fight is... Continue Reading →
On 25 June 1969 Ralph Slayter, an Australian scientist, gave one of the first (but not the first - that's for another time) warnings of the dangers of the build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Slayter was talking at the Australian National University, as part of a lecture series on 'Man and the New... Continue Reading →
Recently I proposed that an organisation (I am a FIFO activist on this) organise some video vox pops around an event that they’re organising for about five weeks’ time. This post is how I would do it. (Or rather, how I like to believe that I would be able to do it. By now, pushing... Continue Reading →
We knew. We knew. Don't let anyone tell you that the failure of the human response to what is fairly clearly its terminal situation was down to ignorance or a lack of advance warning. The standard narrative has the world first being told in 1988, thanks to prolonged work by scientists like James Hansen, Bert... Continue Reading →
Thinking strategically is very very hard. The normal activist mode is to move (or, uncharitably, lurch) from one ‘crucial’/urgent; upcoming event to the next. It might be a camp, or a march, or a submission to some government ‘consultation’. It might be a public meeting, the launch of a document, whatevs. You can spend literally... Continue Reading →
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