First I will treat you as ego-fodder. You will sit in rows, or in a circle,and you will listen to me drone on and on about my hobby-horse du jour. I don’t care what you know about the topic. I don’t want to take time away from hearing my own voice to hear your perspectives.... 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 →
Of codes of silence, workshops and egos
And you can't talk about it And isn't that a kind of madness To be living by a code of silence When you've really got a lot to say Billy Joel, Code of Silence A while back I went to a “workshop” that I thought would be not very good. Why go then? Purely and... Continue Reading →
Probably time for the XR post I haven’t been writing, because…
I have an article coming out that has come out on The Conversation (yes Sarah, yes Matt, you are both right) that may cause some fur to fly. This post is for readers of that who want/demand to know where I stand. I will keep it brief and try to keep the glibsnark to tolerable levels... 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 →
The emotacycle- what it is, why it matters, what is to be done?
The article first explains the emotacyle and its four phases, then what its consequences are. Given that these are (on the whole) negative, the obvious question ‘why does it persist?’ is next addressed. Finally, the all-important ‘What is to be Done?’ question receives a response, albeit an anemic and incomplete one. What is the... Continue Reading →
Of Greta, misogyny, patriarchy, technology and shattered dreams
On Twitter right now (in my stream anyhow) people are talking about why Greta Thunberg, Jamie Margolin and AOC are triggering such incandescent (old, white) male rage. I've written a bit about this here and here, but here's a recap/short0version. This, in my opinion, goes back way further than August 2018, when one Swedish girl... 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 →
