I am to be an expert interviewee (I know, I know, I laughed too) in a project about climate change and "getting to net zero" barriers opportunities, blah blah. And reading over the project info they sent, and the sets of things I am supposed to pick as barriers, it occurs to me that this... Continue Reading →
When will the next Greta Thunberg hit the stage? I know I am a stuck record, but (I think) this is important. a)"We" are leaving/have left a period where climate change was relatively high up the political agenda b) We are leaving/have left a period where small (but non-trivial) numbers of people were willing to... Continue Reading →
Read this and weep. Since long before that delayed "last chance to save the world" climate conference in Glasgow finally happened (see here and here and here) I predicted that in the aftermath, climate change was gonna be far down almost everyone's list. You don't need to be freaking Nostradamus, you just need to know... Continue Reading →
I have a long-standing fascination with how "nature" gets invoked, how the idea is mobilised to defend whatever people want to defend. First really really started thinking about this (I think) after reading the following quote by Julian Rathbone, from his novel "Zdt" Wrong. Nature in the Middle Ages was a hierarchy, a chain of... Continue Reading →
Affecting war-time novel by a master of straightforward story-telling. Last night Dr Wifey and I watched Sicario again. It is a brutal, cynical, violent tale, directed by Dennis Villeneuve, with great everything (performances, sound, cinematography). There's not a lot of hugging and learning. I knew this at the outset, but still found myself looking for... Continue Reading →
Last week I gave a seminar as part of the Sussex Energy Group’s seminar series. This was, for me, a Big Deal, because the Sussex Energy Group is a very cool collection of scholars, mostly from the Science Policy Research Unit but also from University of Sussex (the clue is in the name) more broadly.... Continue Reading →
Times are tough. Today I did something I'm proud of, something that helped other people in a couple of ways. This is a blog about that. As part of The Job, (a very good job, one I am grateful to have), I am doing a bit of seminar-conducting. One problem with seminars is that either... Continue Reading →
Sorry if what follows is banal, but it was new to me. Ah, bless Facebook... The word "constructive," it occurs to me after more than half a century on t'planet, is deployed by people who don't want to engage with criticism of what their cherished organisation has (not) been doing. So, if I point out... Continue Reading →
One of the easiest ways to win is to confuse your opponents so much that they simply don't even know they are in a fight. Saves time and treasure if you can do this, obviously. I could go on and ON about Gramsci this, hegemony that, blah de blah. Let's go for a couple of... Continue Reading →
The Magpie was the newsletter of the Manchester Wildlife Group which had begun in 1984. The first Magpie appeared in 1986, and the last issue 54 appeared in 2005. At its height, it was a quarterly publication. The format was A4 landscape, with staples in the middle. It was sent out to members of the... Continue Reading →
