Writings from 2019

The Amazon burns: will the world learn?

23rd August 2019

The Amazon rainforest is burning. Brazil has had more than 72,000 fire outbreaks so far this year, an 84 per cent increase on the same period in 2018, according to the country’s National Institute for Space Research.

Why is this happening? It is happening because people are systematically setting fires in the forest. This unimaginable, absurd, ecocidal action is probably the crime of the century so far. It could be terminal for human civilisation.

Iceland is mourning a dead glacier – how grieving over ecological destruction can help us face the climate crisis

21st August 2019

Death certificates and commemorative plaques aren’t something you’d normally associate with a glacier. But that is exactly how Iceland recently mourned the loss of 700-year-old Okjökull, the first of its major glaciers to die.

How a movement of movements can win: Taking XR to the next level.

13th August 2019

Our October Rebellion needs to be bigger than April’s was. Way bigger. Because this time, it has to be about not just getting verbal concessions from power, pious declarations of climate and ecological emergency without actual consequence. No; that’s just not good enough. Because this is the age of consequences. There’s no more time to play with…

The climate election?: The real meaning of this week’s vote, beyond Brexitmania

20th May 2019

The past month has witnessed an unprecedented turnaround of public opinion on the climate and ecological emergencies. When the ‘Extinction Rebellion’ broke out in mid-April, the media turned its gaze with almost unremitting hostility onto the inconvenience that it was bringing to motorised traffic in London. A fortnight later, everything had changed.

Academics should take to the streets with Extinction Rebellion

18th April 2019

As climate change protestors continue to shut down major parts of London, Rupert Read explains why he’s joining them.

An open letter to David Wallace-Wells

4th April 2019

As a group of British academics and others who think and write about dangerous anthropogenic climate change, we have been impressed by your new book The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future.

What is actually wrong with WTO rules?: Why they are significantly worse than the EU

18th February 2019

For the first time in 40 years, the UK has to re-consider its trading policy. At the moment, there is plenty of talk about “falling back” onto World Trading Organisation (WTO) rules in the event of a no-deal Brexit, an outcome which Theresa May’s giant game of ‘chicken’ makes dangerously likely. And indeed, if this is what happens, the UK will find itself solely under the minimalist rules-based trading system of the WTO.

School climate strikes: why adults no longer have the right to object to their children taking radical action

14th February 2019

A worldwide wave of school climate strikes, begun by the remarkable Greta Thunberg, has reached the UK. Some critics claim these activist-pupils are simply playing truant, but I disagree.

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