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This Hopeless COP Is the Most Hopeful in Years
Now it’s so obvious that the system is failing, progress is finally possible.
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Changing the Way you See Justice | Rebel Justice
Part II of the special Rebel Justice podcast, featuring Rupert Read with host Nigel Gould-Davies, explores the impact of hasty legislation on climate activists, how individual action is essential and the roles of faith and love in creating sustainable change. Click here to listen.
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Come Clean, Keir! Did You Really Disparage ‘Tree-Huggers?’
Tree Hugging has a long venerated past of protest and environmental protection. Is the Labour Leader completely ignorant of it?
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Time’s up! Green surge in the East alarms the old parties
A Green activist savours the party’s recent electoral success, looks at some reasons for it, and looks forward to the next general election.
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Time to access our superpower
In the wake of 4 May’s breakthrough Council results, truthfulness from us on the mismatch with incipient climate breakdown will be more powerful than ever. Rupert Read from GreensCAN explores.
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Who Voted For This, Liz?
On 6 September, Liz Truss officially became the Prime Minister, having won the Conservative leadership election that followed Boris Johnson’s resignation. Since then, her administration has pushed through extremely radical, untested, and damaging policies that were not included in the 2019 manifesto. Truss of course did not become Prime Minister at a general election. She doesn’t have millions of supporters around the country. She won the Conservative Leadership bid with 81,326 votes. Just 81,326 in this country have cast a vote for Truss. That’s not even enough people to fill Twickenham and represents 0.12% of the population. We have to ask ourselves; who voted for this? By what authority is…
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Why Insulate Britain needs a more positive strategy
Extinction Rebellion (XR) worked. From its launch to the end of the first Rebellion in April 2019, which precipitated meetings with the Government and its subsequent climate emergency declaration, the strategy proved to be successful. Climate-consciousness in the UK was raised, permanently – there was no going back. And yet, XR also didn’t work – in the sense that our country is still emitting deadly pollution like there’s no tomorrow, with efforts to adapt to the effects of the climate crisis nowhere to be seen. An even more radical ‘radical flank’ XR was formed as a ‘radical flank’ to existing eco-organisations, but this has evidently reached a limit. So what…
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Post-Brexit Environmental Principles: Government and risky business
The UK Government recently carried out a consultation on its Statement of Environmental Principles. The Statement will have legal status through being referred to in the Environment Bill, still slowly making its way through Parliament and now in the House of Lords. This Bill is supposed to repair the damage done by Brexit pulling the UK out of the shared EU arrangements for environmental protection. One might think that the issue of risk – and particularly the risk of “low probability, high impact” events would have shot up the Government’s agenda as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Here is an event which few predicted and yet the possibility of such…
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The Politics of Paradox
Extinction Rebellion (XR) has had a permanent transformational effect on the place of climate and nature in British politics and society, and beyond. XR will continue to play an important role: radical non-violent direct action (NVDA) is effective at pressuring government and corporations, but so far the movement hasn’t mobilised masses of people as is required to force systemic change. The percentage of the population it has mobilised is far less than that recommended by social change theorist Erica Chenoweth. XR has successfully set the scene, which now needs filling by a substantially larger mobilisation. We explore here how this might be achieved. Political parties that are serious about learning…
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A new way of taking on the Murdoch empire
I’ve launched a new ‘campaign’ to double-down on the consumer boycott of Murdoch papers that many of us have been participating in ever since Wapping. I am suggesting that it isn’t enough to not buy Murdoch’s media-products. We need also, those of us to whom this is relevant, to not buy into them: i.e. we need to stop being sources for them… I’ve made this gambit initially by myself. I hope others will come on board with me. Some already have; but many more will be needed if this campaign is to win. And it’s a hard ask. Writers are afraid of being black-listed. Activists are afraid of losing even…
