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How whales and dolphins can teach us to be less stupid
For those tens of millions of us who have been watching the extraordinary Blue Planet II, the final programme in the series (which looked at the human-caused threats facing the seas) may have come as both a wake-up call and a disappointment. Disappointment, at what we’ve done to this beautiful planet. And perhaps also, disappointment that the BBC didn’t look deeply enough into why these harms have happened. What emerges when we reflect more profoundly in this way? The background to what we’re doing to the oceans includes, crucially, this: that the world is possessed by the ideology of possessive individualism, which comes in different varieties: liberal, neoliberal and libertarian.…
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The ‘Progressive Alliance’ re-assessed, post-General-Election: a failed strategy
The think tank I chair, Green House published a report, in which I was a prominent author, in favour of the ‘Progressive Alliance’ concept, last year. A year on, and it is clear that we live in interesting times. This election may have gone relatively well for Corbyn – but we must be honest enough to accept that it has gone pretty disastrously wrong for g/Greens. Ecology was virtually entirely absent from the election campaign. The Conservatives, now governing once again, ‘won’ (sic) the election with a manifesto promising less than zero, eco-wise. Labour, the main beneficiaries of the election, promised “faster economic growth” as the linchpin of their manifesto: an idea…
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Ideas for a Radical Green Manifesto
Introduction: the big picture Green politics starts from the realities we now find ourselves in. Human beings are changing the planet in fundamental ways – altering the atmosphere and climate, reducing biodiversity and trashing ecosystems. This is the Anthropocene, and human impacts are going beyond the boundaries that have maintained the planet in a relatively stable state. At the centre of human pressures on the planet are two forms of growth – economic growth and population growth. Both are powerful and complex forces. Economic growth has lifted billions of people out of poverty and poor health conditions, but at the same time it is having devastating effects on the natural…
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General Election 2017: a Green realignment of British politics?
Theresa May has called an election allegedly to secure her ‘mandate’ for a hard Brexit – although in practice it is difficult not to see this as cynical party political maneuver to elect more Conservative MPs in the face of a weak opposition. Despite the slew of positive opinion polls for the Conservatives that have become a distressing feature of this year’s politics, the reality is that their ideology, Neoliberalism, is in deep crisis… The Financial crisis has been stark, is still ongoing, and is likely to get worse in this country due to the instability caused by Brexit. The Political crisis came searingly into view in 2016; with trust…
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Apollo-Earth: A Wake Up Call In Our Race against Time
There is a mission brewing and building, a mission that needs all hands that are ready: To bring the ‘un-named movement’ – the ‘for-life’ story of our time – to a tipping point. This needs to happen faster than the rate at which our planet is approaching fatal climatic tipping points (fatal, that is, to us – always remember that it isn’t strictly speaking ‘the planet’ that needs saving, only the animals, including ourselves, who live on it). The climate nemesis we face is now quite predictable: it is a ‘white’ swan event: But it could still be forestalled, with determination. If that forestalling is to be successfully accomplished, if…
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Why I had to tell my students that I fear for them
Welcome to University! Welcome to perhaps the most amazing opportunity of your lives. Welcome to the astonishing gift that is three years in which to think and learn, three years of the life of the mind. Though I have to tell you… I don’t envy you. And the reason I don’t envy you is because, as I look around the room, with very few exceptions, most of you are significantly younger than me. And I think there is a very real possibility that the later part of the lives of most of you in this room is going to be grim or non-existent. I’m sorry to have to say it.…
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Trump's coming ‘climate moment': and why we should be careful what we wish for…
Electoral democracy has largely failed. It has been captured by big corporates, suborned and crudified (de-deliberationised) by the corporate media, and sidelined by neoliberal globalisation (and the consequent minute-by-minute power of ‘the markets’). Perhaps the most spectacular ever instance of the failing of electoral democracy has been very recent indeed: it is the election of Donald Trump to (what is still, even now) the most powerful office in the world. Probably the most dire but predictable global effect of a Trump Presidency is its catastrophic impact on climate-policy and energy-policy. The most senior salient offices in the land are now stuffed full of the most egregious know-nothing climate-deniers. These people…
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The Rise of the Robot: Dispelling the myth
Robotisation is probably going to be a temporary phenomenon: planetary limits will (within a generation or at most two) severely limit the supplies of raw materials and energy needed to enable large-scale robotisation, and pollution-crises – part-speeded-up by huge investments in automation/robotisation – will have the same effect. The question is whether we can rein in robotisation soon enough to ensure that ‘Peak Robot’ occurs under our control, and not as a result of a crash forced on us by collapsing ecosystems. The delusion of endless growth In the heady days of early industrialization, when infinite economic growth was the unchallenged dogma that promised to dispel the twin evils of…
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After Brexit and Trump: don't demonise; localise!
The election of Donald Trump was a rude awakening from which many people in the US have still not recovered. Their shock is similar to that felt by UK progressives, Greens, and those on the Left following the Brexit referendum. In both cases, the visceral reaction was heightened by the barely-disguised racist and xenophobic messaging underpinning these campaigns. Before these sentiments grow even more extreme, it’s vital that we understand their root cause. If we simply react in horror and outrage, if we only protest and denounce, then we fail to grasp the deeper ramifications of their votes. For the defeat of both the Clinton campaign in the US and…
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We must localise the EU and curb corporate power – but does that mean in or out?
Most voices in favour of Brexit seem to offer little more than narrow nationalism, xenophobia and racism. Such associations make it feel impossible for most Greens and progressive thinkers on the left to vote Leave in the upcoming UK referendum. And that settles it in the minds of some: one ‘has’ to vote Remain. Anything else feels ‘unprogressive’, reactionary, even downright dangerous. However, there are powerful arguments against the European Economic Union. In all five Nordic countries: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, we have had a very powerful critique of the EU from an ecological, cultural, global solidarity and democratic perspective. A large proportion of the population realised that…
