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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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Why to encircle a tree with your arms? | Million Tree Pledge
I was invited to be guest speaker at the Million Tree Pledge’s Netwalk and Lunch in Brighton.
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Jen Newall & Rupert Read Discuss the 6th IPCC Synthesis Report | Climate Majority Project
I was asked to do an Instagram Live with Jen Newall following the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report.
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Introducing The Climate Majority Project
We need to have a mass moderate flank to the environmental movement, far bigger than the exciting innovations we saw with the School Strikers and Extinction Rebellion. How will this be done? http://ClimateMajorityProject.Earth/ The good news is that patience with our institutions is at an all time low, and people are hungry for new voices. Greta‘s voice echoed much farther than it could have previously because ears were waiting for it, and XR has broken the taboo on blunt climate truth-telling. Many who’ve long suspected that serious action will come only after the possibility of environmental disaster becomes too obvious to be ignored are poised on the sidelines.
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Community Climate Action, Transformative Adaptation and the Rise of the Moderate Flank
A talk at a student-led symposium, organised by Schumacher College and Dartington Arts School, with a Q&A at the end.
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When time is not on our side, can we afford to keep the same strategy?
As the Green Party turns 50 and Party co-founder Michael Benfield tells the BBC that he thinks the game is up, Rupert Read and Joe Eastoe argue that it is time for the Green Party to take a long, hard, honest look at itself.
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Mourn and organise: On the power of truth in a world awash with lies
This article first appeared on ABC Religion and Ethics. Upon learning that he was about to die, the Swedish-American labour activist and songwriter Joe Hill wrote a telegram to Bill Haywood, the founder of the Industrial Workers of the World. It read: “Goodbye, Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize!” The (para)phrase “don’t mourn, organise” received a boost in popularity when a collection of Hill’s songs were released under the title “Don’t Mourn — Organize!: Songs of the Labour Songwriter Joe Hill”. The phrase was subsequently used by the Boston Globe as the title of an article honouring the American playwright, philosopher, and socialist thinker Howard Zinn when he…
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The King’s Speech
This article first appeared on Brave New Europe. An alternative to the Queen’s traditional Christmas message has been broadcast since 1993 which, more often than not, gives insight into a serious issue. What if in 2022 it wasn’t needed? Eco-philosopher Dr. Rupert Read, urges King Charles to use his massive platform to highlight a critical issue close to his heart. What follows. Drawing frequently on words that he has already publicly spoken, is the speech that Charles III ought to give, in his address to the nation on December 25th. Good afternoon, on this, Christmas Day. Sadly, as many of us have experienced especially in the last few years, there…
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EARTH VS. FUTURISM
From the way stock markets and for-profit firms operate to the way the media news-cycle works, chronic short-termism is landing humanity in desperate straits. We’re hurtling off a cliff, and hardly even preparing to make our landing softer. We’re crossing what scientists call planetary boundaries, which we ought to have stayed on the safe side of. The most well-known boundary is: maintaining a safe climate.
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Is “longtermism” the cure or the sickness?
This article was first published by ABC Religion and Ethics here. Central to my work in recent years has been an anguished concern that our species and our political and economic systems are dangerously short-termist. I contend that we need to become long-termist. We need to practice precaution, looking before we leap. We need to plan for the seventh — and, indeed, the seven-hundred-and-seventy-seventh — generation. And so we need to overcome the tendencies of politicians to look no further than the next election (or even the next news cycle), of companies to look no further than the next quarterly report, and increasingly of Stock Market investors to look no…