Writings
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Into the light: on exiting not just the figurative but the literal cave…
“You ‘green types’ want us all to go back to living in caves…” If I had a pound for every time I have heard this… Well, let’s just say, I could afford a very big cave indeed. Although, of course, as a ‘green type’ sitting inside our ‘caves’, as our homes seem to have become, is the last thing I actually want – especially during a pandemic when it was much safer to be outside, as government regulations reflected to some extent. However, I believe we could have gone much further during the last couple of years and we would have benefited so much from doing so. By failing to…
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Will the conflict in Ukraine shift us to a post-fossil world?
The shocking onset of the crisis in Ukraine – with Russia’s criminal, murderous invasion – has shown dramatically the downside of depending upon petro-states to keep us warm. While the climate crisis will, of course, over time sweep everything that we hold dear away, unless we address it with far more seriousness than we yet have. We can address these two crises of our time simultaneously by investing right now in a massive expansion of green energy and energy efficiency (including, crucially, insulation). We need to make this switch to a significant degree before next winter. That is when Putin will potentially have the West over a barrel, if it…
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To prevent climate catastrophe, abandon the idea we can limit overheating to 1.5C
If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Obi-Wan Kenobi knew the score. Sometimes, to win, you have first to lose. Big. And I can’t help but think if we adopted his same philosophy when it comes to the dream of keeping global overheating to a maximum of 1.5C, we might actually achieve what, at the moment, seems impossible: saving civilisation. Today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a new report on adapting to the damage already done by climate change. It says its impact will be more severe than initially predicted. Crucially, it says if we reach 2C of over-heating, there…
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The inconvenient truth about telling the truth about climate breakdown
“You could attach prices to ideas. Some cost a lot, some little … And how do you pay for ideas? I believe: with courage.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein. I take it as self-evident that the key reason for the extraordinary and unpredicted success of Extinction Rebellion (XR), of Greta Thunberg, and of similar trends around the world – such as the Sunrise Movement and Ende Gelände – over the last few years has been their (our) authenticity. The willingness to state the uncomfortable truth and draw and act upon the requisite conclusions, congruently. Thus, it is imperative that any fallings away from this truthfulness and authenticity be gently but firmly named…
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Climate crisis and the dangers of tech-obsessed ‘long-termism’
As a philosopher who thinks about climate change, a central concern motivating my work in recent years has been anguish that our species and our political-economic systems are dangerously short-termist. Indeed, I have a book coming out soon on just this: in Why Climate Breakdown Matters, I set out the pressing need for humanity to become more “long-termist” in its outlook. By this I simply mean things like: we need to care more about what the world will be like in 1,000 years, after (on our current climate-trajectory) most of the world’s ice will have melted. We need true long-term thinking, and we need it fast. But the reason I…
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This is not an 'emergency' – it's much more serious than that
The mantra of ‘Climate Emergency!’ has been a central feature of the exhilarating and deeply necessary climate-movement that has swept the world since 2018. In this essay, we ask uncomfortable questions: What if climate is not an emergency, but something much more difficult? Worse: What if the drive towards declaration of emergency is just another form of immunity to deep change, in disguise? Then, the only significant practical value of declarations of emergencies by institutions would be that the language can be mirrored back to them by activists trying to hold them to account for the next step. The question we are asking is whether that advantage outweighs the significant…
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Three new year’s resolutions to help the planet
Fourteen days. That’s how long it will take many people to give up on their new year’s resolutions (although some won’t even make it to the second Friday of 2022 or “Quitters Day”, as it’s become known). Maybe that’s understandable – after all, times are tough. But if you do want to set some goals, how can you make it more likely that you will succeed? Quite often, our resolutions involve making improvements to ourselves, and maybe that’s a bit easier to give up on. But what if we also make plans to help the planet? Would that make us more likely to stick with our resolutions? If 2021 has…
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Why I’ll be giving poems as presents this Christmas
I’m no Clement Clarke Moore (“Twas the night before Christmas…”) but I’d like to think when my family and friends read my Christmas offerings to them, they will get the same warm, cosy feeling evoked by that much loved poem. It’s a true gift from the heart, not just because I have spent time thinking about that person and what they mean to me but also because I’ve spent time thinking about the planet and what it means to all of us. Whatever else you can say about 2021, it has opened the eyes of many more people that the Earth (and everything on it) is in big trouble –…
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There should be no more Cop climate summits. We need an alternative that could actually work
Our civilisation is launching out at full pelt over a cliff. What happened recently in Glasgow – the creation of a super-leaky, near-corrupt climate market; the pledge to come back next year with better promises on emissions reduction; the weird verbal diarrhoea of “phasing down” coal – has made no difference to that fact. Our “leaders” have failed us. Some people, many of whom should know better, have set aside the failure (because, in truth, that’s what it was) of this year’s talks with assurances that we can “come back next year and try again”. My response is that it will be the same old thing – they’ve had 26…
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The Can Stops Now
There’s a phrase used in politics; ‘to kick the can down the road’. No doubt you’ve heard it before. It means to put off confronting a difficult issue or making an important decision to a later date – and it perfectly sums up what’s happened at COP26. It had been described as “our best last chance” but instead of taking it, the gutless message is ‘go away, have a think and come back next year and let us know’. The bitter truth is that virtually everything in the agreement hatched at Glasgow consists in empty promises or exhortations to do better next time. Can you hear the noise of the…