The climate and ecological emergency consuming the world, usually, defies the imagination. It is so life-altering yet so gradual – exploiting the human tendency to ignore things that are radically outside our own experience.

Yet, thanks to the Coronavirus, we have been given a small taste of what is to come. The short COVID-19 pandemic is like an accelerated version of the long climate emergency. The UK’s vulnerability has been exposed, along with the incompetence of its Government, and the generosity of its people.

When I heard that Culture Declares emergency was organising a series of ‘Letters to Power’, I thought to myself: “Rupert, you should probably write one”. You see, I have spent much of my life attempting to talk to, persuade, even beg those with power - our elected leaders, heads of banks and businesses, big organisations or media companies, for example. I have written many, many letters to power before.

Greenhouse gas jargon has become a common part of corporate life. Even the most detached executive will have an idea of so-called Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions in their carbon footprint. But the current way these metrics are compiled is too generous. 

…Rupert Read with a tongue-in-cheek yet serious pastiche on Michael Shellenberger’s recent hyped ‘apology’...

“Rebuilding local production is an action which will simultaneously make us less vulnerable to the ever-growing vicissitudes of the deteriorating global climate as global just-in-time supply chains are increasingly fragile.” Emma Dawnay and Rupert Read of think tank Green House argue, in a newly published report, that it is time for Britain to seek a Brexit that will really take back control.

Many of us who are awake to the climate nightmare cycle through periods of despair on the one hand and desperate hope against hope on the other. We veer between not seeing how we can possibly make it through the long ecological emergency, and declaring that we must and will. Between being tempted to give up, and throwing our all into a no-holds-barred defence of Mother Earth.

Rupert Read from Extinction Rebellion warns of the false hope of Green Revolution but argues the Coronavirus crisis has revealed our vulnerability and made a kind of restoration possible.

Rupert Read and Deepak Rughani lament the film’s fatalism and argue that there is a ‘managed descent’ from our current dangerous energy dependencies.

He who does not deny our doom, becomes capable of action

Two intellectuals philosophize about the climate catastrophe.

The government is currently working out the finer details of an airline rescue package. In practice, this likely means throwing billions of pounds at the industry in the form of loans and tax breaks. Ministers are hoping that this bailout will ensure that the UK still has a functioning airline sector after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides.