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’...

‘Test, trace and isolate’ is not working and is unlikely to work well anytime soon. With the Government failing, community medics and volunteers reveal how we can save ourselves.

Our collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been characterised by two vast failures of imagination:

1) Many people and most governments —particularly those of the United States and the UK — have failed to imagine exponential growth and how bad it can get.

What are the underlying reasons for this first failure?

Normalcy bias

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.