Laurie Laybourn-Langton

Laurie Laybourn-Langton is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). Previously, he has worked for Lord Skidelsky at the House of Lords, INET at Oxford, LSE, and Purpose. His work includes political economy, the implications of environmental crisis, the future of the state, and the NHS.

storm

Notes from a 1.2C world

Alongside the grief, as the fires rage and the fear grows, we need stories of focus, struggle, and hope as we head into this next phase, battening down the hatches with a voracious resolve to fight for a future against the lashing fury of this storm.

March 12, 2021

Reflected city

Today We’ve Consumed More Resources than the Planet can Renew in a Year

August 1 was Earth Overshoot Day, the date when we have taken more from nature than it can renew in an entire year. Unsustainable extraction is occurring on a planetary scale: we are using natural resources 1.7 times faster in 2018 than the Earth’s ecosystems can regenerate this year.

August 7, 2018

Hurricane Maria image

Time for Politicians to Get Real about the Anthropocene

It seems that the short lived cycles of electoral politics means that politicians chase short-term goals, rather than tackling problems such as climate change which require long-term, global thinking. The test of a capable politician in 2018 is whether they take a stand against cavalier resource extraction.

July 11, 2018

Imagination and Will in the Anthropocene

This is about building, for the first time in history, a capacity for collective self-awareness, a sense of shared identity, and a political expression of our common will in pursuit of our common interest – not only as nations, tribes and social groups but as the species whose ancestors first ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

January 17, 2018

The Movement to Replace Neoliberalism is on the Ascendency – Where Should it go Next?

We think there is now broad intellectual convergence across groups around a shared critique of the failings of neoliberalism and the need for a new paradigm. There is slightly looser convergence on the overall goals or values of a new paradigm, largely centring on equity, sustainability and democratisation. However, outside of one or two notable efforts, we have not seen common narratives or policy solutions emerge. Our conclusion is that this results from material barriers to progress, rather than profound differences between groups.

November 27, 2017