Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When a recent study highlighted generational differences in attitudes to food waste, a large number of media outlets reported the news that millennials are the worst culprits when it comes to throwing away food and contributing to the 7.3 million tonnes of food wasted by UK households each year. The reason? Apparently an obsession with social media, Instagram culture and a ‘live to eat’ attitude are to blame…
For me personally this is a great opportunity to create the space for people to come, discuss and really face the climate change issue, and bring in the facts and the data and the possibility of what we can do together to find solutions. Yet my personal experience is that I question the grand scale of COP23. I question even the economy behind it and if this money could be used to actually implement the solutions that are needed.
The glaciers of Pine Island Bay are two of the largest and fastest-melting in Antarctica. (A Rolling Stone feature earlier this year dubbed Thwaites “The Doomsday Glacier.”) Together, they act as a plug holding back enough ice to pour 11 feet of sea-level rise into the world’s oceans — an amount that would submerge every coastal city on the planet. For that reason, finding out how fast these glaciers will collapse is one of the most important scientific questions in the world today.
So as I see it humanity now faces a choice. We can continue extolling the virtues of ‘development’, pin our hopes on a rapid decarbonisation of the energy system while retaining something like present levels of energy usage, and imagine that a further iteration of the capitalist economy will somehow overcome the grinding poverty that afflicts so many people in the world today. Or we could take the view that the forms of development offered by this ‘modernism’ have failed.
In his book “Last Child in the Woods” and “The Nature Principle,” US author Richard Louv coined the phrase “Nature-deficit disorder,” which comes from children no longer exploring woods or bogs and having adventures. Children who are obsessed with computer games or driven from sport to sport, Louv maintains, miss the restorative effects that come with the nimbler bodies and sharper senses that are developed during random running-around in wild places.
Efforts by the White House and Congress to enact tax reforms are posing clear and present dangers to existing renewable energy tax credits. The House and Senate versions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 differ in their impacts. Should the final legislation more closely resemble the House version of the legislation, the negative impacts will be especially felt by the wind and electric vehicle industries.
Organic agriculture can feed the world. The only question thereby being what “feeding the world” may mean. Today, it basically means high shares of animal products in diets and that a third of production is wasted. Projections for 2050 look similar. Does this make sense? No. And this is the entry point for organic agriculture to play a role in sustainable food systems and for contributing to food security.
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.
A group of 15,000 scientists have come together to issue a dire “second notice” to humanity, 25 years after a group of scientists issued the “first notice” warning the world about climate change. We speak with the co-author of this report, Kevin Anderson, one of the world’s leading climate scientists.
In Curing Affluenza Australian economist, Richard Denniss puts forward proposals to tackle “that strange desire we feel to spend money we don’t have to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t know”. This disease of ‘affluenza,’ he argues, “is economically inefficient… the root cause of environmental destruction and… global inequality”…But in my view his diagnosis, as well as the proposed remedies, are far too mild to adequately deal with our societal ills.
In short, democracy is everywhere and always a wager that enough people would know enough and care enough and be wise enough to participate honorably and well in the conduct of the public business. The only sure foundation of democracy is a well-educated and well-informed citizenry that is tolerant of differences, good hearted, merciful, and farsighted.
This was my third COP, and despite a challenging schedule of events, I leave Bonn-Fiji more jaded than when I returned from its Parisian predecessor. I was certainly uneasy with the euphoria surrounding the Paris Agreement, but I could also see its potential for catalysing a transformation in global responses to climate change. Two years on and Bonn-Fiji signals just how entrenched, powerful and resilient our status quo is and how compliant the ‘established’ climate change community has become.
