Blog Action Day: The Environment

Its proving rather difficult to work out what to write about with regards to the environment today. I suppose I really ought to, seeing as I signed up for Blog Action Day months ago, and I voted for this very subject to be included. But the environment is a big thing, a powerful force in our lives, but to one extent a very fragile one. For decades, people have been calling on others to “do it for the planet”, but we still manage to make things worse to the extent that Climate Change now threatens humanities very existence.

Winning Kingsnorth, Winning the Struggle

The dust has now settled after the shock announcement that Kingsnorth is going nowhere for 3 years at least. Naturally I’m delighted, to the extent that I raided my alcohol supply for a swift one and bounced around the living room with my housemate. But politics is complicated and victories rarely more than partial. Also, sorry for lack of posts, life is just moving too quickly. Edit: And now we’re back in shock mode, as the Telegraph announces BAA’s decision to scrap the Third Runway at Heathrow. This post is probably only more timely because of it.

Could power black outs ever be helpful?

I’ve seen more than one article or comment recently stating loudly and clearly that the problem isn’t solving Climate Change, its solving the power black outs that will become a reality if we continue to use electricity at our current rate. The mind set is one of utter presumption: I must be able to get electricity when I want it! But this cannot continue to be the mind set for much longer…

The Age of Entitlement

Casting my mind back to the events of Momentum in August, which you can read about here, I remembered my mental note to explore one area in particular. I wanted to return to Mike P’s three factors preventing today’s young adults getting the most from life: Consumerism, Individualism and Entitlement.  Today I shall point to just one in particular.

Welcome to Staycation Nation

Apparently this summer is meant to be the summer of the “Staycation”, people deciding to holiday in Britain instead of going overseas in order to save money. This leaves me wondering when it became insufficient to simply Vacate one’s town or city, and why we need a whole new (or rather, American) term for a holiday we take inside our national boundaries.

Organic Eating Is Not About Me

There was an interesting review of science recently that concluded that Organic Food provided no specific dietary benefits. That’s nice. I’m not going to argue with that. What I want to know is why on Earth this question became important in the first place. Surely this is about food that doesn’t just revolve around us? Or have we become so self-obsessed that we can only understand something as good if we ourselves will directly benefit?

The “Climate Change Affects Us All” Myth

Like many myths, the myth that says that Climate Change will affect us all is based on some degree of truth. But it is also somewhat unhelpful if we are to understand the imperative to act. We in Britain are already likely to fare much better than those elsewhere in the world, for instance Tuvalu, where the danger of total landmass submersion is now so great, they’ve been forced to act much more decisively than anyone in Europe has managed thus far.

UK establishment unashamed to admit brutality?

I’ve been having a slow realisation over a period of some months that the UK government seems to be quite happy to receive small amounts of condemnation for policing tactics, if it makes the risk of injury and inconvenience in taking part more widely known about. It seems the police in particular are hoping that events like the G20 will just serve as a lesson, as people who feel outraged also consider their own interests in getting involved.

Climate Change and Academic Collaboration

It might seem perverse, given the extent to which Academic Collaboration has proven itself vital in the discovery and confirmation of climate change existence, current effects and likely future outcomes, but the imperative of Academic Collaboration is probably one of the biggest root causes of Climate Change within the Academic World.

Connecting Rails to Reality

Having written a long winded rant about air transport a few days ago, I thought I’d actually make use of a bunch of reports I have saved on the current situation for the development railways from Africa and Asia to Britain. As with anything that involves railways, its not so much the engineering that has the effects, its the wider political and social impacts that railways have by their presence or absence.