Opinion
Trump & the climate
What seemed morally impossible has happened. So what does a second Trump Administration mean for global heating? Obviously, it will mean U.S. carbon emissions will be higher in 2030 and beyond than they otherwise would have been, and the world will become hotter as a result. Trump has said climate
Should Peter Singer Be De-Platformed?
At the Byron Writers Festival last week, I overheard a conversation between two writers in the shuttle bus. “I’m going to the Peter Singer session ,” said one. The other, an Indigenous woman, replied, with some bitterness: “I’ve no interest in listening to him, he’s a eugenicist.” I turned to
How do we prepare for life on a hot planet?
There has always been a sense of unreality about our climate change predicament, especially through the long years of denial, disputation and delay. More recently, Australia seems to have jumped from the delusions of denial to faith in increasingly implausible”solutions”, bypassing sober assessment of the seriousness of the reality we
‘Neo-nature’ and the new world of the Anthropocene
Do you, like me, hesitate when you refer to floods or bushfires as natural disasters? When Earth’s atmosphere is warmer and moister because of human-induced climate change, all weather events have a human fingerprint. The now well-developed field of ‘attribution studies’ calculates the increased likelihood and severity of extreme weather
It’s just not cricket: rich kids win at the expense of everyone else
The opening on Friday of Radford College’s multi-million dollar cricket facility—described as ‘better than Lords’—draws attention to the fundamental unfairness of our education system. Elite private schools are engaged in a kind of arms race to build the most lavish facilities for their already privileged pupils, which not only highlights
Elite privilege isn’t a product of wealth Class shame is woven into the fabric of society
Almost a year ago, in July 2023, Rishi Sunak’s government named and shamed Britain’s most unruly towns. The media, unsurprisingly, lapped it up: places subjected to higher levels of social disadvantage were described as “bad towns” filled with “streets of shame”. All who lived there were tainted. We rarely think
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Having just left there after spending almost two hours in line and being unable to get in, I’d wager that the number of people inside the security perimeter, plus the number of people outside the perimeter who tried to get in, vastly exceeded that.