Info, news & debate

The ‘nature problem’

To all environmental groups: lifestyle change isn’t going to be enough to avert ecological catastrophe

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Someone said to me the other day that he associated ‘low-impact’ with lifestyle but not with politics or economics. Someone else asked why we blogged about TTIP, economic growth or system change when we were ‘just’ an environmental organisation.

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childrenandnature

What are we supposed to teach children about nature nowadays, without frightening them?

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My little boy Alfred, just turned 6, pays close attention to what he hears. Sometimes this means that we need to be very careful in case he remembers something and then blurts it out in front of just the wrong person. It’s already clear that he’d make an awful spy.

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light-bulb-moment

What were your ‘light bulb moments’ in understanding the way the world works? Here are mine

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Here’s a rash statement, but I believe it to be true. Most people these days know, either rationally or intuitively, that humanity is heading in the wrong direction. If you ask people whether we’ve seen the back of ecological calamaties, financial collapses, corruption, poverty or war

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stargazing

Fermi’s paradox: does the lack of contact from extraterrestrials have implications for human survival?

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“Where is everybody?” Enrico Fermi is supposed to have asked in 1950 of his colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Working from first principles, Fermi calculated that extraterrestrials should have visited the Earth long ago, and many times over

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ethnicity

Is there a correlation between opinions on ecology and opinions on ethnicity?

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The reason you’re on this website, I guess, is that you believe that there’s something wrong in terms of ecology, or nature. You may not know the details, but you have a strong feeling (or even quite a precise understanding) that we’re not living in harmony with nature, and that’s going to cause us more

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sunflowers

Should we be planning to ‘drought-proof’ our food production for a warmer climate?

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The weather is not the climate. Nonetheless, over the last few years I have noticed that I have developed a slightly panicky fear of the weather; I can’t notice the weather I suppose, without it triggering all sorts of associations in my mind to the myriad articles I’ve read, and conversations I’ve had, about Anthropogenic Climate

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lynas

Mark Lynas thinks that corporate capitalism can solve climate change – that’s like burning your house down to keep warm

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Oh do beware someone who comes before you and claims to be the voice of reason. Mark Lynas does exactly that in this morning’s Guardian and it doesn’t wash. His argument is barely an argument at all, more like a sort of faux man-in-the-street flimflam. Beware.

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