“It doesn’t have to be like this, as David Attenborough has reminded us at the end of every episode of his most urgently powerful and poignant series: Green Planet, and with force in the final fifth, Human Worlds. Solutions are tantalisingly within reach. At no risk to ourselves we can make our own surrounds much greener – and a lot more pleasant.”
environment
Tourism is a river that flipped its course
People want to get out of the cities. Instead of denouncing them and locking the toilets, Scotland should grasp the opportunity to extend environmental education and affordable camping facilities to all who need them.
Bridge over deep, dark water? Five reasons not to build it
The money could be better spent – in good sardonic style, Fraser of Allender lists the reasons for not wasting time on ‘a cracking idea’.
Fear and anger: rational responses to extinction
Children, angry and scared about climate change, might be more rational than adults criticising them: Quan Nguyen, a member of Extinction Rebellion Scotland, makes the case for emotional engagement.
Spuds you should like
But with rises in obesity, we become obsessed with following the latest diet craze – where usually at least one of the main nutrient groups are significantly decreased or eliminated. As part of this, potatoes have become taboo.
False goals and impossible expectations
In Part 3 of his essay the author urges an end to utopian thinking: ‘Should we condone people like my father who yearn for Utopia and who believe we should give planned perfection one more try? No, these people are endlessly sailing their boats towards a non-existent goal and are making themselves and the rest of us unhappy.’
Defending utopia from outsiders, dissidents and saboteurs?
‘In this he follows those other utopian traditions of the French revolutionary great terror, the purges of Stalin and Mao. His walled island state now resembles North Korea. If he were to enforce his ideal of the human blank slate, then he would have arrived at Pol Pot’s ‘Year Zero’.’ Part 2 of the author’s essay on utopia(s)
1968, 2015, and today’s prospects for hope and peace
‘This shared commitment is so different in character from the imposition of any neo-liberal ‘structural adjustment programme’ of the past imposed by the international financial institutions, or any diktat of the powerful emerging from the Security Council or from any single power.’
That £25bn bill for decommissioning offshore platforms?
It is time that decommissioning policy be hastily re-examined in the UK. The government needs to commission a full evidence-based report into the environmental, social and economic benefits, comparing them to other options such as building more green energy stations and even spending the money on things like health or education.
An environmental court for Scotland
‘Rights without any means of enforcement are truly useless. As part of the UK, Scotland is bound by the UN’s Aarhus Convention which requires that people must be able to challenge situations where their environmental rights are denied or environmental laws are broken. Article 9(4) says that these challenges must be “not prohibitively expensive”. But access to environmental justice is prohibitively expensive in Scotland’.