Archive for the ‘Eco politics’ Category

It’s turning out to be a busy week. If the global financial crisis isn’t enough, last night I went to a talk about climate change and peak oil at the local Transition Town meeting.

I just came across this world map by Worldmapper on the new BBC Green website. The map looks pretty distorted, because each country has been resized to show the amount of greenhouse gas emissions it is responsible for…

What is it with bears? There have been a lot around recently. In Sudan there was the teddy bear teacher, while at the Tate Liverpool Mark Wallinger won the Turner Prize by dressing up as a bear - though actually he won it for his installation Sleeper, a recreation of Brian Haw’s one man protest against the Iraq war in Parliament Square.

Read on about George Monbiot’s bear protest…

Last week the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called again for a “green revolution” and suggested that the UK could be aiming for an 80% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Hurrah. That sounds promising.

Or does it?

I’m nervously following the news on Burma on the net, amazed at the profound bravery of unarmed protesters on the other side of the world - in particular the Buddhist monks who have led the country’s rebellion…

I’m wrong to find this funny, aren’t I?

I recently came across a great series of photographs by John Lodei, who spent years travelling around Britian photographing small shops. He’s published the results in a new book called ShuttingUp Shop, about the decline of small shops in the UK. ..

I’ve just read this lovely article in this week’s New Scientist, about Charles Kellogg, a successful music-hall performer who loved the Californian Redwood forests. Kellogg’s bizarre specialism was birdsong impressions…

Who else thinks Jeremy Clarkson is an insufferable jughead?

Recently the pop singer Sheryl Crow was mocked globally for suggesting that toilet visits could be made more ecological if we only used one square of toilet paper.

Later she explained this was supposed to be “a joke”…