As we have struggled on this blog with the challenge of naming looming Armageddon without terrifying people into paralysis, UK press coverage of climate change seems to have crossed a tipping point this week. The Sun has published an astonishingly forthright piece on the Age of Stupid’s movie scenarios for a rapidly warming earth, with … Read more …
Climate Change
Copenhagen Names it Like It Is
(A reminder first that climate change posts are now also going up at facingclimatechange.blogspot.com). As we have struggled on this blog with the challenge of naming looming Armageddon without terrifying people into paralysis, UK press coverage of climate change seems to have crossed a tipping point this week. As George Monbiot rightly argues today, it’s … Read more …
Not If, but When
This blog template isn’t yet the most perfect – we’re beginning to write serious quantities of important thought, and it all tangles up, like the splendid and rich roots on the left, in a lot of text on the front page. But bear with us/me, as we experiment with new ways of posting an intro, … Read more …
Cracking Open – from Viola
I think it is very hard to know what to do to prepare. After all, we have never quite been in this situation before, so how can we know? And we may find that we are indeed already doing some of it, and finding that we may be able to do some of it more … Read more …
Mary-Jayne on preparing for what is to come
Mark, you write below that: “The piece missing for me in Bristol, and still missing in the public discussion around climate change is that the public discourse (as the sociologists say) must move from an exclusive focus on trying to prevent the worst happening to a very serious and sober discussion of how, without losing … Read more …
Facing Climate Change – therapists and academics talk in Bristol
Photographs from China are becoming a useful tool for this blog to illustrate what I’m trying to articulate around psychology and climate change – the picture on the left here being a Chinese taxi graveyard from the Spiegel’s website in Germany. But that’s just a despairing teaser to some thoughts on a stimulating but also, … Read more …
Viola on how we manage the interim
What a relief, Mark and Mary-Jayne, to hear you sketch out some of the process between now and whatever temperature we fear the earth will reach. I am often struck by how much focus there is on that ‘end’ point (the epic climatic climax) and not enough on the interim. I have a slightly different … Read more …
Mary-Jayne response…
Mark, you say: “But when presented with a choice of hard work and sustainable simplicity, or resource-hungry luxury, I fear that human beings of all cultures and backgrounds are programmed to go, in their bulk, for the easier option. Whether Amazonian tribesman or newly-comfortable middle-class Chinese or Indian.” Yes, most people make that choice, but … Read more …
Hutongs and Lovelock – a response to MJ
My point on the Hutongs, Mary-Jayne (and see left for a 2007 view of the old simple-but-communal Beijing making way for the much-less-attractive new), was that most people in China and around the world would choose, rightly or wrongly, and whether to later regret or pleasure, to go for the neat, energy-consuming, marbled-floored suburban house … Read more …
OK – so maybe there IS more to say. A response from Mary-Jayne
OK – I said I was going to take a break from blogging on climate change, but Mary-Jayne Rust has come back with some important comments which deserve an airing and a compassionate response. No pictures on this one, but I’ll think of something for the response above… Mary-Jayne writes: You compare the … Read more …