The Ecologist
Sustainability starts in the classroom
Emily Folk Education is the best start to a sustainable life. Sustainability and caring about the planet are worthwhile causes that need consistent attention and care from our communities. While sustainability starts at home and on a personal level, education plays a vital role in enacting and… »
Blowing up pipelines
Walter Benjamin famously described revolution as humanity’s attempt to “activate the emergency brake” in the locomotive of history. His words, written amid the turmoil of World War II, still ring true in times of climate crisis and runaway ecological breakdown. Andreas Malm’s new book draws explosive conclusions for the struggle… »
XR promises wave of action for COP26
Extinction Rebellion (XR) announces strategy to put pressure on the government in the run-up to next November’s UN climate talks. Online disruption, financial civil disobedience and one-person road-blocks are some of the action XR is urging its followers to take in 2021. In a document outlining its strategy for 2021,… »
Why we created the Mock Cop26 treaty
Young people across the world are tired of empty climate promises – that’s why we created the Mock COP26 treaty. “If you won’t include us in the conversation properly, we’ll start the conversation ourselves.” It is evident, from the postponement and non-virtualisation of COP26 this year, that climate action sits… »
Black Friday and the climate emergency
Black Friday could easily refer to today’s carbon footprint driven by the spree of overconsumption, fuelled by advertising. Black Friday is hyped as the most frenzied day in the year for rampant consumerism. The term began in Philadelphia in the United States as slang for the madly busy shopping day… »
Polluting investments not in our name
Daniel Willis Parliamentarians and NGOs across Europe have signed joint statements calling for public development banks to respect human rights and stop funding fossil fuels. Last week saw the first ever international meeting of public finance institutions, dubbed the Finance in Common Summit, as development banks from around the… »
Nobel Prize for a gene bomb
Silvia Ribeiro CRISPR and new forms of gene manipulation must not be allowed anywhere near our food systems or into the wider environment. Alfred Nobel himself might see the irony. The 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry – named after the inventor of dynamite and… »
Hacking the earth?
Bill McGuire Geo-engineering ‘turns hearts and minds away from the cause of the climate crisis and inevitably dilutes the urgency with which it must be addressed’. The belief that ‘fixing’ global heating through the application of technology is possible, even desirable, is not new… »
Ende Gelände 2020
Ende Gelände mobilised thousands in Germany last weekend, targeting both coal and gas and developing tactics to protect activists from coronavirus transmission. The eighth Ende Gelände went ahead in the drizzly and cold Rhineland region of Germany last weekend. Over 3,000 activists pushed through police lines to shut down a number of targets associated… »
Climate breakdown in Alaska
Cora Dow ‘I’m eighteen and can already see my Alaska community changed forever by climate change. I’ve seen glaciers shrink, summer droughts and deadly landslides – and our elected officials are doing nothing.’ I caught a herring with my hands from the beach beside my grandma’s house in my… »