Category Archives: Climate Change

We did this

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I seem to have fallen into a pattern, that repeats.
Wake up. Feel alright.
Get on with work. The day.
Check the news. Catch up on messages.
Work meeting.
Activist meeting.
Cognitive dissonance EXPLOSION.

Try again. To engage with people.
At work – they don’t get it.
Grief builds. Rage builds.
Go for a walk.
Sit in the church yard.
Wonder when the fields.
Will burn. Or flood.
Or freeze.

A blackbird brings temporary reprieve.
Temporary solace in nature.
The trees. Birds. Insects. Deer.
Then more grief. For them.
For the dog walker.
For kids. In the playground.
For us.

Back to work.
More meetings. More dissonance.
Try again. Mostly silence.
Or embarrassment.
No realisation of what their kids.
Are facing.
What they.
Are facing.
The game. Is up.

They admit. It’s bad.
Then back to holidays. Flights.
AI. TV shows. Shoes.
Buying stuff they want.
But don’t need.
Maybe they can’t connect. Emotionally.
Maybe to do so.
Would crumple something.
Their raison d’etre.
Their fragile purpose.
Their faith in systems. Order. Continuity.
In the future.
All fucked. Collapsed.

Keep on. Keeping on.
Try to conform. To work hard.
To deliver.
To help colleagues. Friends.
Work is, after all, a community.
We lack community.
We need community.
We have destroyed. Community.
Lockdown. The Internet. Nuclear families.
Social Media. The Media. Politicians.
Billionaires. Marketing. Us.
They have destroyed. Community.
We let them.

Finish work.
Although it still goes on.
In my head. The list.
The to do’s. I’ve not done.
Next up. Planning meeting. Action.
People that get it.
That are awake.
The tired eyes. The Grief.
The Rage. The Hope.
That we can still make a difference.
But even if we can’t.
We’ll try.
Because that’s all that’s left.
Trying. In that we find.
Sanity.

More plans. Ideas. Analysis.
Sizzling vibes.
Maybe this could work.
Make a difference.
Wake them up.
Make them see. Connect.
With all their being.
Make them feel. What we feel.
Break the pattern. The mould.
Maybe. They are ready now.
After the heat. The drought.
The fires. The floods.
The harvest gone bad. The deaths.
After. Nepal. The flash flood. The carnage.

Again. I underestimate.
The establishment. The vested. Interests.
Fossil fuel. Lobbyists.
The media, the billionaires.
The politicians, drunk in Westminster.
The corporations. The money. The power.
Corruption. Greed. Hate.
Lady Justice.
Has been blinded.
Gagged.
Violated.

A council meeting.
I go along. Hopeful.
Maybe they’ll listen. This time.
I tried the system. Elected. Councillor.
Tried. To make a difference.
Barriers. Bureaucracy. Semantics. POLITICS.
Pettiness. Sniping. Divisiveness.
Nothing the public.
Would care about.
But stopping anything. Radical.
Anything. Not normal.
Anything needed.
That would rock. The boat.
Which is sinking.

Home. My cat. Unconditional.
Unless I withhold. Treats.
They see, in the dark.
But. Can stand on your face.
While you sleep.
Sofa. Wine. TV.
Anaesthetic. To a failing world.
To the grief. The anger.
The ignorance. The arrogance.
The patriarchy. The old men.
Who greedily grasp power.
Whilst we burn. Suffocate. Starve.

I am hungry. For unity.
For love. For nature. For water.
For soil. For plants. For people.
For community. For care.
For change that means something.
For action that does something.
For systems that work.
For people.
Not power.
For a future. For children.
And.
For me. For us. For all life.

Sleep comes.
Sometimes in bed.
Sometimes the sofa.
Broken dreams. Conflict.
Anxiety expressed.
Lost. Burdened by luggage.
Whilst fleeing.
Mountain passes. Fields.
Tents. Many people I know.
Fighting. I evade. But have nothing.
No weapon. No strength left.
In my legs.
I just exist. Hide. Try to help.
Whilst it all.
Dies.
Guilt.

I awake. A new day.
The pattern repeats.
More grief. More rage.
More sparks. Of hope.
More news. More lies.
Corruption. Greed. Fallacies.
More worship.
Of false idols.
We sacrifice. Ourselves.
Our children.
The future.
On the altar of capitalism.
Of unfettered growth.
Of Trump. Putin. Netanyahu. Modi. Farage. Musk. Zuckerberg. Bezos.
Murdoch. Thiel. Altman. bin Salman.
Oh. Look. All men.

More news. More floods.
More drought. More fire.
More war. More death.
More atrocity. More genocide.
In Gaza.
In Sudan. In Myanmar.
In China – Xinjiang.
In Ukraine.

More. More More.
We push back. We try.
More solar. More wind.
More tidal. More clean.
Grid upgrades. Storage.
But. No.
Self interest. Privilege. Status quo.
They stop us. Surviving.
Stop us. Changing.
It will be too late. Too soon.
Then. Their fields. Will be burnt. Frozen. Flooded.
We will be.
Climate refugees.
With no refuge.

Somehow. Still.
I. And many others.
Carry on. With the burden.
Of grief. Of guilt. Of rage.
Of knowing.
Of being awake.
Of connecting.
With where we are.
And where we will be.

Some things. Locked in.
Others. Still preventable.
If we try.
If we Rebel. For Life.
If we say. No more.
No more patriarchy.
No more media platforms for billionaires.
No more Oil. Gas. Fossil fuels.
No more profit.
Whilst Earth burns.
No more drunk MPs. In Westminster.
No more lies.

Tell the Truth.
Rewild. Restore.
Ungag Lady Justice. Let her see. Act.
Build communities.
Grow connections, not wealth.
Live within. Our limits.
Not taking. From others.
Food. Water. Shelter.
Warmth. Companionship. Happiness.
Joy. Health.
A future.

NOT A BURNING PLANET.
Wracked by storms. Fires. Floods. War.
And collapse.
Extinction.

We can do this.
We can wake up.
We can change our path.
We can save ourselves. Future generations.
The living world we belong to.
If we act. If we step up. If we take risks. If we connect.
HOPE IS ACTIVE


RESIST

Resist.





Rage, rage against the dying of the light

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This morning I am grateful for last night’s rain, bringing relief to the countryside, plants and animals, humans included. Because we are animals, with the same fundamental needs all animals have – shelter, water and food. We seem to have forgotten that. 

We’ve forgotten that without a stable ecosystem and environment to live in, our existence is compromised. Instead, at least in wealthier countries, we often prioritise non-essentials, things we want but don’t actually need – new tech, expensive clothes and cars, holidays abroad, subscriptions to TV and other digital services – all stuff that are nice to haves but not essential to being alive, being happy, or being healthy.

We are a part of nature, not apart from it. Our lifestyles, driven by the media, advertising and mega-corporations harvesting our earnings to get even richer, are not compatible with a sustainable present, let alone future. We are trained from a young age to be good little consumers, that one’s success is measured by how much stuff you have, how much money, not by the community you are in and shared experiences,  support for one another, connections, kindness and empathy. 

Indeed, the latest attack by some right wing figures is on empathy. Apparently it’s a bad thing – caring is bad, don’t care about other people or nature, that’s weak. Much better to live a hedonistic, selfish lifestyle, if you are following the parables of Musk. What an absolute bell-end.

According to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research we have breached 7 of the 9 critical Earth system boundaries. There are only two that remain in safe zones – the Ozone Layer and Atmospheric Aerosol Loading. Human civilisation developed within an unusually stable Earth system. If we’ve pushed 7 of its 9 major life-support systems outside their scientifically assessed safe boundaries, we are progressively weakening the resilience of the planet we depend upon.

This means increasing the risk of cascading, potentially irreversible changes to climate, water, food systems and ecosystems. We’re back to global heating → drought → floods → failing harvests → food insecurity → displacement → conflict → mass extinction.

The Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at PIK finds that seven of nine critical Earth system boundaries have been breached, leaving only ozone depletion and aerosol loading within safe limits. (PIK, 2025)


Source: Potsdam Institute – The Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at PIK finds that seven of nine critical Earth system boundaries have been breached, leaving only ozone depletion and aerosol loading within safe limits. (PIK, 2025)

We’re also experiencing ecological overshoot every year. We are constantly using more resources, more energy, producing and using more stuff. We are cannibalising the planet, using 1.73 times the resources the Earth can regenerate every year. This is not sustainable. The UK national ecological overshoot day this year was 22 May 2026.

We are approaching, and in some cases may already be passing, critical tipping points. Coral reefs bleaching and dying. Albedos that reflect sunlight back into space are disappearing as ice melts. Permafrost is melting releasing methane into the atmosphere, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Parts of the  Amazon rainforest are dying and becoming source of emissions rather than soak for carbon emissions. The oceans are hot, and as they heat up they absorb less carbon dioxide, becoming less effective as a carbon sink whilst they also acidify and become less sustainable for life.  And of course wildfires are raging, destroying nature and carbon sinks, whilst emitting even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

For all practical purposes, we’ve blown any realistic prospect of keeping long-term warming below 1.5°C without substantial overshoot. We are firmly on track for + 2°C, then potentially +3°C, even +4°C in more extreme modelling. The Paris Agreement didn’t define 2°C as safe. It tried to commit governments to keeping warming “well below 2°C” and pursuing 1.5°C because this would significantly reduce climate risks. The IPCC subsequently found that at 2°C the risks to food, water, health, livelihoods and human security rise substantially, with some impacts becoming widespread, severe and potentially irreversible.

The geographical distribution of global and regional tipping elements, color-coded according to the best estimate for their temperature thresholds, beyond which the element would likely be 'tipped'. Figure designed at PIK (under cc-by licence), based on Armstrong McKay et al., Science (2022).


Source: Potsdam Institute. The geographical distribution of global and regional tipping elements, color-coded according to the best estimate for their temperature thresholds, beyond which the element would likely be ‘tipped’. Figure designed at PIK (under cc-by licence), based on Armstrong McKay et al., Science (2022).

We’re already seeing more fires, droughts, and harvest failures. These are hitting especially hard where I live in Norfolk, UK. It’s going to get a lot worse, with more heat injuries and deaths, food and water shortages, floods, sea level rise, poverty, economic damage, rising inequality, war for remaining resources, and ecosystem collapse. We aren’t doing nearly enough to adapt as it is, and simply won’t be able to adapt to what is coming. 

We have to stop greenhouse gas emissions, whilst also implementing adaption measures. And we need to do it now. This rhetoric from the government and fossil fuel industry we’re being programmed with, that we have to be pragmatic, that fossil fuels need to be in the energy mix for a long time yet – it’s a death sentence for billions.

The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA), the people that inform the insurance industry, have warned there is a severe risk of a global death toll of billions of people. They have modelled a severe risk of 4 billion deaths at +3°C. This is them doing catastrophic-risk modelling, but we keep passing worst case scenarios. By the way, this model is scaled up for +2°C which predicts 2 billion dead. As things stand we have very little chance of staying under +2°C as emissions are still going up, and those emissions will impact temperatures for decades, centuries, locking in global heating to +2°C and beyond.

Politicians and oil and gas companies tout carbon capture and storage as the panacea. But it has not been built and therefore proven at scale, and will cost a fortune to build. It is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for continued oil and gas use. Why not spend that money on renewables, energy storage and grid upgrades. At the same time this would create thousands of jobs and give the economy a boost, whilst reducing emissions, lowering bills, and improving our energy security. What’s not to like?

The truth is still being hidden, by Governments – who have both their heads in the sand whilst hiding the facts. By large proportions of the billionaire owned press. By oil and gas companies who are doing the same as the tobacco industry, and have done for decades – hiding the science and truth in order to make sick amounts of money, at the expense of our health, of the Earth’s life support systems. And by banks and hedge funds who are funding it all. 

Business as usual is killing us, and making a few people, an absolute minority, absurdly rich and powerful. But they won’t be able to buy their way out of the multiple crises that are both here right now or approaching fast. We cannot adapt our way out of some scenarios, it doesn’t matter how much money you have if the opposition keep putting more players on the pitch.

Here we are then. Our life support systems are failing, yet we are trying to keep calm and carry on. We are being betrayed, totally failed, by governments whose primary responsibility is to protect and serve their citizens. They in turn are being manipulated by lobbyists, oil and gas companies whose employees meet with ministers every day, by billionaires with no empathy and the media and corporations they control. Our political, economic, financial, industrial, legal, food and water, systems, and many more, are broken, not fit for purpose in the world we now live in. 

We talk endlessly about national security and defence budgets – buying more bullets and bombs. But security also means flood defences, reservoirs, resilient food production and storage, secure clean energy, functioning ecosystems and homes for people displaced by climate impacts.

We won’t get these changes under the current system of government. It just can’t do it with the vested interests involved, and the governance processes it is bound by.

We have to act, for our own sakes as well as future generations. We need a peaceful revolution to make changes to all those systems.

Or we’re fucked.

I’ll leave you with this poem, which has been resonating with me a lot today.

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

BY DYLAN THOMAS

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,   
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

PANDORA’S BOX

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We opened the box. And wonders came out.

At first, what came out looked miraculous.

COAL

Energy beyond anything humanity had known. Factories. Steam engines. Railways. Mass production. Wealth.

We reached deeper. 

OIL

The possibilities seemed endless.

STEAM. ELECTRICITY. ENGINEERING.

SCIENCE. MEDICINE. INVENTION. DISCOVERY.

Cars. Aircraft. Plastics. Fertilisers. Global trade. Consumer abundance. Things previous generations could barely have imagined.

And we congratulated ourselves.

We had conquered distance.

Conquered nature.

Perhaps even conquered scarcity, if you were rich anyway.

Machines could do the work of hundreds. Trains crossed countries. Electricity illuminated the darkness.

Medicine defeated diseases that had killed us for millennia.

Food could be produced and transported on previously unimaginable scales.

Information travelled around the world.

Human lives became longer, healthier and, for many, easier.

It was extraordinary.

But we’d reached too deeply. More things were crawling out.

COLONIALISM. EXTRACTION. EXPLOITATION. CONSUMERISM. ADDICTION.

Old appetites found powerful new machines.

An economic system increasingly dependent upon producing, consuming and growing. More resources. More energy. More stuff. Cannibalising the planet.

And then came.

CORPORATIONS. BILLIONAIRES. INEQUALITY. LOBBYISTS. NEOLIBERALISM. PRIVATISATION. DEREGULATION.

CORRUPTION. LIES. GREED.

And somewhere amongst all that prosperity was something nobody could see.

GREENHOUSE GASES

Carbon dioxide. Methane. And others.

More and more of it. The scientists noticed. They warned us. We carried on. Then the consequences started coming out of the box.

GLOBAL HEATING

Then.

HEATWAVES. FLOODS. WILDFIRES. DROUGHT.

DYING RIVERS AND FORESTS. FAILING HARVESTS. RISING SEAS. COLLAPSING ECOSYSTEMS.

And behind them.

FOOD INSECURITY. FAMINE. DISPLACEMENT. CONFLICT.

MASS EXTINCTION.

Still we carried on. We were told changing course would be too expensive. We were told we couldn’t afford Net Zero. We were told another oil field wouldn’t make much difference. 

Another airport. Another pipeline. Another year.

Another delay.

We demanded to know the price of acting, but rarely asked the price of doing nothing.

But, the box had given us something else.

KNOWLEDGE. INGENUITY. COOPERATION. CONNECTION.

We understood what was happening. We had many of the tools to change direction. What we lacked was the collective will to use them.

Until eventually there was almost nothing left in Pandora’s box. Almost.

Because the ancient story says that one thing remained.

HOPE

But hope isn’t sitting at home believing somebody will eventually sort this out. Hope is something you do. 

It is the scientist who keeps warning.

The farmer restoring their soil.

The community protecting its river.

The engineer building something better.

The person standing for election.

The neighbour helping a neighbour.

The activist refusing to look away.

The ordinary person deciding that…

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Hope becomes:

ACTIVE HOPE

And when enough people act on it, hope becomes something else.

RESISTANCE

Not because we know we will win.

Because the box is open.

Because the consequences are still escaping.

Because every fraction of a degree matters. Every species matters. Every harvest matters. Every home matters. Every life matters.

Because every action matters. And action sustains us.

And because the ending of this story has not yet been written.

RESIST 

RESIST

Civilisation Runs on Electricity, Water and Cat Pictures

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Heat map of Europe, with comments about climate crisis and emissions.
Europe is heating up, and so is the battle for a stable climate

Yes, I am enjoying the brighter and warmer weather, although I must admit the heat is a bit harder to deal with since the wonderful NHS fitted a stent to my Left Anterior Descending artery – the so-called “widow maker” – alongside my current medication. I went for a walk today, but had to stop several times to re-hydrate and recover.

Bank Holiday Blossom Fair and Blackbarn Farm
Bank Holiday Blossom Fair and Blackbarn Farm

But I am also increasingly concerned about what the rest of this year, and the years ahead, might hold given this heatwave, the wider warming trend, and the super El Niño now developing in the Pacific. It will definitely mean me moving more slowly, and needing more hydration stops.

Re-hydrating at The Stag pub, Salhouse
Re-hydrating at The Stag pub, Salhouse

Looking at some of the comments on the post I copied in from Facebook above, I understand why people react the way they do. The UK has just had a relatively cool April and May by recent standards – although that is debatable. Weather fluctuates. People naturally compare what they see outside their window with warnings about global heating.

But I still don’t think most people fully grasp the scale of the unfolding climate and nature crises, or the level of existential threat parts of the world already face right now and that we could within our life-times. Our children will definitely be living in a more unstable, violent and resource strapped world.

Floods. Fires. Crop failures. Water shortages. Rising food insecurity. Conflict over resources. Economic instability. Mass displacement. Refugees risking their lives crossing seas because the places they once called home are becoming unliveable. Yes, that means more small boat crossings. And if AMOC collapse we could be the ones needing the boats, becoming climate refugees ourselves.

And many of those suffering first and hardest are in the global south – countries which contributed far less to historic emissions than wealthy industrialised nations like ours.

We also still massively understate our own contribution. The often-repeated claim that the UK produces “less than 1% of global emissions” ignores the emissions embedded in imported goods, international aviation, shipping, finance and supply chains which support our standard of living, which despite a cost of living crisis and hardship in the home front, is still far above many other parts of the world.

I genuinely think if people fully understood the scale and interconnected nature of these crises, they would support a far faster transition to renewable energy, insulation, public transport and decarbonisation.

Especially because renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels, and because electricity demand is rising not falling. We cannot pretend modern economies will function without large amounts of energy.

Unless we collectively decide we want a simpler existence in the UK, without a lot of the things we take for granted now, we will need more electricity. Unfortunately civilisation now runs on electricity, Wi-Fi and people asking AI to draw anime versions of their cats – guilty as charged.

Gideon hanging out in the porch with his mate Ginge. Gideon is not sharing his dreamies.

Gideon hanging out in the porch with his mate Ginge


We will have to try to keep up with the rest of the world and build the data centres which in turn can be taxed, replacing income tax, to maintain public services, roads, pensions, NHS, and the welfare state. But maybe it would be better to opt out – some people argue we should simply consume less and live more simply. There is truth in that. A slower, less materialistic society might even be healthier and happier in many ways. But achieving that transition fairly, democratically and globally is an enormous challenge in itself.

The challenge is whether we generate that energy in ways that accelerate collapse, or help stabilise the climate while reducing bills and improving energy security. This comes back to the solar farms argument I’ve previously reviewed – we have to have both roof-top solar and solar farms if we want to survive and thrive.

The first few comments on the original post demonstrate the educational and political challenge we are up against. This is why initiatives like the People’s Emergency Briefing matter so much.

I also increasingly think many politicians are trapped inside a Westminster system built for short-term headlines, election cycles and lobbying pressure rather than long-term planetary stability and our wellbeing.

That frustration is one reason anti-establishment parties are gaining support across Europe and the UK. People feel unheard. They feel politics is performative. And frankly, much of the media ecosystem makes this worse by rewarding outrage, tribalism and simplistic narratives over honesty and systems thinking. We need more authentic and capabable journalism and meda – check out the Media Sovereignty Act:

I do believe many MPs and councillors are decent people trying to do the right thing. But systems shape behaviour. Westminster rewards caution, short-termism and protecting existing power structures. Funny how those power structures always seem to include oil companies, hedge funds and billionaires who own newspapers.

Perhaps that is one reason so many civilisations eventually struggle or collapse: their institutions become unable to adapt quickly enough to the crises they helped create.

I hope the Green Party wins more MPs and councillors. I hope more people engage with politics locally and nationally. But I also suspect deeper democratic reform is needed – including citizens’ assemblies and more participatory forms of decision-making that are harder for vested interests, and frankly the patriarchy, to dominate.

Because ultimately this is not just about carbon emissions.

It is about whether humanity can redesign its political and economic systems quickly enough to remain a stable, compassionate and functioning civilisation in the century ahead.

Meanwhile, Gideon says he needs aid packages because he is worried about food shortages, especially where Dreamies are concerned. Look, he’s on his last legs, well, his legs are in the air anyway, because he’s so weak, allegedly.

Gideon suffering from severe lack of treats, send aid
Gideon suffering from severe lack of treats, send aid

Politics is killing us

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I am angry. I think I’ve been full of rage for a long time now. But it’s not because I hate people, it’s because I love them – well a lot of them, there are some notable exceptions, let’s not get carried away. It’s the activist mindset of ‘love and rage’, and it keeps me going.

I look around and see a political system visibly failing to respond to the greatest crises humanity has ever faced: climate breakdown, ecological collapse, grotesque inequality, democratic erosion, war, disinformation and the looming disruption of AI and automation.

And yet our politics still feels trapped in short-termism, battling for ratings in a media theatre that ignores truth, whilst our leaders are too cowardly and beholden to the system to do what is desperately needed.

Governments announce climate emergencies whilst approving fossil fuel expansion. Scientists warn of escalating risks whilst billionaires and media barons dominate public discourse. Peaceful protest is criminalised whilst corruption and environmental destruction are treated as normal, even rewarded. Immigrants are blamed for all our problems, rather than inequality and the super-rich exploiting us and the natural world. People are told there is “no money” for welfare, housing or public services – but somehow there is always money for war, subsidies for fossil fuels, or corporate bailouts.

We feel the disconnect. We feel betrayed. Trust in politics is collapsing – it’s already disintegrating. When democratic systems fail to respond to real suffering, people begin searching for alternatives, and as history has shown us they aren’t always good ones. If democracy is perceived as incapable of solving problems, authoritarianism begins to market itself as the solution.

Winston Churchill once said democracy is the least worst form of governance. Socrates was pretty sure democracy was a mistake even though the ancient Greeks invented it. I don’t think the answer is less democracy. It is more democracy – real democracy.

We can’t go on with the current system if we want to survive and thrive. We can’t be reduced to a battle between professionalised parties and politicians every few years, filtered through billionaire-owned media and social media algorithms designed to maximise outrage. We need democratic systems capable of long-term thinking, collective intelligence and genuine public participation.

I increasingly believe citizens’ assemblies must become central to political decision-making. Not just public consultations, but carefully managed exercises that governments are legally bound to act on, and which they can’t ignore. There have been lots of examples of these working, for instance with the abortion debate in Ireland.

We need real citizens’ assemblies:

  • selected by sortition,
  • representative of society,
  • informed by expert evidence,
  • independently facilitated,
  • transparent,
  • protected from lobbying and party control,
  • and crucially, given real power.

Political theorist Hélène Landemore argues that wider participation often produces better outcomes than narrow elite decision-making. Diversity of experience and perspective matters. Collective intelligence matters. She talks about this in her book, Politics Without Politicians – I find the title somewhat appealing.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/456838/politics-without-politicians-by-landemore-helene/9780241649169

Frankly, looking at the state of modern politics, it is difficult to argue elite governance is working well. Westminster has produced a catalogue of failures over the last two decades. The same has and is happening in the USA where one could argue matters are even worse.

Citizens’ assemblies have already shown promise in many countries helping unlock progress on issues traditional politics struggled to resolve. Imagine if they were used seriously in the UK on issues such as:

  • climate and energy transition,
  • AI and automation,
  • housing,
  • social care,
  • media reform,
  • constitutional reform,
  • immigration,
  • nature restoration.

Imagine ordinary people being trusted with complexity instead of manipulated with fear – unfettered by corporate interests and not influenced by lobbyists. Most people, when given time, evidence and the chance to deliberate together, are capable of empathy, nuance and compromise. Most people, when told the truth, with options outlined clearly, will choose what will benefit society most. Far more capable, perhaps, than the current political and media class.

Our present system rewards tribalism, outrage, short termism and even narcissism as we’ve seen across the pond. It concentrates wealth and power – there are now 177 billionaires in the UK, up six since 2021. They have a combined wealth of £653bn, roughly 22% of GDP. I found these stats on the net, which I found, frankly, shocking:

  • The Top 1%: The wealthiest 1% of UK adults control 21.3% of the nation’s total wealth, which equates to a collective value in the trillions.
  • Bottom 50% Comparison: By contrast, the poorest 50% of the UK population hold only about 4.6% of the country’s total wealth.
  • The Richest Families: The 50 richest families in the UK hold more wealth combined than the poorest 50% of the population (roughly 34 million people)

    I mean, how is this morally justifiable?

The system actively selects against honesty and long-term thinking. This simply won’t work with the number of crises, many of them accelerating, that we’re facing. We need cooperation on a scale humanity has rarely achieved before and if democratic systems cannot evolve to meet that challenge, darker forces absolutely will fill the vacuum. History will repeat itself.

Given recent political events in the UK, I’ve been pondering the best, median and worst case scenarios for the next few years.

Best case scenario — “Green renewal and democratic repair”

  • The Labour leadership crisis is resolved relatively quickly after a change in direction rather than descending into factional warfare, like we saw with the Tory party. Andy Burnham or a similar figure successfully reframes politics around competence, fairness, infrastructure and hope rather than managerial decline.
  • Labour forms a broader coalition inside the party with stronger voices on climate, welfare, housing, democratic reform, industrial and economic strategy, immigration and public services.
  • Investment in renewables, grid upgrades, home insulation, battery storage, public transport and emerging technologies accelerates. Planning reform and grid connection reform finally unblock stalled projects – without compromising nature protections.
  • Electricity prices fall as the UK becomes less dependent on volatile international gas prices. Energy security improves through domestic renewable generation rather than new fossil fuel dependency.
  • National infrastructure projects begin to show visible benefits – warmer homes, better rail and bus links, cleaner rivers, new jobs in retrofit and energy, more resilient local economies.
  • The NHS stabilises through workforce investment, prevention, social care reform and better pay/conditions, reducing burnout and waiting lists.
  • A more honest public conversation develops around immigration – explaining demographic pressures, NHS staffing needs, agriculture, care work, universities and the economic contribution of migrants. Dehumanising rhetoric loses traction.
  • Public education, media literacy and local community investment help reduce support for far-right politics and conspiracy movements.
  • Protest rights are partially restored. Some authoritarian legislation from recent years is rolled back. Peaceful protest and civil liberties are treated as democratic necessities rather than threats and charges are dropped against the 1000’s currently facing prosecution under anti-terrorism laws for holding cardboard placards.
  • The UK adopts a more balanced and lawful international stance, including stronger pressure for ceasefires, adherence to international law and reduced political tolerance for war crimes or collective punishment. Yes, I’m referring to Israel mostly, but also in Sudan, China, Iran, Venezuela, and other parts of the world.
  • New North Sea oil and gas expansion remains cancelled as renewables become economically dominant, and the UK becomes energy independent.
  • Super El-Nino hits with devastating consequences.
  • Farming policy shifts toward resilience – soil restoration, flood mitigation, regenerative agriculture, food security and partial dietary transition toward lower-emission food systems – plant based diet.
  • AI and data-centre expansion are regulated and taxed effectively enough that some of the economic gains are recycled into public services, training and eventually forms of income support as automation increases. This could include a Universal Basic Income – we have to tax data centres as income tax revenue falls, due to job losses to AI.
  • The Green Party of England and Wales continues making gains in local government and Parliament, helping keep climate and nature breakdown politically unavoidable even if not in government.
  • Media reform begins to address ownership concentration, misinformation, transparency and platform accountability are addressed more seriously – see the Media Sovereignty Act.
  • Despite worsening climate impacts globally, the UK becomes somewhat more resilient through adaptation planning, flood defence, insulation, energy security and social cohesion.

If Labour could manage that, I’d be both amazed and amazingly grateful.

Median case scenario — “Managed decline with partial progress”

  • Labour remains in power or remains the largest poltiical force, but internal divisions and fear of media backlash limit ambition – what we have now.
  • Some green infrastructure succeeds – especially renewables and grid investment (NSIPs) – but projects are slowed by planning disputes, local opposition (NIMBYs), underinvestment and institutional inertia.
  • Electricity becomes somewhat cleaner, but bills remain high because housing inefficiency, the link to gas prices and infrastructure costs are not fully addressed.
  • NHS pressures ease slightly in some areas but remain severe overall due to ageing demographics, staff shortages and chronic underfunding.
  • Climate policy survives but is inconsistent – progress on renewable power exists alongside airport expansion (on the agenda again), road building and continued support for some fossil fuel extraction. Global emissions continue rising.
  • AI expansion and automation increase inequality faster than political systems adapt to it. Productivity gains mostly flow upward into large corporations and asset owners.
  • Immigration remains a toxic political issue. Neither side fully wins the argument. Public frustration continues to be channelled toward migrants rather than structural economic problems.
  • Reform UK and other populist-right forces continue growing but do not fully take power. Their rhetoric shifts mainstream politics further right on migration, protest and culture-war issues.
  • Protest rights remain restricted compared to previous decades, though not completely dismantled.
  • Media sensationalism, billionaire influence and algorithm-driven outrage continue dominating public discourse. Trust in institutions remains low.
  • Climate impacts worsen globally: crop failures, migration pressures, insurance instability and extreme weather increasingly affect everyday life and public finances. Super El-Nino hits with devastating consequences.
  • The public becomes more politically cynical and emotionally exhausted rather than mobilised – stagnation.
  • Living standards stagnate for many people, but outright collapse is avoided through continued state borrowing, technological adaptation and institutional resilience.
  • The Greens continue gradual growth but remain structurally constrained by the electoral system – proportional representation neeeded.

Side note on data centres and AI: Politicians are failing to keep up with the pace of AI advancement, and the need for data centres to provide a viable economic model – if we don’t want to reject that model completely. In order to be competitive and fund the standards of living, welfare, healthcare, and even military resources we’re used to, then we have to move very quickly, increasing electricity production massively and quickly – which nuclear can’t do but renewables could – as well as the number of UK data centres. The alternative, which actually might be healthier and happier but fraught with peril, is to regress, become far more subsistence based, with communities really supporting one another but without luxuries, holidays and many of the privileges we’ve become used to – maybe that would be a good thing, given we have had our fair share of the carbon budget.

Worst case scenario — “Authoritarian fossil-fuel populism”

  • Labour fractures after electoral defeats, leadership crises or economic shocks. Progressive politics becomes divided and demoralised.
  • Reform UK or a broader right-populist coalition wins power during a period of economic stress, migration panic and institutional distrust – this could happen quite quickly.
  • Net zero policies are heavily weakened or more likely abandoned. New North Sea oil and gas extraction expands while renewable deployment slows through planning obstruction and political hostility.
  • Energy prices remain volatile due to continued fossil fuel dependence and international instability. More people die from the cold.
  • Protest laws become significantly harsher. Direct action, climate protest and some forms of dissent are increasingly criminalised or surveilled. More prisons and detention camps are built.
  • Public broadcasters and regulators face increasing political pressure. Media ecosystems become even more dominated by outrage, disinformation and billionaire influence.
  • Migrants, refugees, Muslims, LGBTQ+ people and other minorities become central political scapegoats. Hate crimes and political intimidation increase.
  • Democratic norms erode, but won’t collapse overnight – attacks on courts, civil society, universities, journalists and human rights frameworks become normalised. This is what happened in the 1930s.
  • Economic inequality worsens sharply. Public services including the NHS deteriorate further through privatisation and austerity-style policies.
  • AI-driven job losses accelerate without meaningful redistribution, retraining or welfare reform, fuelling anger and instability.
  • Climate impacts intensify globally while adaptation remains inadequate – flooding, food inflation, insurance withdrawal, water stress and migration pressures become increasingly destabilising.
  • International instability increases through resource conflicts, wars and geopolitical fragmentation – it’s happening now.
  • More extreme far-right movements emerge claiming even right-populist governments are “too weak”, driving a further cycle of radicalisation and authoritarianism.
  • Civil unrest becomes increasingly common – riots, political violence, strikes and heavy-handed policing become part of normal political life.
  • Institutional trust collapses further as large parts of the public conclude the political system no longer works for them.
  • Local resistance movements, trade unions, community groups, environmental organisations and some councils continue resisting and building alternative structures of solidarity and resilience – we will not be silenced, and we will not give in to fascism and hate.
  • Super El-Nino hits with devastating consequences.

Did you spot the bullet point that happens in all the scenarios. It’s my example, and in the case of Super El-Nino probably inevitable, of the impacts of climate breakdown that will happen whatever we do, like sea level rise and coastal cities eventually being swamped.

These scenarios can sound pretty bleak, but the latter has too high a probability for my liking, on our current trajectory. Personally, I have lost faith in our political system, despite being a district councillor and member of the Green Party. Even in the Green Party I’ve seen the desperation to win votes mean people don’t do what is right, and that appears to be getting worse as we get bigger. I will continue to work to the best of my ability within the system, for the moment, but truly believe we need Citizens’ Assemblies to get us out of the mess we’re in.

I do not want a future built on authoritarianism, scapegoating and fear. I want one built on participation, compassion, truth and shared responsibility.

We need to rebuild democracy itself to give long term resilience, community, wellbeing and equality.

We can’t afford to give up, see you on the streets ✊

Useful links:

And here is a picture of my cat, being judgemental, because he wanted to be involved and frankly is better at governance than me.

Gideon passing judgement
Gideon passing judgement

Rage Is a Rational Response

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It’s February, and I’m still consumed by rage – with a generous side-order of despair – at our direction of travel. Are we really this stupid? Are we genuinely going to let a tiny proportion of the world’s population completely screw the rest of us over?

Last week I wrote about the government report on the risks of ecosystem collapse to national security. The report was finally released in January, but accusations abound, including from The Times, that this is not the full version. Some of the most worrying conclusions, particularly around food supply chains and geopolitical instability, appear to have been quietly redacted. Hardly in the public interest. And, as mentioned last week, all very Don’t Look Up.

I also wrote a letter to several regional newspapers on the subject, which was published today in the heady heights of the Sunderland Echo.

It’s also appeared in the Eastern Daily Press, Derby Telegraph, Leicester Mercury, and a few others – and, unlike the government report, it hasn’t been redacted. For some reason the Daily Mail hasn’t picked it up yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

Our excessive lifestyles are driving global heating. Greenhouse gas emissions are still rising, and the climate and nature crises are accelerating, catalysed by feedback loops that are pushing us over, towards – or dangerously close to – irreversible tipping points. When I say “our excessive lifestyles”, I mostly mean the richest 1% of the global population, who are responsible for a grotesquely disproportionate share of emissions and pollution. According to Oxfam, they emit as much as the poorest 66% — around five billion people.

And even within that 1%, things get worse. A tiny subset – the top 0.1% – is responsible for a massive share of those emissions again, thanks to private jets, yachts, multiple mansions, and lifestyles so carbon-intensive they should probably come with a health warning for the planet.

In other words, a microscopic number of people are wrecking the climate for everyone else.

GroupApprox % of Global PopulationApprox % of Global Emissions
Bottom 99%~99%~(~84% total, much of it very low per person)
Top 1%~1%~16–17% total emissions (Oxfam International)
Top 0.1% (subset of 1%)~0.1%A very large share of that 16% — maybe several % of total emissions just from this tiny slice (per high-emitting daily footprints) (Oxfam International)
Top ultra-rich / Billionaires<<0.1%Extremely high emissions share per capita (data vary) (Oxfam America)

What makes this even more obscene is that while countries like the UK are somewhat insulated from the worst impacts of climate breakdown, it’s poorer countries that are already bearing the brunt: floods, fires, crop failures, heatwaves, and displacement. I say “somewhat insulated” deliberately. We’ve already felt the impacts here over the past few years, and they’re accelerating.

If the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) slows down and stops, as recent research warns it might, the UK will experience far colder conditions alongside extreme weather, making food production incredibly difficult. This is not something we should be sitting comfortably about. It could happen within our lifetimes.

So yes, a small percentage of the world’s elite – the super-rich who control the media, politics, economies, and militaries – are conning us. For years they tried to hide it. Corporations shifted responsibility onto individuals: BP invented the personal carbon footprint calculator; airlines peddled dubious offsetting schemes. But now many of the conmen aren’t even pretending anymore, openly lusting for more power and levels of wealth I can’t even comprehend.

Trump openly told us Venezuela is “about the oil”. An increasingly likely conflict with Iran would be too. Greenland? Rare earth minerals. Netanyahu and Trump have both fantasised about turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” – built on the blood, bones, and bodies of Palestinians, thousands of them children. It’s immoral. It’s grotesque.

We’re in the middle of a pandemic, but not COVID, Ebola, or anything biological in the usual sense. This one often presents as a middle-aged or elderly white man with obscene wealth and a messiah complex. A tiny clique with so much money and influence they can bend even well-meaning politicians to their will through donations, threats, blackmail, litigation, and lies.

You see it constantly with oil and gas giants. Their lobbyists meet ministers hundreds of times a year – a level of access completely unavailable to ordinary people. And that access isn’t accidental: it’s transactional.

It’s not just oil and gas. It’s billionaire media barons like Murdoch, pulling the public’s strings while extracting enormous political power. No UK government in recent history has been elected without Murdoch’s blessing. It’s arms manufacturers profiting from wars they often help create through political and media influence. And behind it all sit the financiers and investment firms, funding corruption, death, division, and lies – all to keep shareholder payouts flowing and the illusion alive that they’re “on our side”.

They’re not.

Epstein is one of the most flagrant examples of how far this rot goes. How deep does the abuse run? How far does the money trail stretch? Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been outed. Peter Mandelson has been exposed for accepting money and handing over state secrets. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Richard Branson, Steve Bannon, Howard Lutnick, Larry Summers, Brett Ratner, Ehud Barak — all appear in the files, with more names emerging all the time.

Epstein’s links to Putin, the Kremlin, and other authoritarian regimes are well documented. And then there’s Trump – already a convicted sex offender – whose Department of Justice has redacted anything remotely incriminating about him. Yet he’s corrupted the US political system to enrich himself while his brown shirts ICE agents round up and deport thousands, or shoot and kill innocent US citizens.

I’m not saying everyone named in the Epstein files is guilty of a crime. Some will be innocent. But there is a common thread: wealth, power, and overwhelmingly white men. And it’s telling that the only person imprisoned for what Epstein enabled is a woman – Ghislaine Maxwell – while powerful men hide behind redactions. Meanwhile, victims’ names and images are dumped online.

This isn’t justice. It’s a parody of it.

The corrupt, immoral patriarchy rules. A small cabal of the super-rich manipulates political, economic, and social systems to maintain power, controlling much of the media and warping public perception via algorithms and social platforms. The introduction of Palantir will make this worse, but that’s a topic for another day.

In the UK we now live in a surveillance state, with increasingly repressive anti-protest laws, restrictions on freedom of speech, and even the right to trial by jury – enshrined in Magna Carta – under threat. Can we really make the changes needed to safeguard liberty, wellbeing, and democracy in the face of climate breakdown, resource wars, economic collapse, and rising fascism and authoritarianism?

I see no hope in the traditional parties. Labour has reneged on promise after promise and looks set to lose badly next time around. The Conservatives have learned nothing and are racing Reform to the far right. Reform, despite its “anti-establishment” cosplay, is stuffed with millionaire MPs who broke the country, most of them ex-Tories, and now want to privatise what remains — including the NHS.

I do feel hope with the Green Party – of which I’m a member and a District Councillor. Membership is growing. Good, honest candidates are winning. Hannah Spencer stands a strong chance in the Gorton and Denton by-election. Parliamentary gains don’t feel impossible anymore. Coalition power doesn’t feel impossible. Nothing does, not with Labour and the Conservatives floundering and Reform slowly being found out.

But will it be enough?

Will it take back power from billionaires, patriarchy, and the men pulling global strings? Will it stop fascism, protect children, dismantle elite abuse networks? I don’t think it will, not on its own. The systems are too entrenched, too corrupt. Any new party entering power risks being absorbed, neutralised, or corrupted by Westminster and the global elite.

These systems aren’t reformable. They’re fundamentally broken.

Which leaves one conclusion.

We need a revolution – preferably a peaceful one, because history shows violent revolutions rarely deliver lasting justice.

Revolution is the only way to make the radical changes required for a survivable, fair, and just future: tackling the climate and nature crises, redistributing wealth, ending wars of greed, dismantling elite impunity and stopping the rise of fascism. You can already see it beginning: resistance campaigns, mutual aid, community organising, people growing food, fixing things, giving time, showing kindness under adversity.

Resistance is alive. But oppression and repression are fighting back, and the sparks of revolution must be fanned – through non-violent direct action, communication, campaigning, and community – if they are to survive and grow into a blaze that not even the billionaires can extinguish 🔥

If you want to see one example, look at https://takebackpower.net/. There are many others. And yes, consider joining the Green Party. We’ll need its people, ideas, and values for whatever comes next.

That’s all for today.

Simple, really.

We just need a revolution. ✊

For some light relief here are two pictures of Budge, the Norwich Cathedral cat who I like to visit, and one of Gideon, who runs my house. Who do you think is the most dignified?

Budge on heating vent
Budge standing guard
Gideon…I dunno…

Don’t Look Up: When the Government Finally Admits the Planet Is Breaking

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The Government has finally published a report it previously suppressed, calmly explaining that biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse pose a direct threat to national security. Which is nice of them. Always good to know when the house is on fire, even if the alarm only goes off after the roof has already collapsed.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nature-security-assessment-on-global-biodiversity-loss-ecosystem-collapse-and-national-security

The report itself is actually quite readable. That’s part of what makes it so disturbing. It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t rant. It doesn’t glue itself to the road or throw soup at a painting. It just politely lays out, in civil-service prose, how the life-support systems of the planet are failing, and how that might be a bit of a problem for economies, borders, food supplies, public health, and, you know, civilisation.

Critical ecosystems are at risk of collapsing
Critical ecosystems are at risk of collapsing

If anything, it feels conservative, which is fairly typical of government or scientific reports on the climate and nature crises. Multiple critical ecosystems – coral reefs, boreal forests, major mountain systems like the Himalayas – are expected to collapse soon. Not in 2100. Not for our grandchildren to worry about. Soon soon. Others, including the Amazon rainforest, the Congo Basin and mangrove systems, are likely to follow. Dominoes, but with forests and oceans instead of plastic rectangles.

Key Judgements
Key judgements

Meanwhile, atmospheric CO₂ has reached 428 parts per million, and the line on the graph is still curving upward. That single number underpins a whole cascade of consequences: climate breakdown, ecosystem collapse, floods, fires, crop failures, water stress, resource conflicts, mass migration, disease outbreaks, and increasing parts of the planet becoming uninhabitable. From there, social instability and collapse aren’t radical ideas — they’re logical outcomes.

Much of this is already happening, of course, especially in poorer countries that did the least to cause the problem and are least able to adapt. But don’t worry – I’m sure the market will fix it. Any day now.

What’s particularly maddening is that this isn’t some unsolvable mystery. There is no missing equation. No magical technology yet to be invented by a mega-corporation keen to make an even more obscene profit. We already know what to do.

We could fly less. Eat less meat. Scale up renewable energy at speed — the way China is doing while we argue about whether onshore wind or solar is “a bit unsightly”. We could rewild vast areas of land instead of treating nature like a decorative afterthought. We could protect rivers, lakes and oceans – which might help if water companies weren’t allowed to behave like extraction businesses with a sewage fetish. Public ownership, anyone?

We could grow more food locally. Insulate our homes properly. Use public transport that actually works. Stop pouring obscene amounts of energy into data centres and AI so that a chatbot can write slightly worse emails than a human already can. None of this is revolutionary. It’s just unfashionable — and it directly contradicts the Government’s growth mantra.

There will be no growth, of money or nature, on a planet stricken by floods, fires and water shortages, or on one with finite resources that will inevitably run out, despite billionaires’ protestations to the contrary. It’s all a bit King Cnut — in fact, with a little rearrangement, that surname could apply to many world leaders and tech bros.

History remembers King Cnut kindly; he was making a point — today’s leaders genuinely expect the tide to obey.

What really blocks progress isn’t technology — it’s power. Decisions about the future of the planet are still overwhelmingly made by a small group of ageing men, many of them white, some of them inexplicably orange, who will be comfortably dead before the worst consequences arrive. They continue to gamble everyone else’s future while telling us to be realistic. At times, I genuinely wonder whether Trump’s plan is simply to burn everything down, unable to tolerate the idea of a world continuing without him.

And here’s the thing: if we fail to act, the consequences won’t land on some distant, hypothetical generation. They’re already landing. They will fall hardest on our children – many of whom may never grow old enough to reach our age, let alone retire.

But don’t worry. The plan still seems to be: carry on, extract more, emit more, suppress awkward reports, and hope no one joins the dots.

Don’t look up.

Time, unfortunately, is.

Take Back Power – join the Resistance.

Don't Look Up
Don’t Look Up


Happy New Year

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Here’s to hoping 2026 is full of more kindness, empathy, and positive change than 2025 ever managed.

Yeah. A likely fucking story. Fuck this shit.

The Labour government in the UK has been a betrayal — yes, even accounting for media bias and the usual right-wing bullshit. With a mandate that large (even if not proportionally representative), they could have done so much better. Instead, we get this hollow, managerial nothingness. So what the hell has happened to Labour? What’s happened to democracy? To the right to protest? To freedom of speech? To simply being a decent human being?

I went for a brief walk around the local church graveyard today, on my way back from the doctors — I’ve succumbed to the traditional Christmas viral cold / bronchitis combo. The gift that keeps on fucking giving.

I love Yew trees (Taxus baccata). The berries are magnificent right now — just don’t eat them. If you do, spit out the kernels very quickly, or you’ll get very sick. Possibly dead. Nature doesn’t fuck about.

Yew Trees at Salhouse Church

There are several Yews around Salhouse Church. I often wonder whether they were there before the main church was built in the 14th century. The site certainly has older origins. Maybe it was sacred long before Christianity turned up — first to the Norse who occupied East Anglia, before them the Saxons, before them the Celts, and before that the people who left those astonishing footprints on the Norfolk coast nearly a million years ago.

Who knows what kind of religion or leadership that hominid family followed. Hopefully not the same patriarchal bullshit we’re still trapped in today.

The Yews got me thinking about rebirth as the year turns. About how they grow — sending out looping branches that strike the ground, take root, and become new trees. That process repeats over centuries, meaning that over thousands of years Yews effectively walk across the landscape, if left alone. They’re said to have walked across from America when the continents were joined. Allegedly that’s where Tolkien got the idea for Ents (thanks, Bushcraft instructor Phil – check out https://www.philbrookelongbows.co.uk/).

That ties neatly to my personal motto: Keep On Keeping On.
Be like a Yew.

We have to keep trying to make things better — not just for younger generations, who are utterly screwed as things stand, but for ourselves too. And for the climate. And for other animals, plants, birds, sea life.

What’s happening to the oceans right now is devastating: coral reefs dying, overfishing continuing, grotesque bycatch, ghost nets trapping, suffocating, killing. It’s heart-breaking.

So yes — we need to fight. Non-violently, but relentlessly. Fight for everything:

Fight the far right and hateful extremism in all its poisonous forms.

Fight the oil and gas companies making obscene profits at the expense of climate stability, nature, and human lives.

Fight corrupt governments and politicians who lie, profiteer, and mostly serve themselves. There are notable exceptions — but our own government, and much of UK politics, seems firmly lodged in the corrupt category rather than the redeemable one.

Fight media companies run by billionaire owners desperate to preserve the status quo and their hoarded wealth — whether social media giants or legacy press — pulling political strings while brainwashing us with consumerist advertising and clickbait bullshit.

Fight the narcissistic, misogynist, arrogant old white men (yes, there are women too, but far fewer) who have clawed their way to the top of the fetid political pile, treating truth, human lives, welfare, and civil rights as expendable commodities — traded for votes or simply discarded as democracy and the right to protest are eroded.

Fight banks and insurance companies that prioritise mega-corporations and polluting industries over ordinary people, worshipping shareholder profit while morality gets flushed down the toilet.

Fight the ultra-rich — the billionaires — who hold more wealth and power than any individual should, often avoiding tax while amplifying extremist views from inside their tiny, self-reinforcing echo chambers.

Fight fascism. It’s rising. The warning signs are everywhere. Thanks to my GCSE history teacher — and many books about the 1920s and 30s — for making that painfully obvious. Books are good.

Fight for those worst off: people suffering under neo-colonialism or living on the front lines of climate breakdown. They are dying because of our emissions, our lifestyles, our privilege, entitlement, arrogance, and ignorance — perpetuated by media propaganda, poor education, and comfortable denial.

Fight for Palestinians still being killed in Gaza, and in the West Bank where illegal settlements continue, aid agencies and journalists are blocked, tents sit on rubble, children starve or freeze to death.

Israel is, right now, acting as a terrorist state — and our government still supports it with arms, intelligence, and foreign policy cover. It is heartening to see so many Jewish people worldwide, including within Israel, opposing these war crimes — and to see young Israelis resisting the draft. Please support the UK hunger strikers.

Fight for the people of Sudan, where genocide continues. And for people everywhere —men, women, children — being injured, raped, displaced, and killed. Men use religion as justification, or don’t bother with excuses at all, to dominate, profit, rape, and murder as climate collapse accelerates and wars over finite resources intensify.

We do have abundant resources: sun, soil, ecosystems — if we care for them. But they don’t generate exponential profit for the already-rich, so they’re ignored. They just allow us to live.

You can’t eat money.
We could eat the super-rich, but it wouldn’t be very nutritious. Or sustainable.

Fight for refugees fleeing war, climate catastrophe, and persecution — much of which we helped create. And if you don’t like refugees coming to the UK, then fight for foreign aid instead of cutting it. Cut aid, increase refugees. It’s not fucking complicated.

Fight those putting up flags to spread hate, lies, and division — marking territory for the far right. They target migrants, refugees, LGBTQ+ people, neurodivergent people, black and brown communities — anyone they can scapegoat instead of confronting those actually responsible. They’re manipulated by toxic media and lying politicians. I do wonder how many of those politicians are sponsored by Russia, the US, or both.

Fight for women’s rights — which after decades of struggle are now sliding backwards. And honestly, given the shit job men have done for the last 2,000+ years, maybe it’s time to let women run the show properly. The Abrahamic religions certainly haven’t covered themselves in glory.

Fight for the homeless, the mentally ill, disabled people abandoned by the state while funding is slashed to build obsolete aircraft carriers and weapons of mass destruction. Fuck that shit.

Fight the cult of eternal economic growth on a finite planet. Fight airport expansion. Fight the destruction of our remaining wild spaces, waterways, and seas. Fight pesticides killing insects, herbicides and fertilisers poisoning the land. Fight unnecessary new roads — we need public transport, not more cars. Fight single-use plastic; it’s just oil-industry brainwashing again. Screw Shell, BP, Exxon, Total, and the rest of them.

There is so much to fight for. So many injustices. How the hell do people just ignore it all?

Fight “the man.”
Stand up for kindness, empathy, community, and solidarity. Grow things. Get soaked in the rain and dance anyway. Play music. Just… play.

We can resist this seemingly inevitable slide toward corporate rule, billionaire oligarchy, and societal collapse—but only if we stand up and take back power.

Resist.

People love to say they wouldn’t have stood by while books were burned, neighbours interrogated, friends dragged off to camps. Well, we’re edging frighteningly close to that shit now. Peaceful protesters in the UK are already being arrested in their homes, surveilled, raided.

Democracy, free speech, and the right to protest are being stripped away across the UK and Europe—and it’s far worse elsewhere, including the US, where armed forces are deployed against citizens by a deranged, orange, wannabe strongman and his boot-licking entourage.

So what am I trying to say?

I dunno. Be like a Yew.

Keep on keeping on.
Relentless.
Sheltering.
Regenerative.
Toxic to immoral, illegitimate power.

Work with your neighbours. Trees always do.

So yeah. Happy New Year. Roll on 2026.

And for fuck’s sake—resist before it’s too late.

Or just have a snooze as it all collpases, like Gideon.

Why Aren’t They Listening?

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The War between the Land and the Sea
The War between the Land and the Sea

Salt, Sea Devil ambassador: “These are the words of a politician, vetted and craven and hollow. You would answer.”

Barclay, Ambassador for human-kind: “Because we were stupid. That’s the truth of it. And the whole planet is going to hell right now because we didn’t understand the consequences.”

Salt, Sea Devil ambassador: “But now, you do?”

Barclay, Ambassador for human-kind: “Yeah, now we do. Still every day water companies are pumping poison and sewage into our rivers and oceans, all the while dishing out bonuses to their bosses. And the thing is, we are letting them get away with it! We’re just sat at home, flicking through our phones, making tea, thinking it’s someone else’s problem! But it’s not. This is my fault. We all played our part. Now we have to help fix it. And the thing is, our kids know this! Our kids. They’re way ahead of us! Why aren’t we listening? Well, today’s the day we start.”

Salt, Sea Devil ambassador: “I think you are my favourite human.”

_____________________________________________________________________________

This exchange from the new BBC/Disney+ series The War Between the Land and the Sea stayed with me long after the episode finished. The sets, costumes and visuals are impressive — but it was Barclay, the unlikely ambassador thrust into responsibility, who delivers the most piercing truth:

“And the thing is, we are letting them get away with it!”

“Why aren’t we listening?” 

Two lines that feel painfully relevant.

Water companies, oil and gas giants, the media, the banks, and the politicians who prop them up have been getting away with it for decades — and we’ve let them.

Where am I going with this?

This post is about why we must accelerate the transition to renewable energy, whilst also bringing essential services like water back into public ownership. For decades, executives have prioritised profit, bonuses and shareholders over public good. Since privatisation in 1989, it’s been yet another “victory” for neoliberal capitalism — one that has spectacularly screwed us over.

We’ve Been Betrayed

The science on greenhouse gases has been clear for almost two centuries.

  • In 1824, Joseph Fourier described the greenhouse effect.
  • In 1861, John Tyndall identified the gases responsible. The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research — named after Tyndall — is just down the road from me in Norwich.
  • In 1900, Knut Angstrom, discovers CO2 strongly absorbs parts of the infrared spectrum. 
  • In 1938, Guy Callendar showed that temperatures rose over the previous century. He demonstrated that CO2 concentrations had increased over the same period, and suggested this caused the warming. His claims were dismissed.
  • In 1968, US President’s Advisory Committee panel warned that the greenhouse effect is a matter of “real concern”.
  • In 1975, scientist Wallace Broecker put the term “global warming” into the public domain.

The above has been followed by countless IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) assessments, and COPs (Conference of the Parties) to try to solve the challenge of climate breakdown. Some progress has been made, but not nearly enough.

We’ve known the facts. We’ve proven them. And yet oil and gas companies hid their own research, just as tobacco companies once hid the link between smoking and cancer. Billionaire-owned media outlets are defending them. Politicians were and are being lobbied into paralysis – just look at COP30. And so we are being lied to, misdirected and exploited whilst the planet is burning.

We have been failed time and time again by successive Governments who have put the interests of mega-corporations, profit and power, ahead of ordinary people. They have betrayed us to the altar of profit, lied, misdirected, and in some cases filled their pockets with blood money.

We didn’t “fail to understand” — we are being denied the truth.

We’re Not Stupid

Barclay says, “Because we were stupid.”

But we weren’t. We were and are being deliberately misled.

Instead of honesty, we got greenwashing, smokescreens, and faux responsibility — like BP inventing the personal carbon footprint calculator to shift the blame from corporations onto individuals.

Imagine if the public could be given the same clarity scientists shared recently at the National Emergency Briefing. The shift in understanding — and action — might come rapidly and radically.

National Emergency Briefing – https://www.nebriefing.org/

You can find recordings of the various segments of the National Emergency Briefing on YouTube.

How Fast Can We Decarbonise?

In the UK, we’ve reduced emissions — but we still emit far more per person than many countries with less wealth and fewer resources. And we should have made the major cuts twenty years ago. We’re now out of time for a gentle transition. We must act rapidly, even if it’s uncomfortable.

This will upset people, especially in a country used to convenience and abundance. But climate physics does not negotiate. Deaths, harm, migration, are all being caused right now by our carbon emissions.

Our Obligations 

We are privileged — often without realising it. Given our historic emissions, the UK has a moral obligation to move first and fast.

The alternative? Pull up the drawbridge, protect ourselves for a few extra years, and ignore suffering elsewhere. But our food imports, supply chains and future mass migration make that fantasy laughable.

Billions will be on the move. The question is whether we meet that future prepared — or panicked.

Tell the Truth

People are not being told the truth by politicians or the media. If they were, they’d understand what we are facing:

As laid out at the National Emergency Briefing, the collapse of AMOC (the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – a crucial system of Atlantic Ocean currents acting as a giant conveyor belt) could mean:

  • –30°C winters
  • extreme summer heat
  • chronic water shortages
  • the UK unable to grow food
  • the British becoming climate refugees

The irony isn’t lost on me; one wonders whether we’ll have enough small boats.

Extinction Rebellion warned we needed major emissions cuts in 2018. Oil and gas companies and wealthy governments around the world denied it, buried it, or have since waved around Carbon Capture and Storage — a technology unproven at meaningful scale, and one that conveniently ignores the huge emissions from extraction and transport of natural gas in the first place. Profit over life, again.

So, What Can We Do?

We need rapid, large-scale deployment of renewables:

  • Wind
  • Solar
  • Tidal
  • Geothermal – there’s some exciting stuff going on with old coal mines

Fusion power would be ideal, but remains underfunded and decades away. We also need to upgrade the grid and to build massive battery storage facilities. This is all doable and exciting, and will create huge potential in terms of sustainable economic growth, jobs and wellbeing, we just need the politicians in power to stop dragging their heels.

But there are obstacles. Solar is a prime example.

Solar Energy: What’s The Problem?
Rooftop solar is brilliant — low impact, popular, and efficient. But we no longer have the luxury of time. Large solar farms are faster to deliver and much cheaper per megawatt.

Using ChatGPT for initial comparisons (yes, with a pinch of salt but it saves me hours of trawling through websites and research papers), I asked, when looking at the electricity 4,000 acres solar panels could generate, what is cheaper and quicker to build – a large solar farm or rooftop mounted solar:

Large Solar Farms

  • 400MW: ~£400–600m plus land/grid costs
  • 800MW: ~£800m–1.2bn
  • Build time: 12–24 months after permitting

Distributed Rooftop Solar

  • 400MW: ~£600–800m (likely more)
  • 800MW: ~£1.2bn–1.6bn+
  • Rollout time: 5–10+ years

Planning times for solar farms could be slashed if government finally treated the climate emergency like an emergency.

And then there’s capitalism: energy companies don’t want millions of small producers cutting into profits. Legislation could fix this — but it requires political will. We already know neoliberal capitalism needs serious reform.

As for the criticism that solar farms use agricultural land:

  • They would occupy only 0.45%–0.82% of agricultural land, some of which is fallow at the moment anyway.
  • We already face food insecurity. Solar barely dents agriculture. 
  • Meanwhile, golf courses consume five times more land than solar would — and I know which I’d rather repurpose.

You can’t tee off on a golf course that’s underwater.

Unfortunately, there is significant opposition to solar farms, largely from people living near proposed sites — which is understandable

Grid Upgrades: The Unavoidable Backbone

We need new pylons, underground cables, or subsea routes — plus battery storage. None of this is optional, and the arguments are similar to the above. All options have ecological impacts, but we’re out of time for perfect solutions.

Pylons may be ugly, but they’re cheaper, faster, and even capable of creating wildlife corridors. France has even turned some into public art. If only imagination were a UK policy priority.

Large Scale Renewables Are the Clear Winner

Solar farms and other renewable energy sources are the clear winner if our priority is rapid decarbonisation. They are cheaper, quicker to build, will create new jobs and provide clean energy. They are our future proofing.

We face a choice: continue failing, continue betraying younger generations, retreat into selfishness and isolation—or respond to the climate and ecological emergencies with the urgency they demand, adopting something akin to a wartime mobilisation.

It may already be too late to avoid severe impacts. But every fraction of a degree of avoided warming saves lives, ecosystems and stability.

CO₂ rises → temperature rises → runaway climate impacts:

  • floods, fires, drought, famine, harvest failure, extreme weather, mass migration, ocean collapse, extinction events… and then societal collapse.

The stakes could not be higher.

The Path Ahead

We change — or we face the consequences.

The graph below shows how CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have changed over the millennia, using data from ice core samples.

Carbon dioxide levels are higher than any time in the last 800,000 years

Renewables give us a fighting chance of reducing emissions and avoiding societal collapse. Oil, gas and nuclear leave only waste and devastation. Renewables can coexist with nature and even help restore it when designed well.

It comes down to communicating honestly, successive governments, oil and gas companies, supported and controlled by billionaire media magnates, have denied people that honesty: change now, or our children will not live to the same age we do. 

We don’t have to let them make us stupid, but they won’t change on their own.
We have to force it.

Let’s Take Back Power

From billionaires. From fossil fuel companies. From media moguls. From corrupted politicians who may not even realise how compromised they are. Let’s stop them getting away with it.

They’ve been getting away with it for decades. They are “craven and hollow.”
We can stop them.

And yes — I’m going to say it:

Vote Green. Let’s make hope normal again

Promoted by James Harvey on behalf of Broadland Green Party, a constituent party of the Green Party of England & Wales PO Box 78066, London, SE16 9GQ

BBC Coverage of the Climate Crisis: A Missed Opportunity

1 Reply

I recently wrote to the BBC to complain about their coverage of the climate crisis, which I, and many others, believe remains woefully inadequate given the existential threats it poses. Below is the complaint I submitted.

Coverage of climate change 

I’m writing to complain about the BBC’s inadequate coverage of today’s letter from the Climate Change Committee to Government on the UK’s preparedness for at least 2°C of global warming by 2050.

This is a matter of profound national importance, yet your main news programmes gave it little to no prominence. Such omission feels negligent at best, and at worst suggests a deliberate downplaying of vital information, whether due to editorial decisions, management influence, or political pressure. The public deserves transparency on issues that will shape our collective future. It is already known that Downing Street blocked a government report warning that the collapse of rainforests, reefs, and mangroves could raise food prices in UK supermarkets.

Earlier this year, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) warned of escalating climate risks -more floods, fires, droughts, and ecosystem collapse. Their analysis projected GDP losses of up to 50% between 2070 and 2090, and warned that global heating of +3°C, possible as early as 2050, could cause over 4 billion deaths, societal collapse, and extinction events.

Despite the gravity of these findings, BBC reporting on the climate and nature crises remains inconsistent and insufficient. This undermines your stated purpose “to provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them.”

While I appreciate an article appeared on your website, this story should have led your main news bulletins, with clear context on what climate breakdown, mitigation, and adaptation mean for ordinary people. It would not have been difficult to feature credible climate scientists or policy experts.

I urge the BBC to give greater priority to the climate and nature crises, ensuring the public are properly informed and able to make meaningful democratic choices, particularly about which leaders and policies will act to safeguard our future and that of coming generations. 

You can read the letter I referenced here: https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/CCC-letter-to-Minister-Hardy-15-October-2025.pdf

The CCC warns that the UK must urgently strengthen its adaptation objectives to protect food security, infrastructure, public services, the economy, and access to financial services such as insurance. Many properties are already becoming uninsurable due to flood risk.

We are beyond the stage where it’s possible to mitigate all catastrophic climate impacts. Yet the current levels of adaptation -and even the plans for adaptation – remain unambitious and wholly inadequate. Inadequate seems to be the word of the day when it comes to both government and media responses to the climate and nature crises.

This is the response from the BBC I received last night:

Dear Mr Harvey,

Thank you for getting in touch about BBC News at Ten on 15 October.

We’re sorry you feel insufficient coverage was given to the letter addressed to the government from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), warning that the UK should be prepared to cope with weather extremes as a result of at least 2C of global warming by 2050.

We know that not everyone will agree with our choices on which stories to cover, or the order in which they appear. Our news editors make these complex decisions, based on the editorial merit of all the stories at hand. We accept that not everyone will agree with each decision – various factors are at play and there’s often debate in the newsroom too.

BBC News did cover this across our news outlets however and you can read the online report here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx24kllyye1o

The BBC has been reporting on both the effects of climate change and the changes that individuals and governments can make in order to reduce carbon emissions for many years. In recent years these reports have had increased prominence as the evidence grows about the speed and impact of climate change.

To read our latest News on the issue of climate change, you may be interested in the following link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cmj34zmwm1zt

We can assure you that the BBC is committed to providing fair and impartial coverage of the latest News stories to our audience, and climate change is an issue that the BBC takes very seriously.

We very much value your feedback. Complaints are sent to senior management and we’ve included your points in our overnight reports. These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the BBC. This ensures that your concerns have been seen by the right people quickly, and helps to inform decisions about current and future content.

If you’d like to understand how your complaint is handled at the BBC, you might find it helpful to watch the short film on the BBC Complaints website about how the BBC responds to your feedback. It explains the BBC’s process for responding to complaints, what to do if you aren’t happy with your response and how we share the feedback we receive.

Kind regards, 

BBC Complaints Team 
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

I appreciate that the complaints team forwards feedback to senior management, and I can only hope that the BBC – and the wider media – will soon recognise the urgency of reporting on the existential crisis that is climate breakdown.

This crisis threatens the lives and livelihoods of billions over the next 25 to 50 years — and millions are already being affected, displaced, and killed by its impacts. It demands coverage that reflects its true urgency, accuracy, and frequency.

I’d be very interested to hear what others think — please feel free to leave a comment or share your perspective below.

This is fine
This is fine