Category: Environment

  • Insure Our Future

    Insure Our Future

    Why are these people standing in the window of Talbot AIG insurance in the City of London? New fossil fuel projects need three things: permits, money and insurance. Without insurance, most new fossil fuel projects cannot go ahead, and existing ones must close. This makes insurance the Achilles heel of the fossil fuel industry. Fossil…

  • Onlookers

    Onlookers

    At the heart of most environmental protests are committed activists, full of purpose and solidarity. Around the periphery, where disruption meets daily life, a kind of crust or scab forms. Spectators, police and security people, aggressive drivers, curious children with parents, and those who resolutely ignore the activists, all swirl around the edge. If they…

  • Ocean Rebellion 2022

    Ocean Rebellion 2022

    Ocean Rebellion is an international art collective who tackle Ocean degradation and biodiversity loss by conceiving playful, emotive and spectacular art interventions.The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) is a UN body, with headquarters on the Albert Embankment in central London. Early on the freezing cold morning of 12th Dec. 2022, delegates to their first physical conference…

  • No Step

    No Step

    I last flew in 2019, a night flight from LA to London. While the passengers slept or dozed in front of in-flight movies, I slid a window blind up and peered out. A few metres from my face, two huge jet engines were hammering out burning hot CO2, Nitrous Oxide and a cocktail of other…

  • Extinction Rebellion April 2022

    Extinction Rebellion April 2022

    “Climate activists are sometimes portrayed as dangerous radicals. The truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, April 4, 2022

  • Protection

    Protection

    ‘Fucking mask wearers’ swore the elderly gent as he and his wife looked around the farm shop tea room. He meant me, and I’d have taken it more seriously, if moments before he hadn’t sworn at everybody for parking their cars incorrectly. Still, it was an interesting pairing: authoritarian and pseudo-libertarian in one go. Nobody…

  • Shroud

    Shroud

    ‘The Sudarium of Oviedo, or Shroud of Oviedo, is a bloodstained piece of cloth measuring c. 84 x 53 cm (33 x 21 inches) kept in the Cámara Santa of the Cathedral of San Salvador, Oviedo, Spain.[1] The Sudarium (Latin for sweat cloth) is thought to be the cloth that was wrapped around the head of Jesus Christ after he died as described in John 20:6–7.’ The cloth has been dated…

  • Stranded Assets

    Stranded Assets

    Since the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, HSBC has poured over $110bn into fossil fuel firms and projects. Valuations of fossil fuel companies include the oil, gas & coal resources they’ve claimed for future exploitation. To comply with the Paris Agreement, most of these must stay in the ground; Mark Carney (former…

  • Compliance

    Compliance

    Since Covid cases have exploded again, I’ve returned to the City of London for my exercise. The streets are quiet but there is always at least one fugitive figure in view. As we come into proximity, I find myself trying to categorise them: compliant or libertarian, responsible or feckless, aware or oblivious. Will they cross…

  • Gully

    Gully

    The ebb and flow of the tides generally follows a sine curve, often described as the ‘rule of twelfths’. One twelfth of the volume of tidal water flows in the first hour after high water, two twelfths in the second hour, three in the third, three in the fourth, two in the fifth and the…

  • Burners

    Burners

    So why is it that so many carbon footprint calculators claim to be able to offset my 6.9 ton return flight, by persuading Atoc to further reduce her already minuscule footprint? And charge me a pittance to do so. Apart from this being bizarre and arrogant, something doesn’t add up here. Mike Berners Lee agrees:”Offsetting’…

  • SYL46 aka Brolley

    SYL46 aka Brolley

    Grey seal SYL46 (name changed to protect her identity), is a juvenile female: nicknamed Brolley, because she was first seen playing with an abandoned umbrella. She was kindly identified for me by the Cornwall Seal Group research Trust. She was among a small group who approached Susi and I while we were swimming along the Devon…