Common Cause for Nature: A call to collaborate
The lessons for the conservation movement held within Common Cause for Nature are deep and many. But I would argue the most important is the simplest of all, and comes before you get beyond the cover. It is the title – Common Cause for Nature. This is a call to arms to all of us who work […]
Nature: container, object, person, self?
Scholars like George Lakoff, John S Dryzek, Brendon Larson and Arran Stibbe have analysed political and environmental science discourse. A dominant frame is nature as a useful resource which is there to be exploited for human benefit. Its value is not intrinsic but instrumental.
What have the immigrants ever done for us?: Five reasons why the economic argument for immigration is destined to fail
“Immigration is like trade. It makes us rich” – The Times (paywall), May 27th 2013 “Immigrants: don’t you just love ‘em? They travel to Britain from far-flung lands, coming here to toil away in our shops and offices and homes, paying their taxes and generally making us all better off.” – The Telegraph, June 13th […]
The Conscience Industry: Tom Crompton at TEDxExeter
Unlike Ed, my polystyrene alter ego, I found this TEDx thing pretty nerve-wracking. There’s a big digital clock at your feet that counts down your allotted time, and then starts flashing admonishment if you overrun. But though Ed may seem rather more chilled out than me, at least I’ve still got more hair than him. […]
The Mouse Paradigm: how markets affect our morals
The life of a mouse is entrusted to your care. You can either save this mouse, and receive no money. Or play the market to bargain for its life, and accept that it will be killed. This is the Mouse Paradigm, and it’s the subject of a recent study into how economic markets affect our moral […]
Embedded emissions and the secret life of consumer values
If our carbon emissions are falling, it means we’re on the right track, right? And we’ve done it without needing to drastically change our economics (or even our lifestyles). But what if our accounting systems are wrong? A new animation exposes three lies we are told consistently by our government about our emissions, launched just […]
It’s (not just) the environment, stupid!
People who cut their carbon footprint because they’re worried about climate change are ‘environmental’ types, right? They love ‘nature’ and get fired up by those photos of polar bears stranded on melting ice. They might even rate ‘protecting the environment’ or ‘respecting the earth’ as their number one value. Well, no; not necessarily. As part […]
Money talks: the impact of economic framing on how we act and feel
We’re ‘consumers’ or ‘taxpayers’ and we care about things like ‘pay-off’, ‘return on investment’ and ‘growth’: that’s the bottom line. Right? Well, I’d put my money on it. But, actually, when did that happen? When did we start to pepper our meetings, our work, and even dinner conversations with such words and phrases? Sometimes, our […]
Values and the Sharing Economy
We are all painfully familiar with the plethora of statistics that illustrate how unsustainable modern lifestyles have become and how humanity is already consuming natural resources far faster than the planet can produce or renew them. In a bid to reverse these trends, increasing numbers of people are attempting to consume less, reduce waste and […]
Blue valuing green? Public engagement with climate change on the centre-right
The question of how to more effectively communicate with members of the public who hold centre-right political views is becoming increasingly important. Numerous studies show that in the UK – as elsewhere in the Anglo-Saxon world – sceptical voices and beliefs about climate change are concentrated among Conservative voters and think-tanks on the political right (e.g. the […]