On Naivety and Homelessness

My recent backpacking trip had many high points: swimming in the Portuguese sea, enjoying wine in the sun, seeing the Notre Dame… Low points included missing trains, paying through the nose for last minute accommodation, living on crisps and running out of money. But by far the worst experience I had while abroad was seeing … Continue reading →

Population: The Elephant In The Room

“The elephant in the room” is a funny phrase because if there was an elephant in your room, you’d definitely talk about it. Pretty loudly, I’m willing to guess. If there were two elephants, there’s absolutely no chance the issue would be ignored. And yet many people continue to ignore population growth and consumption growth. Population growth … Continue reading →

A Slice of Hope

It’s easy to get bogged down with the enormity of the problems that taunt humanity in the 21st century. Climate change, environmental degradation,  resource scarcity, species loss, pollution, environmental injustice, animal suffering, poverty, hunger, human rights violations, inequality, discrimination  corrupt governments, economic recession… The list goes on. But over the last couple of days I’ve come across a … Continue reading →

The Great Green Wall

The Great Green Wall is a long term project in Africa that involves planting a huge ‘wall’ or trees along the Southern edge of the Sahara desert. The picture below is a bit blurry in terms of the key, but you can clearly see the sandy colour representing the desert region and the emerald green line symbolizing the proposed … Continue reading →

What’s Wrong with Money?

What’s wrong with money? Nothing, intrinsically. But it gets in the way. The monetary system is a system based on debt,  scarcity and never ending growth. The first two aren’t very nice and the third is impossible, so it strikes me this isn’t a very good tripod to place our lives on. I’m no economist, … Continue reading →

Too Many People!

Over-population is a very touchy subject. It’s much easier to kind of ignore it and try to just deal with everything else. This post was actually inspired by my doing just that. I was posting all these great ideas about organic farming, recycling, passive solar heating and etc in an earlier post (What Are We … Continue reading →

Organic Cotton

Look, you have to click on this link and read Katherine Hamnett’s page about organic and conventional cotton growing. It brought tears to my eyes. http://www.katharinehamnett.com/Campaigns/Organic-Cotton// Also good news: Organic cotton is definitely getting cheaper. My mum brought an organic cotton sheet the other day that was the same price as the conventional ones. And … Continue reading →