The UK coalition government is trying to push through the Lobbying Bill aka the Gagging Law. This is really bad and needs to be stopped because it puts our status as a free democracy seriously at risk. I’m not even overreacting. The bill aims to limit and suppress campaigns on topical issues during the entire … Continue reading
Treated day in and night out as the consumers we’ve become, we’re all used to deciding what kind of products and experiences we’d like. That should be good practise for a little exercise I want you to do. I think we should all – as citizens – think about the kind of society we’d like. … Continue reading
I’ve just finished reading Supply Shock by Brian Czech and I’m going to give you a summary of what I’ve learned. Basically after reading Enough is Enough by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill (see this post) I was desperate to get my hands on another book that would flesh out the steady state concept even more. … Continue reading
Lately, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way our society will be able to become both sustainable and equitable, providing a good quality of life for ourselves while allowing other species to flourish, is if we abandon economic growth and consciously transition to a postgrowth society. I realise that’s a tall order, but … Continue reading
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
If everyone in the world consumed the same amount of resources and produced as much waste as the average person in Western Europe, we’d need three planets. If we all lived like the North Americans, we’d need five. On the global scale, we’re using just over one and a half Earths worth of resources and … Continue reading
This little video (by Sustainable Man) got me thinking about cooperation vs. competition. We’re often told that competition is they key to survival – in nature, and in human society. Think Charles Darwin. And that is true, up to a point. But it’s not the whole story. Nature would be complete chaos if cooperation wasn’t … Continue reading
Continuing on from my last post, The Consumption Engineer, I now have an ethical question in my mind. On the one hand, I believe it is wrong to manipulate people in any way, and that we should always have freedom of choice. But on the other hand… Maybe Public Relations (PR) can do for sustainability … Continue reading
con·sum·er·ism Noun: Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the purchase of goods and services in ever-greater amounts. – Definition from Wikipedia Consumerism wouldn’t be a problem if we had an infinitely large planet with an infinite amount of natural resources. The catch is that this is pure fantasy and in reality our planet … Continue reading
First of all I want to express that I’m incredibly grateful and lucky to live in a country which has a democracy, and also to live in a time period where women have the vote. But wouldn’t it be super awesome and, you know, right, if we had even more than that? If we had an actual democracy? … Continue reading
If the leaders of the most influential countries and the CEOs of the biggest corporations, plus other key players working for large NGOs came to me and said, ”So Tegan, what do you propose?”, this is what I’d say. STEP 1. TAKE STOCK The foundation of a green economy is truly efficient use of resources. … Continue reading
While reading Libby Lester’s Media and Environment as research for an essay, I came across a section where she writes about another author’s work which I found very interesting. Published back in 1972, Anthony Down’s book is called Up and Down With Ecology – The Issue Attention Cycle. He theorized that any ecological issue goes through a … Continue reading
So we have this situation where the whole world is run on the assumption that economic growth is the major goal and all other aims like human happiness, humans having enough to eat and rare species being allowed to exist, that sort of thing, are secondary to that. We have this situation where we have … Continue reading
Tax. Isn’t that a horrible word? I’m sure it fills you with that indignant feeling – oh great, there the government goes again, taking loads of my hard earned wages to spend on their 5 star holidays and second homes. Great. But what if it could be a solution to the problematic discrepancy between environmental action and the profit-hungry … Continue reading
If you’re one of those people that agonize over the world’s many problems, and find that your awareness of current issues is threatening to turn into a black cloud of apathy and despair (rather than a fuel for positive action) then you are who I wrote this post for. Many people I know care a … Continue reading
Earth Baby 