Paul Arbair

Human societies the world over are confronted with a growing number and range of difficult and compounding problems and crises, which they are increasingly struggling to address and failing to solve, and which are slowly but surely eroding their ability to function effectively and undermining their capacity to coexist peacefully.

During the 2016 referendum campaign, #Brexiteers pretended that #Brexit was about ‘restoring the full sovereignty of Parliament’, which had allegedly been usurped by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. Now, they’re happy to see their unelected PM suspend this same Parliament.

The rise of ‘Extinction Rebellion’ signals that climate activism is moving up a gear. Further radicalisation is probably inevitable.

Here is how: in addition to your “climate strike”, or as a substitute to it if or when you get frustrated of being denied the kind of change you want, embark with all the strength and enthusiasm of your youth on an “energy diet”. A big, fat, relentless and endless energy diet. Not only on Fridays, but every single day of the week, 365 days per year, for the rest of your life.

In the modern world, our perceptions of reality are largely shaped by economic and financial considerations, and our policy conversations are largely built around intellectual categories and evaluative criteria that pertain to the economics discipline. Yet a long-term view shows that ‘The world in 2018’ is in a significantly different place than what economists typically claim, and than what many of us want to believe.

Mainstream economics seems to have learned little and changed nothing in the last decade, despite the fact that the financial crisis and its aftermath laid bare a number of important issues with its theories and models.