Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Public spaces are where physical and social resilience meet. Looking past levees and seawalls, and even beyond nature-based solutions to climate risks, public space designers and managers have to get people into the picture as we all come to terms with the urban impacts of climate change.
People are coming out of their silos. And if these movements have shown us anything, it’s that if we join forces and mobilise then decision makers will have to act.
In a world made nonsensical by rapid climate change, perhaps stories, one of the oldest forms of human meaning-making, can help make sense of the changed and changing world.
By their very nature, the success of citizens’ assemblies can also provide an alternative vision of how decisions can be made – and in so doing shame political parties and parliaments into improving their decision-making practices.
My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 16 years old. I come from Sweden. And I speak on behalf of future generations.
My experience with the Pentagon Papers showed that an act of truth-telling, of exposing the realities about which the public had been misled, can indeed help end an unnecessary, deadly conflict. This example is a lesson applicable to both the nuclear and climate crises we face.
Failing to learn from past mistakes is the only truly unforgivable mistake in science. And on climate change, the scientific community (by and large) has been criminally negligent when it comes to observing — and especially learning from — its own track record.
The promise of an International Green New Deal to is to avoid the pitfalls of cold war politics and unite humanity in the only project capable of preserving a habitable planet.
I briefly mentioned the Extinction Rebellion climate change protest in my last post. In this one I want to describe what some of my misgivings about it were and how I’ve now laid them aside and embraced the movement, thanks to a few dark nights of the soul and a little helping hand over the line from former British Home Secretary, David Blunkett.
The US Chamber of Commerce, through its Global Energy Institute (GEI), recently announced the launch of a major new climate initiative called the American Energy: Cleaner, Stronger campaign
So please stop saying something globally bad is going to happen in 2030. Bad stuff is already happening and every half a degree of warming matters, but the IPCC does not draw a “planetary boundary” at 1.5°C beyond which lie climate dragons.
But let’s not win that way. Let’s operate on the assumption that human beings are not grossly defective. That we’re capable of acting together to do remarkable things.
