Saturday, 27 November 2010
Labour's new policy reviews: announcement imminent - including in areas such as 'Loneliness'
Friday, 26 November 2010
A 'reprieve' from dangerous climatechange?
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Clegg: a true liberal
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Myself and Mr. Clarke in discussion
The Countryside and Cultural Change
Conference, review and discussions
Sainsbury Centre,
Garden Restaurant
Friday 3rd December 2010
Review of Culture of the Countryside, summary of its methods and findings:
5.30 – 6.30 Keynote Lecture and discussion
The countryside and cultural change – from localism to globalisation?
Dr Sanna Inthorn, School of Political Social and International Studies
Discussion led by:
Rt. Hon. Charles Clarke (Visiting Professor, School of Political Social and International Studies & former MP for Norwich South) &
Dr Rupert Read, School of Philosophy & Green Norwich City Councillor.
Monday, 22 November 2010
Does environmental science need philosophy?
There will be a UEA Public Lecture on Philosophy and the Environment this Thursday, 25th November, at 7 pm in LT2. This is a debate between Mike Hulme and Rupert Read on environmental science and philosophy.
All welcome.
Sunday, 14 November 2010
"Not killing people pays" says UN... Woohoo!
Saturday, 13 November 2010
What are the Labour Left for?
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Environmental thinking: a digest of my recent pieces, in case you've missed 'em:
http://rupertsread.blogspot.com/2010/11/change-we-need-to-escape-permanent.html
http://rupertsread.blogspot.com/2010/10/economically-valuing-ecosystem-services.html
http://rupertsread.blogspot.com/2010/10/stopping-slavery-and-stopping-climate.html
http://rupertsread.blogspot.com/2010/10/utopias-changing-climate-conference.html
http://greenwordsworkshop.org/node/18
http://oneworldcolumn.blogspot.com/2010/07/growth-and-death.html
http://oneworldcolumn.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-responsibility-to-future-justice-or.html
http://oneworldcolumn.blogspot.com/2010/03/future-people.html
The change we need: To escape permanent crisis
If we are to avoid being in a permanent ecological crisis, breaching the limits to growth, there are two over-arching requirements that our political, economic, legal etc. systems must observe:
1) 11 1) They need to involve genuinely long-term thinking, long-term planning. (We need and feel to think the needs of the 7th generation, and beyond.)
2) 22 2) They need also to be able to be rapidly-responsive to swiftly-changing environmental conditions, when those arise; e.g. to potential ‘climate surprises’, and in general to the need to change systems fast which are fuelling ecological threats that we have very limited time-spans to avert.
As soon as one reflects honestly upon the nature of the systems that we do in fact have, one realises just how dire a situation we are in, and how dramatically we need to shift our energy in order to give ourselves a chance of bringing about the change that we need in order to escape the crises currently staring us in the face, and in order not to jump into the frying-pan of endlessly succeeding crises (e.g. those which would be caused by our having no solution to the huge nuclear waste problem, by our hoovering up the tar sands and oil shales, by the ever-lengthening supply-lines and ever-diminishing sense of community implicit in the project of globalisation, etc.).
For this is the nature of the actual systems that we have:
1) They are incredibly short-termist. We think largely in terms of ‘business-cycles’, electoral-cycles, etc., at best. These are far shorter than the time-scales with which nature works, and upon which our descendants are hanging, as by a thread.
2) And yet they are also remarkably slow to respond to swiftly-changing environmental conditions, when those arise: A huge inertia is built into our energy-infrastructure, into our business and ‘market’ systems, into our politics. Think for instance of how difficult it has been to get the hydrogen economy or electric cars take seriously. Let alone shifts (e.g. to a steady-state economy, or to permacultural methods of agriculture) which require more fundamental alterations to the status quo. Or think of how poor many of our ‘democratic’ / electoral systems (case in point: First past the post) are at making feasible rapid change in the fundamental political forces in a country (FPTP makes it almost impossible for any new Party to grow at anything other than a snail’s pace).
Think of how conservative so much of our mind-set tends to be: We look to make the minimum possible reforms, as slowly as possible, to keep our system(s) staggering along, thinking only of the short-term as we do so.
If we are as a civilisation going to survive this century, and to put ourselves on a long-term path toward survivability and a culture that will last as permanently as is humanly possible, then we need to change this.
This is going to be very hard: for the very reasons indicated here! Fundamental features of our political economy, perhaps of our very psychology, militate against it.
That just makes it all the more important that we set our minds firmly to it. For the alternative – failure to change (1) and (2) – is clear. And disastrous.
We need in effect a revolution, or a linked set of revolutions. The kinds of change that occurred when Copernicus displaced Ptolemy, when the British or the French overthrew their monarchies, when slavery was abolished. Perhaps the revolutions that we need are even greater in profundity than those. No matter: we must make them nevertheless, for on our doing so our futures and those of our children depend. We can have a world in permanent ecological crisis, or in a state of collapse: or we can have a world in which we flourish, through changing radically the systems within which we operate. Those are now the only realistic options.
Business as usual with a few light green bells and whistles to decorate it is no longer an option.
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
How to support our troops in Afghanistan - Bring them home
Monday, 8 November 2010
Cath Elliott to speak to Greens, tomorrow night!
Sunday, 7 November 2010
You couldn't make it up
Thursday, 4 November 2010
20 questions to a blogger (me)
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
The fees disgrace - blame LABOUR
New blog rankings: Left rises, Right falls.
Community litterpick organised by Green Councillors in Wensum ward (my ward)
Green Party Councillors are organising a community litterpick in the Cadge Road area on Sunday 7th November at 2:30pm, meeting initially outside the Grove Pub.
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
OneWorldColumn online relaunch!
Unpredictability and resistance
Monday, 1 November 2010
How to protect the future, now that the Sustainable Development Commission has been abolished?
My evidence to Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee on my idea for Guardians for future generations, with strong powers:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmselect/cmenvaud/writev/esd/esd12.htm