Category Archives: Environmental politics

Environmental politics Feminism

Appeasing the planet

A powerful piece from an economist, no less, well OK, the Guardian’s economic editor, on the current UK government’s attitude to climate change:

Indeed, one way to characterise the government’s approach to climate change is to compare it to that of the Chamberlain government in the late 1930s. Once it became clear that Britain really could not do business with Hitler, rearmament began, but the process was half-hearted.
Right up until the moment war was declared, Chamberlain hoped something would turn up, that somebody else, Stalin perhaps, would do Britain’s dirty work for it. And, to be fair, he had public opinion with him. There was scant appetite in the Britain of late 1938 or early 1939 for war with Germany, just as there is now no great clamour from the public for the lifestyle changes that would be necessary to make the sort of drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that Stern and others say are needed.

But if you are now really depressed, go over to Alas, a blog, for this great post, which wittily (if with a great deal of hard work behind the scenes), explains how feminism is for everybody.

Environmental politics

Trust your intuition

If it tastes better, seems better, if the inputs going into producing something are better, more balanced, then it will probably be better for you. Stands to reason really. And now it has been proved – organic produce is healthier.

Environmental politics

If the human race disappeared

… what would happen. This website of the book sets it out – I was taken by the conclusion that in 20 years our common vegetables would have reverted to unpalatable forms, which makes sense when you think about it: there’d be pretty strong selection pressures, and a lot of happy herbivores in the meantime.

Environmental politics

One more sign

One more sign of climate disturbance: the American Great Lakes are at record low levels.

And in another disturbing sign of the kind of feedback mechanisms that are occurring, cargo boats on them are having to carry less weight (so they can get over shoals), and hence there are more boats and more journeys… and hence more greenhouse gas.

Blogging/IT Environmental politics Feminism

A cure for an itchy voting finger

Thanks to Jim, who’s named this blog as No 13 in the Top Twenty Green Blogs. There’s also a people’s choice award, so should your voting finger be feeling a little itchy through lack of a chance to exercise it at Westminster, here’s your chance. There are some great blogs there – the observant might have noticed that my blog roll has been augmented…

Philobiblon also makes an appearance in the Britblog roundup No 139. Chameleon did, as ever, a truly stupendous piece of work, and offered, within her feminism section (not a regular feature of the roundup, I’m afraid to say), a piercing commentary on my abortion post, working from Susan Bordo’s Are Mothers persons?, with a great quote: “In practice, our legal tradition divides the human world as Descartes divided all of reality: into conscious subjects and mere bodies (res extensa). And in the social expression of that duality, some groups have clearly been accorded subject-status and its protections, while others have regularly been denied those protections, becoming for all medical and legal purposes pure res extensa, bodies stripped of their animating, dignifying and humanising ‘subject-ivity”.

As I said, not your average roundup….!

(You can also listen to the audio version, on Pods and Blogs from Radio Five Live.)

Environmental politics

Idiot of the week

The “prize” can be awarded, very early, to the driver of the Hummer(!) parked on double-yellow lines, blocking the cyclepath and most of the pavement, in Marchmont Street this afternoon. The registration number was “E8 CAR”. Where’s a traffic warden when you need one?