it's not doom if it's the best case scenario
Authors: Elise Lobbedez and Nicholas BeuretPublished: November 2023, The Ecologist Lessons we can learn from the emergence of the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement. The emergence of the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement surprised the world as they started occupying roundabouts across France, opening tolls for free, and gathering massively in city centres every weekend to…
Published: Environment and Planning E, 2023 Abstract: Stories about the end of the world continue to pile up daily. There isn’t any sense of respite from the litany of horrors we are presented with. The eerie atmosphere of ecological catastrophe colonises our political imaginations. Understanding how we collectively imagine the end of the world, and…
Author: Nicholas Beuret Published: June 2023, Novara Media Coastal erosion is forcing people from their homes. “I’ve lived here all my life and I wouldn’t have thought it would possibly have eroded so much and as quickly as it has done.” Kenny Chaney lives in the village of Hemsby on the Norfolk coast. Hemsby has been under…
Published: Feb 2023, The Ecologist The extraordinary environmental costs of freeports. There is growing evidence of a series of marine die-offs connected to dredging around the UK, connected to the Tory freeport agenda, that the UK Government attempted to cover up. Almost 18 months ago there was a mass marine die-off neat Teesside in Yorkshire, that appears…
Published: Nov 2022, The Ecologist The end of 1.5C and the question of loss, damage and hope. The 27th Conference of the Parties climate talks have started in Egypt. World leaders come into this round of climate negotiations with no credible plan to stay below 1.5C of climate change, with no substantive improvements on the previous pledges…
Published: March 2022, Novara Media Blockades get the goods—and history proves it. All the pledges, promises and plans for tackling climate change have fallen short. Despite decades of mobilisations, protests and campaigns, the best the climate justice movement has secured is the promise that governments will limit future global warming to a disastrous 2.1C. Emissions, after a…
Published: November 2021, Novara Media We’re caught in a vicious cycle – and getting out won’t be easy We are into the era of hard climate choices. The low-hanging fruit of climate action will be exhausted within a decade, leaving only those hard-to-transition industries and transformations that will radically change our everyday lives. And it’s likely…
Published: October 2021, Novara Media Say hello to a green new deal for business. In the final few days before COP26 starts, there’s been a rush of policies and pronouncements from governments setting out how they aim to ‘close the gap’ between current carbon emissions and reaching net zero emissions by 2050. For the most part,…
Authors: Giovanni Bettini, Nicholas Beuret and Ethemcan TurhanPublished: ACME: An International Journal of Critical Geographies 2021 Abstract: Migration and climate change are hot topics generating widespread concerns and fears in European public opinion. However, a striking difference between them is the ‘efficacy’ of the fears that surround the two topics. For migration, the spectre of…
Published: August 2021, The Ecologist A future of carbon neutral border industries criminalising climate migrants is already happening. The number of people crossing the English Channel seeking refuge has risen in recent weeks. This has been accompanied by the predictable right-wing decrying of the ‘invasion’, and populist politicians and commentators calling for the criminalisation of search and rescue…
Published: June 2021, The Ecologist If you want a vision of our green future, imagine a Millennial working a zero-hour contract in a care home, looking after a lonely bed-ridden Boomer – forever. From the current talk of green jobs by the Tories to Labour’s Green Industrial Revolution; the talk of thousands of green jobs…
Published: May 2021, The Ecologist Climate breakdown risks a supercycle where the price of goods – including food – rises as supply breaks down. So who is going to pay? Climate breakdown erodes people’s lives. It doesn’t arrive with a bang or a whimper but a steady, crushing squeeze. To be clear, climate breakdown is already…
Published: April 2021, The Ecologist The lesson of Cop26 will be that governments have run out of time to stop climate breakdown – but we as citizens have not. Here we are, six months out from COP26, the 26th global meeting of the world’s nations focused on addressing climate breakdown. As always there is an…
Published: Environment and Planning E, 2020 Abstract: The only existing plans to arrest dangerous climate change depend on either yet to be invented technologies to keep us below 2 C or on crashing the world economy for decades to come. The political choice appears to be between doing what is scientifically necessary or what is…
Published: October 2019, Viewpoint Magazine What would it mean to implement a Green New Deal? The question is not, what balance of forces would we need (as though we were playing some kind of board game). Not, what policies would we need – we already have truck-loads of plans and proposals. But what would the…