it's not doom if it's the best case scenario
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…
Published: Sept 2019, The Conversation A summer of civil unrest. A global climate strike bringing millions of people to the streets. A stark warning from scientists that climate breakdown is accelerating, and that we must triple our climate ambition at the very least. All of the conditions were there for this year’s UN Climate Action Summit to be a turning point in the…
Edited by Camille Barbagallo, Nicholas Beuret, David Harvie (Pluto 2019) A passionate collection rediscovering the work of two giants of autonomist Marxism and feminism. This collection explores key themes in the contemporary critique of political economy, in honour of the work and practice of Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis – two of the most significant…
Published: April 2019, The Conversation Those least responsible for global warming will suffer the most. Poorer countries – those that have contributed far less to climate change – tend to be situated in warmer regions, where additional warming causes the most devastation. Extreme weather events such as Syria’s prolonged drought, South Asia’s catastrophic monsoon floods, and Cyclone Idai in South-East Africa,…
Author: Nicholas Beuret Published: March 2019, The Conversation American congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently shook up environmental politics by releasing a broad outline of a Green New Deal – a plan to make the US a carbon-neutral economy in the next ten years, while reducing both poverty and inequality. Lauded by many as a radical and necessary step,…
Published: Dec 2018, The Conversation The latest UN climate talks, known as COP24, have just concluded. The supposed story this time was one of a grinding victory by the EU and developing nations over recalcitrant petro-states – Russia, the US, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. These four, condemned as “climate villains” over the past week, worked to…
Published: November 2020, Plan C The Tory government announced plans this week to usher in a ‘green industrial revolution’, off the back of their pledge last year to make the UK net carbon zero by 2050, spurred by the actions of the school climate strikers and Extinction Rebellion, and in preparation for next year’s delayed international…