Steve Martin

Transformation Moment

Transformation Moment – can Britain make it to the Age of Clean? Preface This pamphlet is a ‘Call to Arms’. It comes at a time of confused and divisive global politics, accelerating climate damage and a dangerous retreat into tribal answers to international problems. The UK’s contribution has been to add to the confusion. Britain’s BrexitContinue reading “Transformation Moment”

Some Further thoughts on Green Washing

Greenwashing is a form of climate action delay so deepening our understanding may be the first step to preventing it. Or at least being able to call it out. And that is exactly what financial think thank Planet Tracker has done. Its new report deciphers six types of greenwashing: Greencrowding: hiding in a crowd ofContinue reading “Some Further thoughts on Green Washing”

SAFE AND JUST EARTH SYSTEMS

Humanity is well into the Anthropocene , the proposed new geological epoch where human pressures have put the Earth system on a trajectory moving rapidly away from the stable Holocene state of the past 12,000 years, which is the only state of the Earth system we have evidence of being able to support the world asContinue reading “SAFE AND JUST EARTH SYSTEMS”

New Ways of Seeing the World: Big History and Great Transition

Opening essay for a GTI Forum David Christian May 2023 As the first astronauts peered down on Earth from space, they saw the planet anew. They all had the same epiphany, as the sight of one small, fragile world, embedded in a huge universe briefly replaced the multiple, ever-changing impressions of everyday life. To buildContinue reading “New Ways of Seeing the World: Big History and Great Transition”

EMOTIONS AS A BASIS FOR ECOLOGICAL BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE

The question is urgent: emotions about climate change do not directly lead to behavioral change, what is needed? Yesterday de Volkskrant published an interview with Martha Nussbaum, following her latest book ‘Justice for animals: our collective responsibility.’ I really want to share the last paragraph of the interview with you:“Making people feel guilty is not theContinue reading “EMOTIONS AS A BASIS FOR ECOLOGICAL BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE”

REGENERATIVE CULTURES:LEARNING AND UNLEARNING

In an earlier blog I suggested that we are beginning to see evidence of avoiding using the word “sustainability.” “Sustainability is steadily falling into disrepute, mainly because of its reformist piecemeal applications, which exclude wholesale systems change.” In its place terms such as “regenerative paradigms” have come into play. In its broadest sense this encompassesContinue reading “REGENERATIVE CULTURES:LEARNING AND UNLEARNING”

GDP growth – the Emperor has no clothes

Maze: Is Growth a False God? Is Growth a False God? is an episode of the Radio 4 programme Moral Maze broadcast on 22nd March 2023. Presented by Michael Buerk, the programme has an unusual format where four semi-regular panelists question and elicit testimony from several invited guests representing opposite sides of an argument. I’ve never been a bigContinue reading “GDP growth – the Emperor has no clothes”

HOSPICING OUR UNIVERSITIES IN DECLINE

In this the third of my most recent blogs on the theme of a University for the Common Good – I reflect on the decline of our current model of the University and how the concept of “hospicing a habit of being” coined by Stein et al(2020) might enable those of us who have arguedContinue reading “HOSPICING OUR UNIVERSITIES IN DECLINE”

CAN WE REIMAGINE THE UNIVERSITY?

In my earlier post I set out the idea that universities are of the crisis rather than as is widely understood that external risks are the real threat to them. I have written an earlier blog(Educating Earth Literate Leaders) – if we look back on the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (2002) and many of theContinue reading “CAN WE REIMAGINE THE UNIVERSITY?”

UNIVERSITIES FOR THE COMMON GOOD

It is difficult to imagine a future that is humane, decent, and sustainable without marked changes in the substance and process of education at all levels, beginning with university. David Orr(2018) In my next series of blogs, I want to bring out some of the compelling arguments for transformative change in the education provided byContinue reading “UNIVERSITIES FOR THE COMMON GOOD”