The UK Green Party – formerly the Ecology Party (1975-1985), formerly PEOPLE (1973-1975) – once rejected the conventional party structure of ‘leader and followers’ in favour of a model of ‘participatory politics’, comprising six ‘principal speakers’. But discipline...
In praise of unsustainability
The idea of ‘sustainability’, at first glance, has some footing in common sense. To disagree with it seems to mean standing up for unsustainability, defending houses that will collapse: who would be mad enough? Architect Austin Williams’ new book, The Enemies of...
Environmentalism’s fig leaf
Few arguments in favour of action to mitigate the effects of climate change begin without claiming that ‘the science is in’. James Garvey’s The Ethics of Climate Change is no exception. There begins an account of the ‘science’ which forms the basis of an unassailable...
Environmental catastrophism
The New Generation Society’s Kennedy Lecture aimed to embrace the kind of challenge that its namesake laid before the world nearly half a century ago. “Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars,...
Debunking the debunkers
There should be more to scepticism than angry rants about stupid religious people or New Age mysticism. Responding to the apparent rise and rise of ‘bunk’ - creationism, homeopathy, fad diets and bad science - a new movement of sceptics is mobilising to defend the...