Every civilization comes to an end. Like a holiday in the sun or a birthday party, one day you are having the time of your life and the next it’s all over. The Romans no longer control Europe and North Africa. The Maya’s great cities have disappeared into the jungle…

Over the weekend of 21st to 24th April 2023, I spent quite a lot of time at The Big One, Extinction Rebellion’s mass protest in London. The event was powerful and inspiring. There was a lot of love and anger and sorrow. Speakers demanded change. Workshops set out the dangers…

Rene Descartes famously declared “cogito, ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) as the first principle of his philosophy. It’s a reasonable philosophical position; being able to think is the basis of existence and hence, knowledge. Sadly, this has been widely interpreted ever since as meaning that only human beings…

There is a sense in which all history is a history of homo sapiens because we are the ones who create history. History is not simply what has happened, it is the story of what has happened. Harari’s book turns the historical gaze upon sapiens themselves and asks who we…

Yesterday two Just Stop Oil activists entered the National Gallery in London, threw tomato soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and then glued themselves to the wall, awaiting inevitable arrest. The action was widely reported in the news media. For those not familiar with Just Stop Oil (JSO), all you need…

The claim at the heart of this book is that modernity is an all-embracing mindset that dominates the contemporary world. It is fitting that the author is someone who genuinely has a foot outside of the tent of modernity and can bring a unique perspective to its study. Vanessa Machado…

My understanding of the current Climate Crisis is that human beings are responsible for it, and we have caught ourselves (and the natural world) in a pincer movement of our own making. On the one hand, we have so degraded the ability of the Earth to regulate itself that it…

We can probably say with certainty that the dinosaurs never saw what was coming. They were getting on with their lives; eating, mating, raising young and repelling rivals. Then, one day, a meteorite slammed into what is now Mexico and it was all over for them. By contrast, human beings…

Anthea Lawson is an activist with a formidable reputation. Trained as a journalist, held numerous high profile campaigning positions, uncovered scandals and frauds, been instrumental in getting laws passed and with access to the corridors of power. Despite this enviable status, she encountered terrible, disrespectful working practices at the NGOs…