Missing In Action: The (Democratic) Politics of the Ocean
Yesterday I gave a talk at a ‘thought festival’ in the Netherlands, on the future of the ocean. The size of the audience far exceeded my (quite modest) expectations. And the discussion we had was...
View ArticleFor Working-Class Academics
Last week I was talking to a new academic acquaintance, when ‘that thing’ happened: we worked out that we’d both grown up on council estates, within working-class, non-university-attending families.[i]...
View ArticleMy year in fiction
Reading novels is my life-blood; I can’t go more than a few hours between books. That said, this year was a slightly odd one in my reading career. First, the year leading up to August represented the...
View ArticleCommitting to Net Zero Means…Committing to What, Exactly?
The goal of Net Zero emissions by 2050 has had a remarkable rise to the forefront of climate politics. Governments and corporations are falling over one another to commit to it. That in itself might...
View ArticleHappy World Ocean Day
I’m off to do a talk to mark World Ocean Day, so this is posted in haste. The ocean needs advocates. It’s our biggest ecosystem, probably our biggest carbon sink, a major source of oxygen. It regulates...
View ArticleCampus novels
I’m a complete sucker for them. I don’t know why: you’d think twenty-odd years as an academic would have cured me of the idea there is anything romantic or glamorous about universities. But I keep...
View ArticleOn not knowing what to say about Gaza
I was meant to write a post this week, but then Hamas’s horrific assault on Israel happened, and now the civilian inhabitants of Gaza are once again living in fear (some of them have put themselves in...
View ArticleMy best novels of the year
I tend to read a novel a week (53 this year). Academic friends sometimes appear amazed by that, but if I don’t read 20 or 30 pages at night, I’m not going to sleep. Add 10 pages here or there during...
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What if there were far fewer people?
One of the most common arguments in debates about environmental crisis is: “it’s the rising population, stupid.” There are just too many human beings, using up too much stuff, leaving too little space...
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Global Justice and the Biodiversity Crisis
My new book is out this week (in the UK at least – but those elsewhere can read it right now online). I very much hope it will stimulate debate and discussion. Something that’s really struck me over...
View ArticleWhy has global biodiversity governance failed so badly?
Later this month it will be World Biodiversity Day, and we will again celebrate the remarkable contributions that biodiversity makes to the resilience and productivity of the earth’s ecosystems. But it...
View ArticleBye bye, Tories, hello what?
In the UK, we’re all waking up to the prospect of a new government. The election was an oddity: Labour has converted a modest 35% vote share into a whopping Parliamentary majority; the Tories did...
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