Just what is overpopulation?

Another extract from another book for all those intelligent 10 to 12 year olds out there, and that's all of them. Overpopulation is a word that gets all its meaning from the over bit. Population is good, so the story goes (unless it’s nits in your hair), overpopulation isn’t. Overpopulation means you’ve gone over the … Continue reading Just what is overpopulation? →

Good government

I'm writing a series of books called The big fat NO debates for a young audience (aged 10 - 12). Here is an extract from a debate about what makes a good government [without included art brief details]: Eskify lists 10 great rulers (who governed) in ancient times. If you're interested go to my WordPress … Continue reading Good government →

An alternative truth

The opening of a novella about this pandemic; just set somewhere else entirely.In a world with alternative truths what we would perhaps prefer is an alternative world on which to trial them. Part 1 - Beginnings December 13 Nahuw, Anihc Moon is about to place an Uggo piece into what he hopes will be a … Continue reading An alternative truth →

Foreword from a draft non fiction text

The fossil fooled I began to write this book on the first of January 2020, hoping this will be a year and decade of better vision than we have shown so far (forgive the pun). As I write, much of Australia burns. This fire season began in August 2019, some say July. The fires are … Continue reading Foreword from a draft non fiction text →

Greta and the trolls

Isn't it fitting that Greta should hail from a nordic region, more-or-less the homeplace, I think, of trolls and other things nasty, like Ragnarok. What is it that brings them out whenever she gets a post or mention on social media.

Figment of imagination

I once could not imagine that someone human could not respond somehow, at some time or another, to the natural world. Impossible, I would have said. No matter how entrenched in the urban one was, how enmeshed by the artificial, surely the whir of a bird’s wings, the flash of a butterfly’s colour, the shape … Continue reading Figment of imagination →

Are we locked in a dance to the death (economically anyway) with fossil fuels

factors other than the purely economic must be taken into account. The problem with our purely economic thinking is that it is tainted with neoliberalist assumptions about worth. Humans, certainly all the ones in the first world, have been programmed to accept the notion that economic growth, most particularly at the personal level, is essential. To challenge this paradigm is to adopt the denialist annoying Greta Thunberg ‘how dare you’ stance. But in fact what we do need to do - if you factor anything other than pure Homo economicus thinking - is to do away with stuff. Perhaps take a significant dip in our GDP rich life. Give up some goods, some cargo, some economic cudos. Will we be poorer for it? Will our health go into decline? Will our world become much smaller? Perhaps we’ll travel less, the carbon load of flying is prohibitive. But will we be poorer? Will our air and waterways be cleaner? Will some of the wilderness be restored? Will we rediscover community? I don’t know, but I don’t think we can continue with business as usual. Because business isn’t (despite what they tell us) everything. We can choose to remain fossil fooled or we can choose not to be.

Letter to our first grandchild…

Corporations run governments. That seems to be a truth pretty much universal. Corporations determine policies; the chief democratic will of most nations at present is one which does not want to divest itself of the making of profits and greenhouse gases. Our economies are well oiled. Coal seamed. Denial of our climate emergency is a well-funded industry.

Capitalism: the neo-liberal way to sin

Neo-liberalism adherents favour small government and demand that government regulation of economic practice is reduced or absent; neo-liberalism demands an allowance of business as usual because business knows best and will do best, eventually, for people. Neo-liberalists prefer no counterweight of unionism, or organised workers’ counterweights to the practice of business. What neo-liberalist capitalism permitted in the 18th and 19th centuries – and increasingly now - is an exploitation of workers and growing inequality. The natural world was deemed [biblically justified] the dominion of man, available for our use and so we see the exploitation of natural resources.