Sustainability for a Thriving Future
It’s been a while since I updated and refreshed my website – I was looking a little unloved. My writing endeavours can now be found more regularly at https://gclaws.medium.com/, where I explore more deeply the evolving landscape of sustainability practices. These are transitional times, with moving pieces of heightened geopolitics, new technologies and accelerating climate and biodiversity breakdown. I have made a concious effort…
I sit here writing now, in the beautiful mountains of Portugal, and the scientists are increasingly concerned that the 1.5⁰C safe(ish) threshold of planetary warming will be passed in 2027. I am in a small village surrounded by Eucalyptus plantations for the paper industry, which smell glorious but are combustible and dangerous. If you walk through the roads between the monocultures you discover pockets…
There is a feeling among my friends and colleagues, it fills the algorithms of my social media too. This feeling is nearly despairing, a clamouring and call to action on the climate. Yet, days turn into weeks, weeks into months, and years have come and gone. New leadership in the UK heralds yet more back-turning, away from the facts, the truths of global temperature…
Unfortunately, the funding bid was unsuccessful. It was disappointing, yet I’ve still been busy, building links with the Cooperative movement in Portugal and supporting them to get funding for a forthcoming conference in June. Down, but not out. The plan, although stalled, is still a plan, defined and written, ready for the wider world. Instead of a quick bolt out of the blocks, it…
There’s nothing like a looming deadline to spur action and refine thought. After a year of learning and talking to people who share our dreams of building a sustainable lifestyle based around regenerative agriculture, I found the idea. The idea fulfils a need, filling a gap by exploring twin themes, the intersection between permaculture and technology. An opportunity to bid for start-up funding presented…
As an environmentalist looking at the climate and biodiversity crisis, I could easily fall into the vision of the future where technology has diminished and humanity has reconnected with nature. It’s a beautiful vision and one that calls many environmental types. It is also highly unrealistic. Technology, for good or ill, is a manifestation of human innovation and therefore, is unlikely to be suppressed…
The year 2022 begins. Netflix showcases their new movie, Don’t Look Up, the unfortunate story of desperate scientists trying to alert a distracted and oblivious audience to the plight of planet earth, which is due to be hit by a comet. The film attempts to show how our current climate emergency, like the comet, is pushed below celebrity news and the like, consigning it…
I have mixed feelings about COP26, seeing both the positive and negative from the outcomes. Clearly not enough was committed to, to keep us at or below the 1.5oC the planet needs, however resolve to return annually with progress and more ambition is important. Sadly, key countries returned immediately to their fossil fuel frenzy, seemingly uncomprehending of how their words and deeds are not…