What he doesn't say (probably because it's not really his remit), is that the only answer to the misplaced 'pragmatism' is degrowth. The change in paradigm is almost too large for politicians to accept. Or at least for us to expect from them. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"She'd been cared for. She had these little bobs in her hair and clean fingers. But she'd been in an airstrike. And she died." And she was fucking five. These fucking fucking bastards running our countries, pretending they are decent people and they are NOT.

Gatekeeping of education is apparently devolved to parents when it suits.

I keep discovering new-to-me writers, and then finding out they already died.

I just discovered Donella Meadows' writing. She spotted the 'growth' problem in 1972. Actuaries have been writing reports with an increasingly panicked tone for quite some time. At what point do lawmakers begin to get it?

Skin in the game. A negative feedback loop.

In discussion with a computer scientist from the University of Cambridge last night: Me: "you've described some of the things that AI is good at. How would you describe the category of things it's not good at? **pause** Him: "Anything where it has to be right".

Coupons

Authors, one more time: 📣 ANY use of genai will get you onto my "do not read" list. Cover art, interior art, character pages, extras, bookmarks, ads, marketing material, website, all of it. Using it AT ALL means you do not respect or understand the damage that genai has done and actively does.

So where's the data impact assessment for Starmer's digital ID cards? www.afronomicslaw.org/category/ana...

For further education, Dee Brown's Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee is a heartbreaking and essential read.

Even getting it to court, with world class environment lawyers, Leigh Day, means it will get some attention. Attention Sellafield and the EA do not want. Please, donate what you can, and share if you are able. We're so grateful for all the help so far. 🙏

Cumbrian otters need our help! Here's why: Nature's interconnectedness used to be thoroughly understood by humans. They understood that different animals and plants relied on each other, and that if one disappeared, others would too.

So the UK cuts a special deal with the US for nuclear power. Gets rid of regulations. Brings in a bunch of untested reactor designs that may or may not work. Yay.

How many people gonna just go for this.

Cumbrian otters need our help! Here's why: Nature's interconnectedness used to be thoroughly understood by humans. They understood that different animals and plants relied on each other, and that if one disappeared, others would too.

That's some passive voice shit in the middle of this piece.

So the UK cuts a special deal with the US for nuclear power. Gets rid of regulations. Brings in a bunch of untested reactor designs that may or may not work. Yay.

In the meantime, Sellafield continues to contaminate its environment. The latest new contamination is dumping over 40,000 tonnes of radioactive water into the nearby River Calder.

Nuclear power has a problem. One that just won't go away.

The UK govt is attempting to site its nuclear waste dump, yet again (3rd or 4th time of asking) in the eminently unsuitable West Cumbria. Straight out of the playbook of exploitation. www.sufficiencywellbeing.com/p/the-truth-...

If the UK was a society that, as a whole, looked after its vulnerable people just because its the right thing to do, the Assisted Dying Bill might have been right. But, it isn't.

But maybe that lack of hope should be what drives us harder. Hope is useless anyway. Maybe what we need is desperation.

This says the really-quiet-almost-silent part out loud. That for humans to get to the bottom of our waste issue, we have to start from the top: design everything according to what will happen to it after it wastes

This is a view from inside Nepal, from independent publication Prestige Journal. It ends with this: “Leaders will have to face a truth they have avoided for decades…this country no longer belongs only to them, it belongs to the generation rising now.” Read this and you’ll recognise a lot… 🇺🇸

Wow

"The five ideas were found to risk intrinsic environmental damage, as well as introduce significant infrastructure in a fragile environment and increase human presence into these challenging polar regions"

Humans *should* design things that are expected and accepted to decay. It's another mistake in the thinking of progress where everything is designed as if it is going to be there forever.

There's no river like a Cumbrian river. While I was away from Cumbria, I used to remind myself of the bubbling, trickling, busy beauty of my homeland's beautiful waterways.

The Environment Agency has granted a license to allow the nuclear waste site at Sellafield to dump 40 cubic metres of polluted water an HOUR ! in the rivers Calder and Ehen, that’s 40 tonnes of toxic water every hour of the day. buff.ly/piwSDPP

It's hard to know what is worse, the devastating pollution, or the betrayal of the Zambian government to its people. I mean, obvs the pollution is immediately worse, but empirically, over time, the refusal to conduct any kind of clean up, surely causes ever more deaths.

"A National Audit Office report this year found one building to be leaking 2,100 litres of radioactive water into the ground every day, although officials say the risk to workers and the public is “low”. With absolutely no justification whatsoever. uk.news.yahoo.com/britain-coul...

Yesterday, we paid a visit to the River Calder, to pledge to help and support it, and to offer apologies and support to it, on tiny bark boats. It's a symbolic gesture, given the massive quantity of radioactive and sewage dumping taking place at Sellafield.

Land and water isn't here for our use. It supports much more than just humans. A delicate ecosystem which carries the existence of so many creatures.

This isn't about NIMBYism, and it isn't about 'oh, our beautiful countryside'. It's about the fundamental issue of humans using land and water as if they have moral rights over it.

Surely the clever people at Sellafield and the Environment Agency can come up with better solutions than dumping sewage and radioactivity into the nearest water source?

Yesterday, we paid a visit to the River Calder, to pledge to help and support it, and to offer apologies and support to it, on tiny bark boats. It's a symbolic gesture, given the massive quantity of radioactive and sewage dumping taking place at Sellafield.

Called it "[E]ducation ... must impart the ability to think and express those thoughts. There’s no guarantee that any fact learned at school will be either remembered or used in later life."

Not just meat, either. Vegans aren't getting through this with a clear conscience either. Monocultures, whether chickpeas or soy, are bad.

Oh no. Whatever can be done about it? 🙄🤔 I mean, we can't starve the billions of livestock animals who rely on this much soy, right?

"Fryer’s problem, of course, is that engaged people at this stage are most likely to be anti-GDF. The more people he can engage with NWS’ clinical ‘artist’s impressions’ and endless documentation, the more possibility of an even distribution of opinions." www.change.org/p/urgent-ins...

This is exactly why we need the humanities. Science can tell us how to split the atom, but without philosophy, history, and ethics, we have no framework for asking whether we should. The humanities keep us from becoming efficient, well-funded machines with no moral compass.

Sellafield are being pretty disingenuous here, saying they are planning to dump the radioactive water into the Irish Sea (bad enough) when the EA document says they are going to dump it in various places, including the rivers.

They're at it again. This time, Sellafield (again). www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I just reminded myself of yet another way consumers in the UK are screwed in the event of disruption.

Plastics. Even with the so-called recycling that we do, only 1% of overall plastics (or is that 1% of the recycled ones?!) are actually reused. There are bigger cons, I know, but this is pretty massive.

Big business leaping on board the nuclear train. Not forgetting that SMRs are as yet untested (and don't come at me about China, S Korea, and Russia because those ones aren't technically modular) so it's a band wagon with lots of lovely taxpayer money, less of a business risk than you'd think.

Main takeaway for me: behind the scale of current animal agriculture is the fact that we use fossil fuels to do it. Reduce fossil fuel use, and we've got a much different ability to farm.