🧵 Please share: Today is a big day! The website for the Foresighters Doctoral Programme is live: www.qub.ac.uk/sites/foresi... 1/n

Applications opening soon for 20 PhD positions on the @Foresighters.bsky.social doctoral network funded by EU MSCA & NI Dept Economy. Inter-disciplinary research on topics that tackle key societal challenges using Futures Thinking. Website live soon.

This is excellent

In March, I signed a letter alongside more than 100 academics calling for the introduction of universal anti-SLAPP protections to safeguard academic freedom in the UK. Read the letter: antislapp.uk/wp-content/u... Sign the petition: tinyurl.com/4zsw59eu #StopSLAPPS @indexoncensorship.org

Brown University is home to George Orwell's original manuscript of 1984. Most of it is marked up heavily in Orwell's hand-writing but this untouched page caught my eye.

'In Rwanda, the climate crisis is no longer a future threat, it's a daily experience' Thanks for joining our event at Imagine Festival on the climate crisis as a human rights issue. Huge thanks to our panellists, especially Trócaire Rwanda's Jackline Mugoboka who made clear the effects there.

These people have a funny way of saying "Environmentalists have been proved right yet again."

every environmentalist who has for DECADES been saying we need to get off oil and gas, watching governments panic at this energy crisis

📣 Join us for a panel discussion Thurs 26 March, part of the @imaginebelfast.bsky.social festival Hear from our panel on why we need urgent climate action & the role governments must play in a fair and funded fossil fuel phase out, from the perspective of both climate & human rights obligations.

Europe spent years debating whether the energy transition was affordable. Spain quietly answered the question: gas now sets its electricity price in only 7% of hours. Strategic autonomy doesn’t arrive via summit communiqués. It’s built in advance — in wind farms, solar parks, and grid investment

Rightwing narrative fuelling false belief UK public oppose net zero, study finds

I've signed this petition calling on the NI Executive to regulate the heating oil industry today - will you sign too? @actnowcampaigns.bsky.social my.actnowni.org/petitions/re...

Have you seen this? This recent study of mode share (the % share of transportation trips that are by car, transit, walking, biking etc) relative to city size and income levels in almost 800 cities in 61 countries. Interesting results. HT @davidzipper.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Hard to grasp the amount of shamelessness required for Exxon to sue environmentalists for defamation

Our latest news: we have signed our MSCA COFUND grant agreement! We'll soon announce opportunities for 20 international students to do PhDs in anticipatory governance research at Queen's University Belfast on 5 different research themes. #Academicsky #AnticipatoryGovernance #PHD #research

Find out about our plans for this site, and the wider Mackie’s site at takebackthecity.ie 🔗

Trigger warning. “In crashes, SUVs are more likely to strike vital organs in the core of adults’ bodies & heads of children. Hitting pedestrians above their center of gravity means they’re more likely to be knocked forward & down and then be driven over.” Plus more likely to hit in the 1st place.

If you're having a rough day, remember that in 1991 Tim Berners-Lee's paper for the World Wide Web was rejected and he was relegated to the poster session.

PhD opportunity: Enhancing community resilience and adaptive capacity through ocean literacy: an action research approach to community participation in marine planning Queen's University Belfast Application Deadline - 30th April 2025

HOT RESEARCH NEWS! Motonormativity ("car brain") is a bias that stops people making rational judgements about driving en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motonor... Our new study shows where this bias comes from AND how it makes people think they're odd for supporting changes to the transport system 🧵

Get the message? By Portuguese editorial cartoonist Zez Vaz.

Make this viral

ANNOUNCEMENT: EMERGENCY GENERAL MEETING - 6th February 11am Members will have seen this morning that the University is launching a Voluntary Severance Scheme (VSS), hot on the heels of announcing a new Indian campus, while budgets for faculties, schools and directorates have all been slashed. (1/4)

This is the elephant in the room that needs to be recognised: due almost entirely to the proliferation of single houses in the countryside, Ireland has >four times< the length of overhead electricity wires than the European average. That’s why it’s taking ESB so long to restore power after Éowyn …

Gobshitery taken to epic new levels by rural independent TD Michael Collins today, calling for removal of ALL trees “within 30 metres of a public road”. Yes, you heard that right. That would be MILLIONS of trees this joker proposes destroying. www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...

SLAPP law suits are alive and kicking

Cheating on an exam by memorizing everything the professor taught in advance so I can easily answer all the questions

Donald Trump has declared the U.S. is in a “national-energy emergency.” “The actual emergency, obviously, is with the climate,” @billmckibben.bsky.social writes. nyer.cm/pmI58Hh

This matters. Not because I think Trump is capable of mercy or empathy towards these vulnerable groups. But because it is a public act of defiance. Contrast that with all these other powerful people in this country signaling nothing but appeasement and obedience.

“It's not easy to be exact, but studies estimate that tires create anywhere from 10-28% of the world's microplastic pollution, according to National Geographic. These particles don't just disappear — they end up in our water, our soil, and our bodies.”

Air pollution has dropped significantly in #Paris in the last 15 years. Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s leadership has traded car space for green space, safe bike space, kid space.. and traded pollution for people. Good trade.

‘Everyone thought it would cause gridlock’: the highway that Seoul turned into a stream www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Credit to Terrible Maps on Facebook

The Northern Ireland Planning System is failing us all, in a very fundamental way: 'Back to square one' as gold mine inquiry is suspended www.bbc.com/news/article...

In 2018 we left the EU's Water Regulation body and their massive fines. Then sewage dumping increased 20x. Before Brexit we had some of the cleanest water in Europe. Now it is by far the dirtiest.

Before and after picture of Los Angeles. Oh sorry it's actually Gaza.

“91% of the revenue generated by these businesses came out of the wallets of customers who walked, cycled or used public transport to reach them. Customers that drive to the shops accounted for just 9 per cent of sales.”

Paris urban biking DOUBLED in just one year. “Cycling in Paris has transcended mere trendiness; it’s become a fundamental aspect of the city’s identity. Despite challenges like inclement weather, cyclists continue to flock to the streets, setting new records and reshaping the urban landscape.”

The Earth's Corr: 2024 was a landmark year for the environment in Northern Ireland www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/norther...

Biking to work reduces the odds of dying from cancer by 51%! You’d think transit planners would find the hell out of bike lanes given how much money that saves to public and the government. Even “fiscal conservatives” can’t debunk the obvious societal good and savings from that. Fund bike lanes!

Have you seen this one before? A short history of traffic engineering via @copenhagenizers.bsky.social. Manufactured #CarDependency takes a lot of forms, including how easy or hard we make it to get from A to B using any other ways of getting around. A direct result of the wrong priorities.

“It's amazing how pollution has dropped in #Paris in 15 years. @annehidalgo.bsky.social has filled the city with bike-lanes & not only has she reduced pollution by 40% but she’s also been re-elected.” Trading car space for green space, bike space, kid space…trading pollution for people. Good trade.

This is sort of fascinating because if you were to turn on pretty much any talk radio station or pick up any tabloid, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was the inverse.

Look at the map of cycle routes in Belfast 2004. Astonishing how little change we can see over 20 years. Damning evidence of the Dept. Infrastructure’s lack of commitment to health and safety, active travel and the environment. @belfastcyclecam.bsky.social

It is expected that Ireland will generate more electricity from utility-scale solar PV than from coal this year 🌞 And PV installations are growing so quickly (from such a low base) that similar solar power was generated in October this year than June 2023. SEAI's "Energy in Ireland" is out today.

Posts about urban biking in #Dutch cities are routinely replied to with something like “well, they have the big advantage of being relatively flat.” The Dutch also have the big advantage of not constantly making excuses about why they can’t make clearly smarter decisions.

Reverse the current ratio DFI spends on motorists vs public transport for 10 years and we shall build something relatively half competent that will appear as a utopia when compared to our current system