How would you describe a tree? Would you talk about its trunk, its branches, its leaves, its roots, its abundant life? Would you describe it as an object or a subject?  How many species of tree can you name in 30 seconds?  Our knowledge, relationship and connection with trees, forests and woodlands, may be under…

Hadrian’s Wall stretches for 84 miles across the North of England, from Bowness-on-Solway to Wallsend, Newcastle, signalling one of the last frontiers of the Roman Empire. Nowadays, the Wall remains intact only in certain sections, with the best views to be found in the isolated middle sections far from the cities and towns. Walkers can…

By George Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson ‘Sunlight’, as US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis proclaimed over a century ago, ‘is the best disinfectant.’ In this new exposé, Monbiot and Hutchison expertly shine the sunlight onto a ‘normalized ideology’, which has been lurking in the shadows. They urge that the vital first task is to finally…

‘Nations are concerned about themselves, not about the planet, and this kind of problem will keep coming at us as we discover more and more such potential catastrophic consequences.’  Carl Sagan 1984 The words of Carl Sagan, quoted early in Gerald Kutney’s book, encapsulates the geopolitical issues that have been identified over the last seventy…

Max Roser- ‘The world is much better; the world is still awful; the world can do much better.’ As to be expected, ‘Not the End of the World’ takes a systematic and methodical approach to the issues analysed in the text. Each chapter follows the same clear format of : ‘How have we got to…

‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe… Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion… I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain… Time to die.’ Rutger Hauer’s character from ‘Blade Runner’, Roy Batty, closes the film with a…

The map of the known world is being redrawn. Christina Gerhardt, Associate Professor at the University of Hawai’I and Senior Fellow at the University of California, explores the shifting worlds across six major oceans and seas- from the Arctic to the Caribbean Sea in ‘Sea Change- An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean.’ In…

All great sagas have an ending.  Esteemed meteorologist Guy Walton’s ‘World of Thermo’ series has included all the elements of a true saga: journeys, friendships, sacrifice, help from characters with potent, magical powers and an evil villain who needs to be vanquished.  Great storytelling is at the heart of climate communication- those stories that stay…

‘Humanity’s Moment’ is a masterclass in climate communication, with Dr Gergis detailing the climate impacts already being felt and aligning these with real emotional and psychological responses. Dr Gergis served as a lead author for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and is an authority on the climate science underpinning the report. This is not a…