Laurie

We failed to prepare for pandemics, we cannot do the same with climate change

In late February, the UN Security Council held a meeting to discuss how the climate crisis is a threat to international security. As David Attenborough told the meeting, “we will face the collapse of everything that gives us our security: food production, access to fresh water, habitable ambient temperature and ocean food chains…[and] much of the rest ofContinue reading “We failed to prepare for pandemics, we cannot do the same with climate change”

Interview: The Owen Jones Show

Mat Lawrence and I spoke with Owen Jones about Planet on Fire, how we face an overall environmental emergency, it’s caused by (deeply unjust) economic systems over individuals – so our response can and must be political and transformational.

Interview: The Nomiki Show

I spoke to Nomiki Konst on the Nomiki Show about the environmental emergency, the role of economic systems in driving the disaster, and how our response can and must be political and transformation. I joined by Mat Lawrence and we also spoke about our new book, Planet on Fire.

Foul is no longer fair: Towards an economics for planetary stability

Talk to the Council for the Human Future conference, 21st March 2021 It is never hard to find commentary on why we are collectively failing to address the accelerating environmental emergency. ‘We’re not wired to empathize with our descendants,’ laments a psychology professor in the Washington Post. ‘We lack courage,’ concludes President Macron to worldContinue reading “Foul is no longer fair: Towards an economics for planetary stability”

Notes from a 1.2C world

I was born at the end of the eighties, this side of Hansen’s testimony to the US Congress and before the first Scientists’ Warning and Earth Summit in 1992. Much of the subsequent mainstream narrative on the environmental crisis seems to have been akin to warning fellow crewmates on a ship of a far-off storm.Continue reading “Notes from a 1.2C world”

On climate change, the younger generations must shout even louder

What a difference a crisis makes. It wasn’t all that long ago a Tory prime minister wanted to “get rid of all the green crap”. This week, however, Boris Johnson committed to power all homes in the UK with wind by 2030, investing £160m as part of a wider drive to “build back greener” by making Britain a worldContinue reading “On climate change, the younger generations must shout even louder”

Interview: Blick

I was interviewed by Fabienne Kinzelmann at the Swiss paper Blick about the environmental crisis and how we best respond (link is not in English): https://www.blick.ch/ausland/physiker-und-wirtschaftswissenschaftler-laurie-laybourn-langton-31-ueber-die-waldbraende-in-kalifornien-greta-und-die-schweiz-beim-klima-verlieren-wir-die-kontrolle-id16111422.html

Change only through crisis? Reflections on strategies for paradigm shift in an age of coronavirus and environmental breakdown (Forum for a New Economy)

1st December 2020 The emergency measures undertaken in response to the COIVD-19 pandemic constitute an unprecedented break from the norms and practice of the prevailing political-economic paradigm—the predominant set of economic theory, policies and narratives. Public health has always been a major driver of changes in political economy because it is a systems-focused approach, providingContinue reading “Change only through crisis? Reflections on strategies for paradigm shift in an age of coronavirus and environmental breakdown (Forum for a New Economy)”

Politics in a time of consequences

Fighting the environmental emergency is about power and politics, not just clean technologies and regulation. This presents a problem for political systems. When considering the record of our democracy in handling problems that arrest all parts of society, such as Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic, the prospects look poor for responding to the environmental emergencyContinue reading “Politics in a time of consequences”

Notes from a 1.2°C world

The coronavirus pandemic is a warning from the future. It has brought the fragility of our increasingly interconnected economic and social systems into stark relief. A health crisis became an economic crisis, a social crisis, a political crisis. The word ‘resilience’ now peppers the policy PDFs of governments, NGOs and multilateral institutions. Let us hopeContinue reading “Notes from a 1.2°C world”