Author Archives: Laurie

A recent report painted a terrifying picture of our coming future: within decades, for every 1°C increase in the global temperature, a billion people will be forced to live in unbearable heat. Without change, we are on track for catastrophic global temperature increases of 3.5°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. This crisis isContinue reading “10 things you can do to change everything and combat the climate crisis”

Today is Earth Day and Joe Biden, the US President, has invited leaders of 40 countries to come together for a two day zoom conference to discuss the climate emergency. Seventeen of the countries invited are responsible for 80% of carbon emissions in the world. Biden is expected to announce his commitment to halve the carbonContinue reading “President Biden’s leadership on climate must be supported and applauded by health professionals”

The Polynesian island has intrigued generations of Western explorers and scholars. But much of what they had previously assumed is wrong In 1722, in a remote expanse of the Pacific Ocean, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen squinted out from the deck of his flagship at a triangle of land sitting on the horizon. Roggeveen hadContinue reading “What we know—and still don’t know—about Easter Island”

Left environmentalism struggles in the face of a disturbing truth: the global environmental emergency is going to get much worse no matter what happens, as scientists’ warnings about the future increasingly become the destabilising reality of the present. It is still technically possible to avoid a 1.5C temperature rise above the pre-industrial average, the goalContinue reading “The age of consequences: the future for which left environmentalism is unprepared”

The NHS is the model of how the state can democratise action on climate change. In looking for a path beyond the neoliberal state, we find one national institution that has always embodied the alternative to neoliberalism – the National Health Service (NHS). The NHS is Britain’s publicly owned and provided system of healthcare, freeContinue reading “The NHS shows the way in approaches to 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”