The new Atlantis: will Miami become the City in the Sea?
Prof Bill McGuire wonders whether Miami’s financial district will soon give a whole new, literal meaning to going ‘off shore’, ending up 60 km out to sea Rarely, if ever now, does a month go by without more evidence coming to light of the increasingly dire straits we...
Did the bank crisis ever end?
Did the banking crisis ever end, or continue in other forms? New Weather teamed up with Prime Economics on the anniversary of the crisis to ask the big questions Click & listen: Finance Shrugged - will the banking crisis happen again? Ten years ago the former...
The post-crash culture we now live in
There is a truism about fish, who are said not to wonder overmuch about the nature of the water they are in, simply because they are swimming in it. I have to say I find that pretty unlikely. There would be many other reasons why they might not think about it - fish...
The abuse of ‘progress’
Bill McGuire is astonished at how a system of economic self-destruction still carries the label of 'progress', after long ago being called-out... Enjoying one of the seminal works on self-sufficiency - The Fat of the Land by John Seymour; first published in 1961 and...
Finance Shrugged: 10 years on, will the banking crisis happen again?
Book: Finance Shrugged: 10 years on, will the banking crisis happen again? When: Weds 9th August 2017; 18:00 – 20:00 Where: Congress House, TUC Congress Centre, 28 Great Russell St, London, WC1B 3LS On the day ten years ago, when inter-bank lending froze and the Great...
Empathy is not a finite resource
I have been reading Robert Hutchison's excellent pamphlet on rapid transition - though it does not use that phrase - which includes a hopeful idea: that there is no limit to human empathy. In the end, as he explains, there is a race going on between the limitless...
Mega farms: the Next Great Crime?
Today The Guardian reveals the onward march of the mega farms defined as warehouses – effectively accommodating more than 40,000 poultry birds, 2,000 pigs and 750 breeding sows. We now have almost 800 of these mega farms in the UK. In the same week Ahimsa, a...
The Grenfell Inquiry – There is A Way
There are now serious doubts that Sir Martin Moore-Bick, retired judge of the Court of Appeal in England, will be able to take up the role of Chairman of the Grenfell Tower fire public inquiry. Residents say they have little faith in him; the local MP has called for...
Avoidable atrocities – failures to adapt & prevent on climate change are Grenfell Tower writ large
Prof Bill McGuire writes: Grenfell Tower exposed one regulatory failure, but the government is ignoring other official advice to strengthen building regulations to protect homes, schools, hospitals & care homes from the heat of climate change, it's another...
What are we dreaming of? Care for Planet A or hunt for Planet B?
As some call for colonisation of other worlds, and the government invests in space industries but fails the green economy, New Weather debates the dreams humanity has for its' future on the BBC and explores the issue in more detail...