Clearing the air – a tale of two cities & #SmogDay
See the SmogDay website for the real human stories behind the statistics on pollution. In December 2015, pollution causing smogs in Delhi gave it the worst air quality of any city in the world. It was exactly 63 years since the ‘Great Smog’ of London, estimated...
How to call-out everyday climate denial
FOLLOW: @EverydayDenial You know things are bad when it takes Donald Trump pulling the US out of the Paris agreement for climate change to be discussed during the UK election. His climate denial is of the extreme and obvious variety: pages were removed from the...
A Thoughtful and Kindly People
For the moment let's leave the tactical discussion, the grim DUP, the Tory panic and the musings about Theresa May's lack of normal antennae to one side and concentrate on what might be the early, cheering conclusions of this unbelievable General Election. The first...
Missing election issues 3. That stupid magic money tree
What is wrong with the Tory Central Office inspired act-of -desperation, the 'magic money tree' meme? The first is the patronising tone: as if they were talking to idiots, as if there was nothing they could possibly understand about our economy. It is never difficult...
Missing election issues #2. The rise of the giants
This is the first of a series of contributions which New Weather is setting out before the last week of the general election, about what has been glaringly missing from the campaign. There is clearly something about airlines which, beyond the other business sectors,...
Climate change? Hmm… that rings a bell
Bill McGuire is a leading global authority on climate and geophysical hazards and a Professor Emeritus at UCL. Today, in the wake of President Donald Trump taking the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, he begins regular contributions to the New Weather...
What we don’t talk about when we talk politics
The first thing we're not talking about is 'we'. Who are we, when it comes to this General Election in particular? And, to sign in for that master class in linguistics, what do we mean when we say 'talking'? I'm not about to attack politicians on the ground by saying...
The rise of authenticity, and what it means
Some years ago, fourteen to be precise, I wrote a book called Authenticity. The subtitle was 'Brands, fakes, spin and the lust for real life', which had a kind of ring to it. I've since written more in a collection of essays called The Age to Come. I was predicting...
Neoliberalism – The Break-up Tour
Premiere: 7.30pm, Friday, 9 June 2017 The unwinding of Neoliberalism comes under the microscope in this new interactive performance by playwright Sarah Woods and the New Weather Institute’s Andrew Simms, staged for the first time at the opening of the 2 Degrees...
New Weather at the Hay Festival: a progressive alliance for politics and new folk tales for troubling times
Joint the New Weather Institute at the Hay Festival to get to grips with political upheaval and explore different ways to understand our troubled times THERE WAS A KNOCK AT THE DOOR - CAN MODERN FOLK TALES HELP TO UNDERSTAND THESE TROUBLING TIMES? With Sarah Woods,...