The media and climate change

Progressive voices in the arts and heritage sector have called for a politics of cultural democracy as a means of empowering all to participate in public life. Through a rejection of policies of 'inclusion', they have asked more searching questions about the role culture can play in the fight for social justice. At the same time the sector is preparing for a change of ideological direction, as rumours run rife about what a future Tory government, highly critical of state intervention, will do to the bodies that run the arts and heritage sector. This article looks at the prospects for a radical cultural democracy in the face of these potential political changes

Climate change and rising energy costs will change everything: A new mindset and action plan for 21st Century public health

Western governments currently prioritize economic growth and the pursuit of profit above alternative goals of sustainability, health and equality. Climate change and rising energy costs are challenging this consensus. The realization of the transformation required to meet these challenges has provoked denial and conflict, but could lead to a more positive response which leads to a health dividend; enhanced well-being, less overconsumption and greater equality. This paper argues that public health can make its best contribution by adopting a new mindset, discourse, methodology and set of tasks

It’s not too late to do the right thing:: Moral motivations for climate change action

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this recordWhile it is too late to avert some dangerous consequences of climate change, it is not “all-ornothing” and our actions can still make a difference. Building on social psychology research showing the importance of seeing one’s group as moral, one reason people act on climate change is to help create a more moral and caring society. Considering climate change action through this lens gives rise to several challenges, including how people respond to moral threats, who has moral standing as advocates, the consequences of promoting a moral cause through “immoral” actions (e.g., breaking the law), and moral “blindspots” where some emitting behaviours are excluded from scrutiny. Reviewing social psychological bases for these issues suggests potential responses to these challenges, including the importance of engaging people with diverse views and backgrounds (e.g., through citizens’ assemblies), advisory personal carbon budgets, and broad-based policies that aim to secure the social wellbeing of communities as well as the protect the environment (e.g., a Green New Deal). Encouragingly, a recent study suggests that many people are more ready than we might assume to accept the types of changes urgently needed

Eyes wide shut? UK consumer perceptions on aviation climate impacts and travel decisions to New Zealand

The purview of climate change concern has implicated air travel, as evidenced in a growing body of academic literature concerned with aviation CO2 emissions. This article assesses the relevance of climate change to long haul air travel decisions to New Zealand for United Kingdom consumers. Based on 15 semi-structured open-ended interviews conducted in Bournemouth, UK during June 2009, it was found that participants were unlikely to forgo potential travel decisions to New Zealand because of concern over air travel emissions. Underpinning the interviewees’ understandings and responses to air travel’s climate impact was a spectrum of awareness and attitudes to air travel and climate change. This spectrum ranged from individuals who were unaware of air travel’s climate impact to those who were beginning to consume air travel with a ‘carbon conscience’. Within this spectrum were some who were aware of the impact but not willing to change their travel behaviours at all. Rather than implicating long haul air travel, the empirical evidence instead exemplifies changing perceptions towards frequent short haul air travel and voices calls for both government and media in the UK to deliver more concrete messages on air travel’s climate impact

Climate change and rising energy costs: a threat but also an opportunity for a healthier future?

Health problems caused by overconsumption, growing inequalities and diminished well-being are issues that have been attributed to the prioritization of economic growth as the central purpose of society. It is also known that climate change and rising energy prices will inevitably bring changes to the globe's economic models. Doctors and the wider public health community have campaigned successfully in the past on issues such as the threat of nuclear war. Is it now time for this constituency to make its distinctive contribution to these new threats to health

Exploring new visions for a sustainable bioeconomy

The Bioeconomy is both an enabler and an end for the European Green Deal transformation: achieving the EGD transformation entails transforming the very meaning of sustainable bioeconomy. Among the deepest and most effective leverage points to transform a system are the worldviews driving our behaviours: they yield an enormous power to influence the framings which determine the solution space we explore. Transforming the bioeconomy, thus, requiresreflecting on the stories we tell about ourselves, our place in nature, and our relationship with others. Scholars have highlighted how narratives surrounding the EU Bioeconomy have predominantly embraced a “Green Growth” perspective, centred around economic growth, technological innovation, and anthropocentric values, largely ignoring the social and justice dimensions, as well as not questioning the role, relations, and responsibilities of humans in the web of life. These dominant framings are increasingly contested, though, because they have failed to produce the social and ecological outcomes desired. This report introduces perspectives which have been under-represented in the Bioeconomy discourse and integrates them into an alternative vision for a “green, just and sufficient bioeconomy”. This vision places environmental sustainability and social equity at its core, regardless of economic growth; has an inclusive and participatory perspective; care, respect, and reciprocity for and with other humans and non-humans are core values; technology is important to deliver on the green and just objectives, but ethical considerations for new technologies are openly debated

Do trees in UK-relevant river catchments influence fluvial flood peaks?: a systematic review

This report describes a systematic review of the evidence in support of the primary question “Do trees in UK-relevant river catchments influence fluvial flood peaks?

Dilemmas of Development and The Reconstruction of Fashion

Sustainable development by its nature appears elusive. It seems the more we try to capture and pin it down the more it moves away from us leading us into murkier waters and all manner of contradictions. No more is this felt than in the fashion industry where we are presented with a number of oppositions. The fashion cycle renders styles obsolete before they have worn out generating waste and over-consumptive practices. But it can also bring into the fore practices that have resonance to sustainable development in terms of their location, orientation and consideration for the environment. As studies emerge considering the detrimental environmental impacts of the manufacture and consumption of new clothes, second-hand clothes have become a focus for research endeavours considering how they can be reincorporated into the fashion system and have resonance to an ever ‘fashion’ hungry consumer. This chapter discusses methods for the processing of second-hand clothes into fashionable items and, by drawing on the wealth of ‘waste’ materials through reselling, restyling and remanufacturing, argues that ways of re-appropriating them into a more environmentally focused fashion industry is possible and necessary. It sets out as it hypothesis that the global fashion system has value in its transformative powers but that damaging and exploitative forces are still preventing it from being a force for good. This is due to the nature of the items being produced, the way they are manufactured and how they are ultimately consumed and disposed of