The words ‘palm oil’ make my heart drop. This usually occurs when I help do the weekly grocery shop. For some years I was aware of palm oil’s impact on our environment, but it’s only in the last eighteen months that the scale of the problem has hit home. The Good Derived from the fruit…
Read full post
Is it reasonable to demand that the UK government take drastic action to address the climate emergency, when China’s emissions far outweigh our own? As someone who works in the media, this is a question I’m asked a lot. It is clear that seismic shifts will have to take place globally if we are to…
Read full post
A plant-based diet isn’t just good for the environment, but also for our health and animal welfare. I’ve been vegan for 4 years and it’s one of the best life choices I’ve ever made. At first I found it hard to believe that I could live without meat, eggs and dairy. I needed protein –…
Read full post
I’m not a funeral director, but I’ve wrapped dozens of people in a funeral shroud. It was the same shroud every time; my shroud, and the people I’ve wrapped in it were very much alive. After a demonstration of shroud wrapping, I ask people how it feels. ‘Peaceful,’ they usually tell me. ‘Like being tucked…
Read full post
Jessica Townsend meets Maxine Peake, an actress keen to talk about the climate and ecological emergency When Maxine Peake enters the small back room at the National Theatre for our interview, she is tall and glamorous: so far so showbiz. But it’s only when she begins to speak that I’m smitten: this woman is smart,…
Read full post
Big people helping little people with big climate thoughts and feelings How do we explain the climate and ecological crisis to children when we have challenging feelings of our own to manage? In the second part of this series SARA MAE suggests more ways to tackle this difficult topic. Taking the leap Perhaps you’ve been…
Read full post
In June last year Australia gave final approval for the Adani Carmichael coal mine. It will be the largest coal mine in the country and one of the biggest in the world, producing 2.3 billion tonnes of coal over its lifetime and 130 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. The Carmichael mine is controlled…
Read full post
Researchers have found that consuming a western-style diet can damage brain function. Healthy volunteers in their 20s spent a week eating foods that were high in fat and added sugars, such as processed foods and ready meals. Volunteers scored worse on memory tests after the week-long diet. Coronavirus, also called COVID-19, is a new illness…
Read full postProtestors in the UK have thrown their weight behind the plight of Indigenous peoples in Canada who are under threat of losing their land to the development of oil pipelines. Young Indigenous people recently occupied the office of Winnipeg-based Liberal MP Dan Vandal’s office to call on the Canadian government to take action against the…
Read full post
An internal report by the world’s number one investor in fossil fuels, JP Morgan, titled Risky business: the climate and macroeconomy, detailsthe ‘potentially catastrophic outcomes’ of ongoing fossil fuel extraction – and investments therein – ‘which might be impossible to reverse’ and ‘where human life as we know it is threatened’. The report warns that…
Read full post