December 2018

  • Requiem for a golden age

    I wrote recently about when there might have been a golden age [*] for environmental education in the UK, and in that post I did not come to any conclusion.  When I spoke at the LEEF event a few days afterwards...

  • Report from Poland's Coal-face

    Today's post is a guest blog by David Oldroyd who has lived in Poland for many years and who writes a regular Letter from Poland.  The third December 18 letter concerns the Polish backdrop to COP24.  Here it is: From...

  • There's no fun fun fun at po-faced SOAS

    The Times reports that Konstantin Kisin turned down his invitation to speak at SOAS after he was sent a behavioural agreement form by the students organising the event, Unicef on Campus.  The form asked him to accept the group’s no tolerance...

  • If every child went to school ...

    The Economist says that many children's lives would be better if they went to school even if they didn't learn anything. This is how their recent feature article begins: "AS YOU WALK from classroom to classroom at Tibba Khara school on...

  • VW blues

    I thought my trusty electric car – a VW eUp! – had a serious problem the other week when it would not charge, and I didn’t have enough in the battery to get it to a VW dealer – an...

  • What a load of rubbish

    This was the title of an Economist special report on waste which was published about 6 weeks ago and which I've been meaning to write about ever since.  If you want your students to have access to up-to-date info about...

  • Stamp for Brexit

    The other day, a kind sympathiser sent me pics of a set of UK Brexit stamps (all with a forged Queen’s head) that are entertaining the internet. There’s – a sculpture of a bloke with his head in his hands...

  • Maintenant, aprés le climb-down?

    Are the gilets jaunes protests in France anti-environmental, as some are claiming, or are they mostly a cri de coeur about the disdain with which other people are regarded by metropolitan and cultural elites?   In other words, are they...

  • Farewell Erik Solheim; how you'll be missed by the airlines

    I see from The Nation (essential reading) that Erik Solheim has resigned as executive director of UNEP.  What a great loss. Solheim commented: "On Saturday, I received the final report on the audit of official travel undertaken by the UN’s...

  • LEEFing

    I went to my first meeting of LEEF last week.  If I lived in London I’d be there all the time.  The meeting was to launch the King’s College research reports and I’d been invited to say a few words....