Podcaster : Writer : Engagement Specialist
On the day the Government announced it was banning a thing I have called to be banned for very many years, I wrote a blog about the strange feeling of being told you’re wrong while knowing history will judge you to be right. https://powellds.medium.com/the-happy-death-of-petty-idiocy-4c245e649bb1 It always was completely and utterly loopy to say that we weren’t doing things like subsidising …
The problems of thinking about the vastness of climate change as simply one kind of problem. On my Medium blog: https://medium.com/@powellds/what-if-climate-change-was-not-this-thing-but-another-thing-e539868a647a “given no metaphor for climate change will be anything other than desperately partial and constraining, perhaps the most useful thing to do is not to try to pick the ‘best’ metaphor, but to always just be acutely aware that …
What lockdowns can teach us about climate change. For the Rapid Transition Alliance: “sometimes in the rush to point out the policies that should be put in place to deal with the climate crisis it feels like we forget how important it is that we make acting on that crisis feel vibrant, essential, inclusive, and if it entails any whiff of a …
Is it feasible to deregulate whilst also acting on the climate crisis? Not really, is the conclusion of this major report (NEF/EEB). I was lead author, in partnership with the European Environmental Bureau. It was the culmination of a 3-year research and mobilisation project to build opposition in Brussels, France and Germany to national and European programmes of environmental deregulation. …
Bringing together the ‘levelling up’ and climate agendas makes sense. I wrote for Tribune in 2019: https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/12/why-the-north-needs-a-green-new-deal There is political consensus on the need to address geographic inequalities in the UK, with the Conservatives calling it ‘levelling up’ and Labour ‘regional rebalancing’. But what they’re missing is that the climate transformation is the perfect opportunity to put this approach into …
How can we build common cause between labour unions and climate campaigners on the future of high-carbon work? I was lead author on a major report from the New Economics Foundation. Trust in Transition was well received by energy unions (for example) – who have historically been disappointed at the lack of empathy and engagement from those whose campaign demands …
I was lead author on a report commissioned by the Scottish Green Party – what the Scottish Government could do to support more green manufacturing jobs. NEF link: https://neweconomics.org/uploads/files/NEF_Re-energising-manufacturing_Nov.pdf “The Scottish Government should match its aspirations to be a world leader on climate action with more direct support for domestic manufacturing for its future renewables growth. This means acting both …
On the problems of linear thinking – both about climate itself, and how we should respond to it. For NEF: https://neweconomics.org/2019/07/climate-breakdown-think-exponentially (The original name for this piece was ‘Be more virus’, which has been changed retrospectively for obvious reasons.)
When the parks dried up and it hadn’t rained for over a month, I wrote about how strange it all felt to have it dawn on you that this is climate change. https://medium.com/@powellds/in-praise-of-mild-discombobulation-because-christ-what-else-have-we-got-bb3e7d648fb0 Ecological philosopher Timothy Morton argues that our brains are wired to generally not notice most things until they try to bite us or start behaving a bit strangely. Then …
Things have changed now but in the summer of 2018 the UK left was pretty quiet on climate change. In this challenging piece for NEF, I challenged it do to better. http://neweconomics.org/2018/07/climate-breakdown-where-is-the-left “Progressives get it – intellectually speaking. You’d have to be a bit of a doofus not to. Climate change is clearly a problem. A great big, era-defining, ecology-changing, …