The Lucrative Illusion of Green CapitalismLaurie Parsons

  Crickets chirping noisily around me, observed with blinking indifference by long-tailed lizards as mosquitoes circled in periodic diving raids, I trudged the last hundred or so metres of rising dust to the rear of the factory compound. The corrugated iron fence, ragged but ten foot tall in places, seemed to offer no insight into […]

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Rewilding: Brodgar Poetry/Sound WalkStephanie Green and Sonja Heyer

Why not go on a short walk? Only fifteen minutes or so. It could take you anywhere, through a green space, or down city streets. Go on a walk and listen to recordings of poetry melded with sound. These natural sounds were recorded on site at the Ring of Brodgar, Orkney, Scotland. They comprise wind, […]

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Brother Earth, Sister MoonAnita Roy

  In 2019, a group of Swedish scientists published a paper on the migration patterns of the European Nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus). They had discovered that the migration patterns of the birds, worldwide, are linked to the lunar cycle. This led me to wonder what tales nightjars would tell each other if they could speak? Perhaps […]

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In the Paper ForestFrancesca Schmidt

  Cheap paper is all around us. It’s flushed down toilets, taken away in cups, wrapped around online orders, photocopied, printed and discarded. Paper may be a renewable resource, but it has to be grown somewhere. For the European market, this somewhere tends to be Portugal, which produces about 50% of Europe’s paper. Portugal’s paper […]

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Staying GroundedDr Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs

  It’s 2020 and I am debating whether my lupin seedlings are ready for transplanting. Like Barnacle goslings leaving the nest, the transition is a bumpy cliff.  They are the height of my thumb, two only have their seed leaves still and aren’t identifiable. I use a spoon to scoop them up and plop them […]

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Now is the time to set up a local Writers RebelRebecca Stonehill

  In 2022, a writer friend and I began talking about how we wanted to draw local poets and writers together, to build community around those who were addressing (or wanted to address) the climate and ecological emergency in their writing. We put some feelers out and on a warm evening in June, twelve of […]

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THE TUFTON PRAGMATISTSZadie Smith

  Following her appearance at The Big One on April 21st 2023, Zadie Smith has shared the definite text of her piercing speech with Writers Rebel. It is reproduced here exclusively.    Hello. I want to speak to you today about a man called Craig Mackinlay, MP. Craig campaigns against flagship green policies, and is […]

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10 Things We Must RememberTom Bullough

  For 2100, 77 years from now, the likely range in global temperature increase above the pre-industrial average is 2-4.9°C, with the median 3.2°C. Globally, that is to say, we are set on a course for a barely imaginable catastrophe. As Sir David Attenborough put it, four years ago this month, “It may sound frightening, […]

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Tufton Street: A PoemJacqueline Saphra

  We gather here in love and rage to tell the story of our age, to ring the bell, to write the page, to raise the roof, rattle the cage, expose the lies, call out the cheats who foster, posture, pant and pitch deadly denial, rank and rich, and peddle death at Tufton Street and […]

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Life on the EdgeSandy Winterbottom and friends in Uganda

  On the 25th March 2023, as a side-event of the UN water conference held in New York, Women from XR Global linked live to three regions in Uganda to listen to voices rarely heard: the women who live on the frontline of climate change. The technical challenges were significant: the most impacted areas are […]

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Dispatch from AustraliaJean McNeil

  Scribbly gum forest   We inch westward on a sluggish commuter train. The trees look African – acacias? – but on closer inspection are not. Everything initially looks African or European (my two points of reference) but then isn’t. It is 35 degrees. Of my trip to the Blue Mountains, everyone in Sydney says, […]

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I’m not radical, I just don’t want animals to diePhilly Stock

  It was April Fool’s day, and I thought it was a joke at first – my partner’s face plastered across the front page of the Mail on Sunday. We were out for dinner with his university friends. A mixed group – teachers, scientists, journalists. Those in the media would easily be able to mock […]

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Q&A with Tracey Williams, founder of Lego Lost at SeaToby Litt

  One of the most beautiful and affecting environmentally-related Twitter accounts is Lego Lost at Sea. Most often, it first presents many followers with a hauntingly eroded plastic figure – like an unfinished painting by Charles Munch – and asks them to identify it. Very quickly, it will be identified as, for example, something a […]

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Where the Seals SingSusan Richardson

  Grunts and snorts and wails were bringing depth and texture to the pre-dawn dark. From my dune-top spot, my eyes gradually acclimatised to the lack of light and I managed to make out hordes of hulking forms persistently shunting themselves into new configurations on the beach. Soon, a bloom of peach on the skyline […]

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What Would a Whale Say?Sean Lusk

  A little while ago Caitlin Moran wrote about Greta Thunberg. The article, laced with Moran’s characteristic humour, was respectful and admiring, but a line towards the end snagged me. Moran, discussing predictions that humans will soon be able to communicate meaningfully with whales, asked Greta what she thought whales would have to say about […]

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Art and ActivismTom Hardy

  Picture this… a man walks into a gallery and throws black ink over a renowned artwork. Not, as you would be forgiven thinking, a Just Stop Oil intervention but a 1994 reaction by artist Mark Bridger to Damien Hirst’s pickled sheep creating a new work he called “Black Sheep” which was in turn absorbed […]

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A GRANDMA’S TALESue Hampton

  In a downmarket flat in a comfortable English town there lived a shy grandma. She lived with the guilt of breaking her children’s hearts and she didn’t suppose it would ever ease. But now that she had grandbabies she was determined to give them all the love, fun and care her slightly creaky body […]

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After Reading the Lorax as a Bedtime StoryJessie Tomlinson

  When I was in high school, I babysat for my next-door neighbours, and one time – I was about fifteen – their seven-year-old daughter came downstairs after I’d put her to bed, unable to sleep. I picked out a story to read to her for comfort and – unthinkingly – chose The Lorax. At […]

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