Until a couple of years ago, I would not have imagined I would ever go to prison. Then the moment came when I realised that the forms of climate protest I had participated in for 30 years – petitions, marches, letters to my MP, joining environmental organisations – were not working. So with time […]
Brian Eno, David Gilmour, Nick Hornby, A L Kennedy, Robert Macfarlane, Ben Okri, Chris Packham, Helen Pankhurst, Miranda Richardson, Sir Simon Schama, Kamila Shamsie, Lemn Sissay, Ali Smith, Juliet Stevenson and Dame Emma Thompson are among those who have signed a letter which begins: ‘We are writing in solidarity with all those in the […]
Read More… from Public figures speak up for protesters in prisonWriters Rebel
Two magical things happen when you move from the grid-connected life to an off-grid existence. The first is that you become instantly attuned to the natural world. You centre yourself around the daylight hours, because your batteries, if you have any, must be preserved for the essentials. The rain, sun and wind directly affect your […]
Who are you? You go to work, hang out with friends, care for your family. You may have a favourite meal or song or movie or memory. You read certain books, purchase a specific newspaper, have your own affiliations, and vote in a certain way. You are you in a way no one else […]
Read More… from HOW DOLPHINS AND WHALES CAN TEACH US TO SURVIVE Rupert Read and Joe Eastoe
Speculative Fiction (SF) models potential scenarios for the future of humanity by proposing alternative visions of the future that evoke different ways of inhabiting the world. But such templates can threaten the status quo: during apartheid in South Africa, several SF novels were banned, and the current right-wing book-bans in the United States show that […]
Read More… from Just Stories: How Speculative Fiction can Challenge Climate ApartheidNick Wood
Latitude: 71° 17′ 26″ N Longitude: 156° 47′ 19″ W Big fat flakes of snow drifted past the kitchen window. I watched them fall, while stirring honey into my oatmeal. ‘Whale snow.’ Julia sighed. ‘That’s the kind of snow you get when whales are around. They’re out there. Just we can’t get to them.’ […]
Today Writers Rebel took action against the Institute of Economic Affairs. We made this statement about why we did so. We choose the Institute of Economic affairs because its work is encouraging those politicians and fossil fuel companies who are right now leading us to a cliff edge. Its utterances constantly deny the […]
Read More… from What is the Price of Experience?Writers Rebel
Writers Rebel’s Katie Percival interviews Professor Sarah Bridle, a UK-based interdisciplinary researcher and writer concerned with what our food system is doing to climate change, and what we might need to do to fix it. Katie Percival: Your background is as an astrophysicist, but in the last few years you’ve turned your attention to […]
Read More… from Q&A with Sarah Bridle: Fixing Our Food SystemKatie Percival
Although it looks quite slim, The Nerves and Their Endings: essays on crisis and response is a really big, ambitious, global book that speaks very clearly to lots of aspects of the present moment. It insists on an intimate relation between the individual body and the whole environment. It’s very moving and full of insights. How […]
Read More… from Q&A with Jessica Gaitán JohannessonToby Litt
Recently two women threw a can of soup onto the glass protecting Vincent Van Gogh’s Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers in London’s National Gallery, and then glued their palms to the wall. Watching the YouTube video, I’m struck by how young they are. Their hands shake as they apply the glue to their palms, and […]
I watch the way you want to reach the end before you’ve begun. Here there is only this egg and our sitting in shifts to keep it warm, at the mercy of weather, another bird’s hunger. Trust me, you must go to unknown places and stay inside your body while you try. […]
Tell me there is a meadow, afterwards, that the roe stag will come to the top of my garden, that the window will cut me with glass blades of dewy hooves. That I’ll lay out my doe mask, my necklace of icicles, onto the deep windowsill. Tell me the stag will be […]
20 degrees north, 62 west. The outer rise of the Puerto Rico Trench, a hundred miles north of Anguilla. New Moon, 1% visible. Kraken darkness, lit only by octopus phosphorescence and the bright detonations of ejaculating eels. They’ve been travelling in tandem for five days now, through frittering flames of fertilised ova and the disarticulate, […]
I watch them for a long while, the pair rising and courting the field in daylight, the strange geometry of their faces funneling the air, and everything – their whiteness, their sense of having slipped through from another world, their focus on the hunt – in the end it all comes down to […]
Dear Dr Fritz Vahrenholt, You will be aware of Steve Baker’s decision to stand down from his position as Trustee in order to take up his government post unmarred by an association with the Global Warming Policy Foundation. I write to you in earnest to ask you to consider doing the same. You must […]
Read More… from Bill McGuire’s letter to Fritz Vahrenholt of the GWPF
Dear Professor Vahrenholt, I write to you as a conservation scientist, having spent my career working to stop the decline of nature across the world. I have read some of your work, and like you I am concerned about the potential impacts of rapid decarbonisation on the natural world, particularly if renewable energy infrastructure […]
Read More… from Charlie Gardner’s letter to Fritz Vahrenholt of the GWPF
20th September 2022 Dear Professor Edwards, I am writing to you in regards to your position as a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. As you will know Steve Baker recently left that role and I am hoping to persuade you to also step down. I am an associate professor, working at a […]
Read More… from Rupert Read’s Letter to Peter Edwards of the GWPF
Dear Mr Stringer, I am writing to you about your position as trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. I am puzzled as to why you, as a Labour member of Parliament, have taken on such a role. I am a member of the Labour party and while I welcome breadth of debate among […]
Read More… from Natasha Walter’s Letter to Graham Stringer of the GWPF
Dear Professor Michael J Kelly, I am writing to you as a scientist. I have a PhD in experimental physics, and moved on to study the biophysical resource use of economies, as well as the links between social progress and resource use. I have led a very successful project entitled “Living Well Within […]
Read More… from Julia Steinberger’s letter to Michael J Kelly of the GWPF
Dear Terence Mordaunt, all your working life, you’ve been a man of the sea. As co-founder of the Bristol Port Company, it’s the key element of your immensely successful business. But even before that, you were – as I understand it – a navigating apprentice in the Merchant Navy. I’m sure you must have […]
Read More… from Toby Litt’s Letter to Terence Mordaunt of the GWPFToby Litt
12th September, 2022 Dear Kathy Gyngell, I’m a well-known novelist and co-founder of Writers Rebel and I’m writing to you because Steve Baker announced last week that he’d been given a role in Liz Truss’s new government as junior minister in the Northern Ireland office. A day later, he stepped down from his role as […]
Read More… from Monique Roffey’s Letter to Kathy Gyngell of the GWPF