Recycle Archaeology’s Labels for LandfillHelen Wickstead

  Most people don’t know that thousands of finds from archaeological digs end up in landfill. Some of these “de-selected” artefacts turned up on the spoil-heap or outside the trench. They can’t be used to date deposits because they are not stratified within excavated layers. Many fragments of ancient bone, pot and stone are not […]

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Hungry for a FutureCharlie Gardner

  Soon after laying down our fork at the end of a meal, our body starts to protest. At first it’s a subtle, uneasy feeling in the belly; a sense of absence, a hole that needs to be filled, but ignore it for long and the reminders become less subtle as the stomach contracts in […]

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A Citizen’s ArrestCarsten Jensen

  “What if I got to jail?” I thought, when Extinction Rebellion Denmark asked me to speak at the opening of its week of protest. Because this is the point we’ve reached: the point where states come down more heavily on climate protest than on tax evasion. When he was jailed for his role in […]

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The last speech I gave before I became a criminalCarsten Jensen

    If you think you can live the way you have always lived, you are wrong. If you think your kids will have a life like yours, you are wrong. If you think politicians have a bigger horizon than the next election, you are wrong. If you think that the problems you don’t solve […]

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FOLLOW YOUR HEARTBREAK: Q&A with Jeremy LentLiz Jensen

Jeremy Lent, described by Guardian journalist George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age,” is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future. Here he talks to Writers Rebel’s Liz Jensen about his latest book, The Web of […]

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Shades of EmergencyDaisy Hildyard

  What does emergency feel like? If you’re in Henan, China, perhaps you felt a goldfish nibbling your foot as you waded along the pavement during the summer floods. If you’re in Madrid or Chennai or Sydney, maybe it was stifling heat, the smell of rotting trash, dead insects crisping on the windowsill. If you’re […]

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As the Oil Pumps, the Blood SpillsStephen Young

  Behind the missiles, bombs and bullets raining down on Ukraine lie fossil fuels. The rich world’s addiction to perpetual energy is financing a dictator’s war. The Ukrainians fleeing home and those who’ve stayed to fight are at the mercy of a twisted economic system. As the oil pumps, the blood spills.  Oil and gas […]

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Satisfying, empowering, life-affirming: civil disobediencePeter Kalmus

Peter Kalmus getting arrested with Scientist Rebellion

  Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist, known as @ClimateHuman on Twitter, founder of ClimateAd and a  number of other organisations responding to the climate crisis. Last week he was arrested with Scientist Rebellion. Yesterday (Tuesday 12th April 2022) he spoke at the a launch event of the new A22 global climate change civil resistance […]

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Q&A with Maggie GeeSharon Eckman

Professor Maggie Gee speaks to Writers Rebel’s Sharon Eckman about her new book The Red Children, released today, and how it might inspire wider understanding and action around climate change. Read on for some extracts from the book.   SE: You said that you wanted to write an ‘upbeat, funny novel’ about climate change, which […]

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Q&A with Margaret AtwoodToby Litt

  This interview took place on Thursday 24th March 2022. The wonderful Margaret Atwood was in London for an event at the Royal Festival Hall, promoting Burning Questions, her new book of essays and occasional pieces. She spoke with Toby Litt, editor of the Writers Rebel website.   TL: Thank you for talking to us. […]

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What We Find in the Guts of the Bodies that the River Gives UsPhilip Webb Gregg

  There is a place where the river meets the land; a kink in the direction of the water, so that the usually tranquil current froths to a restless swirl, and things wash up onto the grass like bad food spat out. For the past two weeks we have been pulling bodies from that place […]

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Running out of timeAna Campos

  Bombs are falling on Kiev in a war whose outcome could bring unimaginable consequences. As if the environmental crisis were not dangerous enough for life on Earth, we must wonder: is humanity incapable of mastering its own demons?  We have been blessed with an amazing planet born 4.5 billion years ago; a small fireball […]

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Don’t Be Like MeMark Engineer

  I have a confession to make. I’m a world class procrastinator. A heavyweight champion faffer-abouter. An Olympic standard timewaster. (This isn’t the confession. I’m just setting the scene.) It’s not great. It drives my friends and family nuts. It’s of practically no use in a climate and ecological emergency, which is all about acting […]

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An orison for UkraineAlex Lockwood

  We don’t wake up at 5:14am and check the news to see if we’re at nuclear war. We don’t go back to sleep. We don’t read Putin-expert Fiona Hill’s article ‘Yes, He Would’. We don’t blame friends for dropping out of WhatsApp groups (we can’t, they’ve left). We don’t spend an hour leaving Google […]

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The Electric BlanketFernanda Eberstadt

Fernanda Eberstadt

  I was born in New York in 1960, an era when people—Americans, especially—still believed in the modern. My grandparents were wild about gadgets: at Sunday lunch, my father’s father—whose teasing always carried a whiff of terror—liked to chase his grandchildren with his electric carving knife; when we went to stay with my maternal grandmother, […]

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The Month of Emergencies – poemRebecca Faulkner

  7.9 inches of rain fell in Central Park last night dead cicadas on the crosswalk   their bodies bunched   in brittle knots         sticky candy sky bright with grief      branches submerged   by the weight     of our silence     a letter unread a door closed firmly       & […]

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Duino – poemPatrick Mackie

  Whether you can get there from here or wherever depends on whether you are there already, on whether you will find that you are already standing amidst the outspread hands of its stones, and their misty grey dawns,  on whether indeed the arcs and folds of that sky really can make all location moot […]

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Diver Overview – PoemSebastian Schloessingk

  The Great Barrier Reef diver/cameraman ‘cried in my mask’, to see the bleaching. Mankind is beginning to take creaky  baby steps towards being able to live forever. Just when there’s no more   forever to live in. There is a shock that sidles from the phrase ‘humans were rare,’ as applied to time in […]

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Shadwell Three: Phil Kingston’s Defence StatementPhil Kingston

Phil Kingston

  Phil Kingston, 85, was one of three Christians on trial in January 2021 after they stopped a train at Shadwell Station in London in 2019. Two people stood on top of the train while Phil superglued himself to the side of the train. All three were acquitted. Here are some extracts from the defence […]

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The Vicar, The Priest and The Former Probation OfficerJessica Townsend

  A vicar, a priest and an elderly former probation officer sat on a train. Not in a train, you understand: on it. It sounds like the beginning of a joke but it’s not. Far from it. These are the facts that were established at the beginning of a court case in which three people […]

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Q&A with Laura Jean McKayLaura Jean McKay

  Laura Jean McKay is the author of The Animals in That Country, which in her home of Australia won the 2021 Victorian Prize for Literature and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. The novel then won the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award Science Fiction Book of the Year. Here she discusses with Alex Lockwood […]

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