The magician’s house, by Jan Dean, a chilly hearth-side story for the world we live in about a promise, begins a new, monthly feature from our project on modern folk tales for troubling times The magician’s house was first published in our collection of tales 'There...
Initiatives
One special day – a cautionary Christmas tale
One special day – a cautionary Christmas tale by Bill McGuire is a short, seasonal special for our project on modern folk tales for troubling times Ivy collapsed into the overstuffed armchair and let out an enormous sigh. It was so good to be able to relax after all...
The new reformation: 33 theses for an economics reformation
Marking the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's challenge to the established church, the New Weather Institute and campaign group Rethinking Economics, with input from a wide range of economists, academics and concerned citizens, challenged the mainstream teaching of...
#SmogDay: remembering air pollution’s victims & clearing the air
Action: please call on MPs to sign Caroline Lucas' #SmogDay early day motion for urgent action to clean the air in our towns and cities. Smog Day is a day to remember all the people who have died prematurely, and avoidably, because of air pollution, and to advance...
Why people long for stories
“It takes a civilized man,” said George Bernard Shaw, “to be deeply moved by statistics.” The whole edifice of Fabian statistics, outcomes, learnings, KPIs and so on were built on those foundations. Shaw was not wrong. You do need an imagination to imagine the picture...
Milking it
Systemic corporate failures are leaving our glass of milk half empty... There's a milk and butter shortage threatened, who would have thought it? And it's accompanied by the usual, willfully ignorant media jokes about the French croissant becoming a rarity. Morrisons...
New: modern folk tales from top scientists, economists, ecologists & activists
Knock Twice: is a new collection of 25 modern folk tales for troubling times by a group of leading scientists, economists, environmentalists and policy experts and activists. Realising the limits of facts and policy alone to change the world, an innovative group of...
Can any country opt-out of Google?
Nations may opt-out of the EU, and regions out of nations, but is corporate power inescapable? Lindsay Mackie reports on a vital, missing debate Is corporate power a danger to democracies? This was the key, under-considered question that the New Weather Institute...
Clearing the air – a tale of two cities & #SmogDay
See the SmogDay website for the real human stories behind the statistics on pollution. In December 2015, pollution causing smogs in Delhi gave it the worst air quality of any city in the world. It was exactly 63 years since the ‘Great Smog’ of London, estimated...
How to call-out everyday climate denial
FOLLOW: @EverydayDenial You know things are bad when it takes Donald Trump pulling the US out of the Paris agreement for climate change to be discussed during the UK election. His climate denial is of the extreme and obvious variety: pages were removed from the...