Positive thinking

Paul Gregg, University of Bath   Jeremy Corbyn has signalled that a new Labour government under his premiership would drop social mobility as a policy goal and replace it with a focus on social justice. Labour said it would replace the current Social Mobility Commission with a Social Justice Commission, claiming the move would be a break from 40 years of political consensus around social mobility. But Corbyn’s speech at an education policy event in Birmingham in early June was part sense and part nonsense. He argued that social mobility was the idea that “only a few talented or lucky people deserve to escape the disadvantage they were born into” and it had resulted in “the talents of millions of children being squandered.” Yet the pursuit of social mobility in policy and research has never just been about the opportunities of a few bright poor kids. Such an argument is like arguing that gender equality is merely about getting more women on the boards of FTSE 100 com...

Benjamin Neimark, Lancaster University ; Oliver Belcher, Durham University , and Patrick Bigger, Lancaster University   The US military’s carbon footprint is enormous. Like corporate supply chains, it relies upon an extensive global network of container ships, trucks and cargo planes to supply its operations with everything from bombs to humanitarian aid and hydrocarbon fuels. Our new study calculated the contribution of this vast infrastructure to climate change. Greenhouse gas emission accounting usually focuses on how much energy and fuel civilians use. But recent work , including our own, shows that the US military is one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries. If the US military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, sitting between Peru and Portugal. In 2017, the US military bought about 269,2...

Lynn Williams, University of Strathclyde  Y⁠o⁠u⁠r⁠ ⁠p⁠a⁠r⁠t⁠n⁠e⁠r⁠’⁠s⁠ ⁠p⁠e⁠r⁠s⁠o⁠n⁠a⁠l⁠i⁠t⁠y⁠ ⁠c⁠a⁠n⁠ ⁠i⁠n⁠f⁠l⁠u⁠e⁠n⁠c⁠e⁠ ⁠y⁠o⁠u⁠r⁠ ⁠l⁠i⁠f⁠e⁠ ⁠i⁠n⁠ ⁠a⁠l⁠l⁠ ⁠s⁠o⁠r⁠t⁠s⁠ ⁠o⁠f⁠ ⁠w⁠a⁠y⁠s⁠. For example, studies have shown that a conscientious partner i⁠s⁠ ⁠g⁠o⁠o⁠d⁠ ⁠f⁠o⁠r⁠ ⁠y⁠o⁠u⁠r⁠ ⁠h⁠e⁠a⁠l⁠t⁠h. Our latest study shows that they are also good for your quality of life. Personality reflects a person’s characteristic way of thinking, feeling and behaving. Psychologists tend to examine personality across five key traits : extroversion, openness to experiences, conscientiousness, emotional stability and agreeableness. Typically, these traits are measured using questionnaires that help psychologists build up a profile of a person’s personality. Personality characteristics can have a strong impact on health, even influencing how long you live. Research shows that the more conscientious a person is, the longer they live. Conscientiousness is defined by high levels of self-d...

Laurie Wright, Solent University We’re all too aware of the consequences of plastics in the oceans and on land . However, beyond the visible pollution of our once pristine habitats, plastics are having a grave impact on the climate too. Newly published research calculates that across their lifecycle, plastics account for 3.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s almost double the emissions of the aviation sector. If it were a country, the “Plastic Kingdom” would be the fifth-highest emitter in the world. Demand is set to rise, too. At 380m tonnes a year, we produce 190 times more plastic than we did in 1950. If the demand for plastic continues to grow at its current rate of 4% a year, emissions from plastic production will reach 15% of global emissions by 2050. Plastic across the lifecycle More than 99% of plastics are manufactured from petrochemicals, most commonly from petroleum and natural gas . These raw materials are refined to form ethylene, propy...

Rick Stafford, Bournemouth University and Peter JS Jones, UCL Nobel Peace Prize nominee Greta Thunberg claims we need system change to save the planet, and the majority of experts, from the IPCC , through to our own research , would certainly agree with this. But for most people, it often isn’t clear what changes actually need to be made to address environmental problems. And ideas that are presented can be seem as extreme to some . This is despite the fact that many experts agree that to really tackle climate change, the focus needs to be on changing the capitalist system to make it more environment-friendly. System change can sound scary, but as the current system drives social injustice and environmental destruction, a new approach to address both is called for. These are some suggestions to help build that new system which also aims to improve people’s lives in the process. 1. Less focus on economic growth The suggestion that GDP is a good measure of a country’...

Danny Dorling, University of Oxford and Sally Tomlinson, University of Oxford   It was a man called Reginald Brabazon, Earl of Meath, who in 1903, two years after the death of Queen Victoria, suggested that her birthday, May 24, should be renamed Empire Day and become a day for patriotic celebration. His idea began to take off the following year and slowly spread in popularity. In 1909, Brabazon attended a day in Preston where a crowd of 20,000 people watched boys and girls parade past in what they were told was the national dress of each colony. When World War I patriotic fervour was at its height, in 1916, the government gave in to calls for the day to be marked with an official state ceremony. But it wasn’t until the 1920s that the official celebrations really began to take off, and in May 1926, Empire Day became closely linked to the work of the newly established Empire Marketing Board . British school children all received a free mug and cake and were routinely ...