Positive thinking

Mary Thornton, University of Hertfordshire Teachers have a lot to put up with at the moment in terms of workload and stress. But what may come as a surprise to some is that, just like in the playground, bullying can be a big problem in the teaching world. Research shows that when a teacher is being bullied, the bully is often (but not always) the headteacher – who is increasingly stressed and can sometimes take out their worries about Ofsted inspections on their staff. And with this in mind, Dr Pat Bricheno and I recently studied the experiences of 39 bullied teachers in the UK. All became ill as a result of being bullied – mostly with anxiety, stress and depression. The symptoms they described included palpitations, shaking uncontrollably, crying a lot, drinking too much, raised blood pressure, and taking multiple medications. We also heard about teachers who were getting so upset they were crying in their cupboards, while still on the job. This was due to an atmospher...

 Rebecca Willis, Lancaster University The UK’s climate change targets are world-leading. Yet there is no clear plan in place to achieve them. That is the stark message of a new progress report from the government’s official advisers, the Committee on Climate Change. The Committee is forthright in its criticism of government . On its report card, assessing progress against 25 policies needed to meet carbon targets, there is just one green tick. But, beyond asking for the prime minister to set up a “climate cabinet”, the Committee has much less to say about how government – at both national and local level – should be reconfigured to make climate action a priority. The stark truth is that no one is in charge. Under the UK’s Climate Change Act, there is a statutory requirement on the government as a whole to meet targets. This leaves the prime minister with ultimate authority, but no clarity about which department should do what. The Department for Business, Energy and I...

Richard Kingston, University of Manchester and Ransford A. Acheampong, University of Manchester Since the 1920s, the car has revolutionised the way people travel; eliminating the constraints of distance while offering a personal, fast and convenient way to get from one place to another. Cities have been designed and built to make space for cars, and many cities which existed centuries before the advent of the car reshaped their streets to accommodate it. The car, along with investments in major road infrastructure, has allowed people to live further away from city centres. The result has been that residential settlements can sprawl out over large areas – a perfect example is US suburbia. Yet people’s dependence on cars poses a major threat to public health and the environment. It is estimated that there are more than a billion cars in the world. As well as driving up energy use, contributing to more than 70% of C0₂ emissions in the transport sector and reducing air qual...

Alex McGoran, Royal Holloway Ever since the issue was highlighted in shows like “Blue Planet 2”, plastic pollution in the world’s oceans has generated a wave of concern among the public . It might surprise people to learn that despite comparably less attention, many of the world’s rivers are just as polluted, if not more so . Around 80% of marine litter starts on land and rivers help transport it out to sea. In this way, plastic pollution is not just a problem for the distant open ocean – it’s an issue on our doorstep. For this reason, I chose to focus on the River Thames and the impact that plastics are having close to home. There are currently no estimates for the amount of plastic in the Thames, but the world’s rivers are estimated to carry up to 4,000 kg of plastic out to sea every day . Despite much of the plastic in the Thames making it to the North Sea, a portion is permanently accumulating in the catchment. A large wet wipe reef on the south bank just upstr...

Pip Roddis, University of Leeds Subsidies for onshore wind power were cut by the UK government in 2015. Then the main reasons given were that it was too expensive and that the public didn’t support it. Amber Rudd MP, then head of what was the Department of Energy and Climate Change, said in a statement to parliament : “We are reaching the limits of what is affordable and what the public is prepared to accept.” Fast-forward to 2019: onshore wind is the UK’s cheapest form of electricity , and our newly-published academic research shows that public support for renewables is high and getting steadily higher. Support for nuclear and fracking, on the other hand, is low and decreasing. These trends are demonstrated by the government’s own data: the UK Energy and Climate Change Public Attitudes Tracker (PAT). The PAT has been running quarterly since 2012, meaning there is a huge amount of data to show how attitudes have changed over the past seven years. In total, more than 50...

Marcelle McManus, University of Bath   It will be very difficult to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by enough to halt global heating at 1.5°C – the threshold at which catastrophic climate change becomes more likely – according to a new paper published in Nature. If the Earth warms by more than 1.5°C , millions of people could be displaced by sea level rise and global crop yields could decline. Fortunately, the political will to prevent this seems more widespread than ever . The UK recently became the first major economy to pass a commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 into law . Sounds positive, so what’s the problem? Well, the new study has shown that if the world continues to use its existing power plants, it’s likely that the target of 1.5°C will be exceeded. If all the fossil fuel plants and other carbon-emitting infrastructure that’s currently planned are built, this target will certainly be exceeded. There is a significant number of fossil fuel plants curr...