Positive thinking

Tom Oliver, University of Reading Climate change no longer seems just a future threat. In 2019, major fires in Australia , Russia and California burned over 13.5 million hectares of land – an area four times greater than the size of Belgium. Major floods and cyclones displaced over four million people in Bangladesh, India and Iran, while entire townships were laid to waste by storms such as hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas. This year, things show no sign of letting up: the Australian fires continue, Greenland ice sheets are expected to lose another 267 billion tonnes of ice and thawing Arctic permafrost is causing positive feedback effects that will intensify climate heating and future impacts. In the face of such a global catastrophe, it can seem futile to take any action, individually. Over 36 billion tonnes of CO₂ are emitted globally every year, with each of us responsible for a fraction of this (for example, each person in the UK is responsible for around 5.8 ton...

Janet Lord, Manchester Metropolitan University Recent changes to school funding in England mean that, although there may seem to be more money for education, in general schools will be worse off in 2021 than they have been over the last few years. In the second half of 2019, the government announced a £14 billion increase in funding for schools in England. This is over three years: £2.6 billion in 2020-21, increasing to £4.8 billion in 2021-22 and £7.1 billion in 2022-23. The National Education Union (NEU) analysed the figures , and despite the cash injection, found “a strong link between deprivation and the scale of government cuts to school funding”. The NEU suggests that, when inflation is taken into account, over 16,000 schools will have less income in April 2020, compared to 2015. Over the past decade, school spending per pupil in the UK has fallen by about 8% in real terms. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies , this is the largest decline since at lea...

Richard Sambrook, Cardiff University The BBC faces a hostile government seeking to end the licence fee in favour of advertising. Meanwhile, political polarisation has undermined consensus about its role, it faces increased competition and technology is rapidly changing viewing habits. And there is serious criticism of its editorial performance. I’m not talking about today – although all of the above apply – but the mid 1980s when the Thatcher government set up the Peacock Committee to report on the BBC’s finances with the expectation it would recommend advertising. Meanwhile home video recording was presenting challenges to viewer numbers and there was fierce public controversy led by government over its coverage of Northern Ireland. The BBC responded by promoting finance director Michael Checkland to director general and bringing in former London Weekend Television boss John Birt as his deputy and anointed successor. The Peacock Committee decided the licence fee was “t...

Jon Fairburn, Staffordshire University Poor air quality is responsible for over half a million deaths in Europe every year, but not everyone is equally at risk. Our new review found that across Europe , the most deprived people have the worst air quality. This means that the people already experiencing multiple deprivations because of their social class, ethnicity or gender, also have the unhealthiest environments to live in. In Wales, deprived areas have the highest levels of major pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter, from traffic exhausts, industrial pollution and wood-burning stoves. Particulate matter forms a fine mist of toxic debris that affects more people than any other type of pollution . Inhaling it can contribute to heart attacks and respiratory diseases, including lung cancer. For the very smallest particles, there’s no safe threshold below which “ no damage to health is observed ”, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). ...

Edda Sant, Manchester Metropolitan University   If political headlines globally are anything to go by, it seems democracy is at risk. Totalitarian views are on the rise . Far-right parties and leaders have gained voters in many countries . And decisions are being made by law courts or by technical experts from international economic organisations. And people, particularly young people, feel they do not have a say . So it’s not surprising then that governments are turning their attention to schools as a potential cure . Promoting democracy has always been one of the tasks of schools within democratic systems. But this demand is now on the rise. Indeed, across the globe teachers in schools are expected to engage students as democratic citizens. It’s hoped such lessons about democracy and what it is to be a good citizen will help to combat growing support for totalitarian and radical views . Wanted: democratic education In my research , I have examined more...

Luca Panzone, Newcastle University and Natasha Auch, Newcastle University How does your food shop affect the planet? Well, think of it like this – consuming just one egg emits between 260 and 330g of CO₂ to the atmosphere. That’s because before that egg can reach your plate, animal feed has to be produced and delivered to the hen that laid it. That hen then needs heating pumped into the shed it shares with the other hens on the farm, and their eggs have to be transported, often by van, to the shop you buy them from, where they’re stored in refrigerators. There’s also the packaging that must be made to store the eggs and the process of cooking them to consider. All of this takes energy, which, more often than not, is generated using fossil fuels. We can analyse the carbon footprint of a particular food item by working out the quantity of greenhouse gases that are emitted during the production of raw materials, industrial processing, transport, storage, cooking, consumption...

Marc Hudson, Keele University Extinction Rebellion was once criticised by other activists for “ love bombing the cops ” , but now it has found itself labelled a terror threat. In a guide sent to teachers by counter-terrorism police, the non-violent group’s logo and activities were described to help them spot students who may be involved. The guide – which includes neo-Nazi and Islamist terror groups – has since been withdrawn and Extinction Rebellion may yet sue , but this extreme response should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to how states are treating environmental protest. In 2015, the Federal Australian government released a similar booklet called “ Preventing Violent Extremism and Radicalisation in Australia ” . It shared the story of “Karen”, who “attends an environmental protest and gets mixed up with a radical green group”, eventually dropping out of school to “devote herself to forest protests”. Here also, Karen the environmentalis...

Jamie Morgan, Leeds Beckett University Cast your mind back a decade or so and consider how the future looked then. A public horizon of Obama-imbued “yes we can” and a high tide of hope and tolerance expressed in the London Olympics provides one narrative theme; underlying austerity-induced pressure another. Neither speaks directly to our current world of divisive partisan politics, toxic social media use, competing facts and readily believed fictions. This should be instructive. The future is made, not discovered, and yet we are constantly confounded by the future as it becomes the present. What we believe, say, do, organise and vote for matter, but the world they matter to constantly eludes our grasp. We often stumble into futures we would rather avoid. Our ecological and climatological future represents one such horizon and whether and how we will work , another. Organisations are also constantly trying to own the future by mapping out what it will mean for us. The “ f...