Category: essay

Blinded by The Light (newspaper)

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As with many countries in the Western world, the UK has seen a rise of ethno-nationalist politics in recent years. One politician who led the Brexit agenda to leave the EU, is Nigel Farage. Not being able to blame the Eurocrats anymore, the lie took hold that Britain’s ills could be blamed on poor immigrants rather than greedy elites. Recently, Farage has come under fire for his alleged expressions of antisemitism. Although that focused on his childhood, his appearances on the podcast of alt-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was also discussed. During an appearance, Farage claimed that ‘globalists’ are trying to override national sovereignty by creating one world government. Some critics have claimed that it was ‘dogwhistling’ about threats from Jewish elites. The concern arises because Jones and Farage claim there are evil cabals of people, rather than members of a transnational capitalist class, who are serving the extractive demands of international capital. They don’t discuss capitalism in an intelligent way, because then they would be criticising their friends, funders, and the system that has promoted their views to huge audiences. Discussions in the mass media about who ‘globalists’ are and whether we should be concerned about them (and the structures of capital they serve) could be welcomed, if those discussions go beyond the lazy and nasty tropes of antisemitism. Unfortunately, such discussions seem difficult to have in the UK and elsewhere, as political discussion is often febrile and superficial. I was reminded of that recently in the town of Stroud, where one independent newspaper seems to have generated new debates and fractures between people who previously worked together for social change. In this essay, I want to share what I noticed from reading that newspaper and from experiencing the community fractures that emerge around its arguments. If the mass media weren’t so badly misinforming people in order to protect elites, perhaps this situation would not be so difficult. But in such a poor information system, there is work to get people talking about what can be done together at community level as life gets increasingly difficult for so many.  

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After the Alarm: Artificial Intelligence, metacrisis, and societal collapse.

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The breakneck acceleration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has moved the discourse on its benefits and perils from science fiction to boardroom and government-level concern. In the last few months there has been a series of articles by the BBC about AI trends and potential dystopias. One article was about how some leaders in AI are anticipating societal collapse and getting their bunkers ready. We also read that some ‘tech bros’ even want such a collapse, as their technotopian futures involve a break with life as we know it. One BBC article mentioned that the ‘AI Futures Project’ predicts AI may achieve ‘super intelligence’ by 2027 and then human extinction, or something like it, will occur within 5 years, via an AI deliberately engineering superbugs. Supposedly, it would do that after deciding that humans are a major problem without a remedy other than mass murder. I haven’t seen the authors of that study receive the kind of aggro I got since 2018 from predicting societal collapse due to climate change. Maybe that’s because we are used to sci-fi dramas where robots kill nearly everyone. But their prediction might be part of a ‘wake up call’ for wider societal engagement and responses to AI, so we might head off the worst scenarios. Maybe I’m naive, but these dystopias certainly woke me up a bit, and so here I am writing about AI and collapse. After the jolt, I read into the nature and scale of some risks, with the aim of exploring how people who want to behave well in these times of societal disruption and collapse — including myself — could use AI responsibly. That exploration is still ongoing. 

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A Personal Message on Covid-19

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I was surprised recently that someone close to me likely had Covid-19 again less than 3 months after her previous infection. She didn’t take a test for it either time, but the symptoms suggested it wasn’t the flu. Fever, headache, lethargy, loss of smell, but no sneezing or phlegm. As the initial symptoms didn’t put her in bed, sick, we didn’t take it too seriously. But this second infection has lingered, and created recurring lethargy and insomnia, while also bringing back some old health problems. That encouraged me to look into the latest information on Covid-19. What I found concerned me. I am sharing about it here for the same reasons I did so in the past. Since looking into it more closely in 2021, I have thought that the policy orthodoxy on Covid-19 has been counterproductive. Additionally, I have been concerned that most commentators in the environmental field are aligned with the orthodoxy and thereby turning many people away from the environmental cause. Thirdly, pandemics have often played a key role in societal breakdowns and transformations in the past, and so the risks of the Covid-19 pandemic, and future ones, is within my field of analysis and comment. Looking back, one sad aspect of speaking out over the last four years has been that many people assumed that questioning the orthodoxy means caring less about this disease, or public health in general. Such prejudice was produced by Big Pharma and their supporters in politics, the medical establishment, and mass media. In sharing on Covid-19 now, I don’t expect to have much influence, but if some of you, my readers, take the following ideas seriously enough to check them out for yourself, then at least a few of you might benefit. 

My past essays on the topic were always well referenced, and I provided links to credible sources, such as official data sets or peer-reviewed papers. I wanted to be as factual and precise as possible, and avoid the misleading spin from various commentators. This post will not be like that. I write not to influence agendas but to nudge those of you who follow my blog to act to be healthier than you might otherwise be… that’s if you look into the information for yourself and agree. You could use an AI chatbot to check some of my statements that will follow and look for relevant data. I think if we don’t do our own checking then we don’t convince ourselves enough to change behaviours. 

Anyway, here goes, with my personal message on Covid-19…

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The Mirage of Climate Action at the Summit in Brazil

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In this era of societal disruption and metacrisis, international climate summits provide us a Shakespearean display of the human craving for credible myths to avoid daunting truths. Four lanes of greed carve through one of the remaining lungs and heat-shields of our planet — and this month it speeds 50,000 souls towards reassuring each other that they are noble, not needy, and well-informed, not foolish. Earlier this year, the summit secretariat rushed to tell everyone that this new highway through the Amazon Rainforest would have been built anyway. They’d probably heard how new roads cause – and then enable – deforestation. The Brazilian government responded with some more commitments on rainforest protection. That’s promising, but they still give permits to dig up the Amazon for the metals under the trees. The mirage shimmering above the asphalt, seen by delegates as they approach the city of Belem, is a symbol for what passes as scientific curiosity, environmental care, and responsible leadership on the world stage in 2025. 

Ahead of the latest tropical junket, I spoke with the Climate Emergency Forum about what the climate has been telling us through the crazy temperature readings over the last two years. The changes can’t be explained through carbon gases alone. There are various contributing factors — and an important one is that human activity has badly disrupted the biohydrological processes where large forests and oceans naturally seed clouds. I explained the need for a paradigm shift in climatology and related activism and policy, and mentioned my recent essay on the topic, where I summarise the evidence. As many people have followed my analysis on the topic since 2018, I thought it important to summarise my latest understanding — beyond ‘carbon-centrism’.

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Heartfullness: The Way of Contemplation

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In a time of metacrisis, disruption and collapse, many of us yearn for deeper spiritual meaning but aren’t attracted to institutional religion. We also sense that growing recognition of humanity’s predicament could prompt a spiritual awakening, at least for some. This means many of us aren’t sure where to turn to find either advice or community, or to invite others together for that. That has been my situation. Personally, I have benefitted from Buddhist and Daoist philosophy and practice, nature-based Indigenous wisdom, and mystic strands of Christianity, as I shared in a ‘Buddha At The Gas Pump’ interview and now integrate into my music. I now want to go deeper and further with others. In the New Year, we launch the Metacrisis Mentors programme, where we will draw upon a variety of wisdom traditions to explore, in challenging times: what is mine to do and how am I to be? 

In January, we will announce more about the programme, which will be open to all members of the Metacrisis Meetings initiative. One of the key texts will be Heartfullness: The Way of Contemplation by Reverend Stephen G. Wright. A former palliative nurse, academic, and ordained inter-faith minister, Dr. Wright has cultivated decades of wisdom at the intersection of caregiving, contemplation, and mystical inquiry. His voice is deeply rooted in the lived experience of guiding seekers and spiritual nomads — those who feel estranged from dogma but still feel the call of the sacred.

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Summary of Breaking Together

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Portuguese is the fifth language that my book Breaking Together is available in. Many at the launch in Lisbon last month travelled from the countryside where they are working on community resilience. For them, the book Juntos Na Rutura provides a useful explanation to others about why they are promoting community economics. One of the interviews around the launch was with the Portuguese degrowth network, which is available on video.

After that inspirational boost, my next speech was to a more general audience in the UK, and I discovered how my analysis on the causes and implications of societal collapse can be easily misconstrued.  Therefore, I wrote a summary of the foundational concepts in my work, including concepts like Deep Adaptation, the Metacrisis, the Great Reclamation and Ecolibertarianism, to appear here on my homepage. In addition, I worked with a colleague to prepare a summary of some ideas in each chapter of Breaking Together, which I publish below.  

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Restoring Forest Cover and Ocean Health as the Frontline in the Climate Fight – an FAQ

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After my essay on September 5th on the need for a pan-ecological understanding of climate change and how to respond to it, I received a range of feedback and questions. “Does it change your anticipation of collapse,” was one question. Ahead of next week’s Metacrisis Meeting on this topic, in this blog I am sharing my provisional answers. An 800-word summary of my essay on the topic can be found below the following FAQ.

The renowned Professor Bill Rees, who popularised the concept of ecological footprint, welcomed the climate dogmas essay as follows:

“Most climate science sees climate as mainly a physical system with scant attention to  systems ecology… Your essay goes a step beyond, to see the climate as a biophysical phenomenon, as a product of the interactions among the physical drivers— atmospheric gases, the solar flux, etc. — and biological processes both marine and terrestrial.  I.e., it forces recognition that the climate system cannot be understood in isolation from the biosphere. To acknowledge and fully understand the role of the oceans (e.g., dimethyl sulfide), forest cover, soils production, evapotranspiration, etc. and their effects on atmospheric gases (hydrological cycle), albedo, heat balance , etc. would be a massive leap forward for climate science.  I suspect, as your article implies, it would go a long way toward revealing why (more or less in the words of top US climate scientist Gavin Schmidt) present climate models cannot explain what’s actually been happening for the past decade or so… I agree completely that what you are calling a ‘pan-ecological paradigm’ would “recognise that the pervasiveness and complexity of living systems” and that related bio-processes “are salient to any natural phenomena” including the climate systems.

As a sociologist and transdisciplinary research analyst, rather than a climatologist or ecologist, I am grateful for such feedback, and hope it encourages you to read the essay and look at the sources and references I link to from it. 

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Mary Magdalene and the Mariam Mantra

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If we are truly in a situation of ‘metacrisis’ then the foundations of our understanding of life and death are being challenged. It feels that way for many people who conclude that the upheavals of recent years are aspects of a breakdown in ‘normal’ life. Such a deep disturbance can be fertile ground for rethinking dominant ideas we received from our culture. For some, that can involve rethinking our relationship to religion, spirituality and the divine. That has brought me to a point of recognising that the cultural mis-shaping of our shared interpretations of personal experiences of non-separation and existential gratitude, are at the root of widespread destruction and exploitation. Even without the scandals and violent histories, institutionalised religion has a lot to answer for. Beyond that, exploring an enlivening and empowering spirituality can be an amazing outcome of the metacrisis. It doesn’t make the bad stuff go away, but it can change how we respond to it.

I was born into Christianity, in the Anglican tradition. It took me until my 50s to look into the content of those Gospels that were excluded from the official canon. One of those is the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Upon studying it, I composed a mantra that draws from one of its phrases about the sacred interbeing of all that exists. I performed the mantra at a musical gathering, or Kirtan, which occurred on the day of the feast of Mary Magdalene (July 22nd, 2025). The band had not heard it or rehearsed it before, but as we had Ezca dancing with us, I wanted to record the occasion – and the video follows below. The result is a bit messy, musically, but I think it conveys some of the feeling of the moment. The chords and words of the mantra follow at the end of these reflections.

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Centering Citizen Ownership: Britain is not for sale and Palestine is not for stealing.

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The transcript of a speech delivered in Stroud, UK on 13th Sept 2025, by Professor Jem Bendell.

“Britain’s not for sale and Palestine’s not for stealing – defending and restoring citizenship ownership in the face of collapse.”

I am pleased to be back in ‘The People’s Republic of Stroud’. I first saw that phrase in the background of a talk entitled ‘heading for extinction’ by Gail Bradbrook back in 2018. People in the town of Stroud played a key role in the formation and growth of Extinction Rebellion, which sparked a new wave of environmentalism, bringing wider attention to the climate crisis. I mention that today, as I’m interested in connections between more commonly-owned assets, on the one hand, and a political voice on the other. Only with both of those do we increase the chances of coping better with a creeping collapse of the systems and opportunities we once had.

Today is unusual for me, as I am going to talk about politics. I have never given a speech before that is explicitly about politics. In the first half of 2017, I worked in front line politics with Jeremy Corbyn and his team. I advised on strategic communication, co-wrote speeches, and some of the manifesto. I went on to train some of the current backroom staff for PM Keir Starmer, including Morgan McSweeney. But I have never given a political speech myself. I feel now is the time to do that, because of what’s happening in Britain right now.

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The Dangers of Climate Dogma – and what we can do about it

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“We are already in a manmade climate emergency and it is probably not primarily due to CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s because the pace of change in our climate is what makes this an emergency, and that is largely due to a decline in the Earth’s reflectivity, primarily from a loss of cloud cover, which is due to a fall in cloud seeding, with strong evidence that is mainly from a degrading of forest cover and ocean health. Downplaying this ecological dimension to global heating due to a dogmatic allegiance to carbon-only explanations and targets, has become as bad a response as that from people who dismiss it all as a climate scam.”

How do you feel when you read these lines? Who would say such a thing? Could it be true? Please read on to explore why we can update our understanding of climate chaos and what to do about it…

Being curious despite our fear  

If you have been noticing the temperatures around the world over the last 2 years, then you will have felt some degree of shock and trepidation. Both on land and in the oceans, the thermometers have been going up faster than we were told to expect – and faster than the top scientists have been able to explain. We’re talking about present day measurements – so the facts of observation – not the latest theories about what might, or might not, occur. Living in a world that’s reached 1.5C degrees above pre-industrial averages, years before past predictions of worst case scenarios, is both scary and a challenge to the claimed expertise of mainstream climatology. Or so it should be. That does not need to be something to be feared and avoided. Instead, science is, by definition and methodology, an ongoing dialogue with nature, which requires an openness to unanticipated or anomalous data, which might lead to the ditching of old ideas, the testing of new hypotheses and even the transition into new paradigms. Unfortunately, that is not how all climate science is being practiced and communicated today. Instead, it has become a field plagued by dogma and tribalism, which results from multiple commercial and institutional interests. 

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