Environmental crisis

Marking 3,000 days since I first set out on my bike on a daily basis to take photos of the changing face of the capital for a project that became known as ‘The State of London.’ On the fifth anniversary of the start of the project, I began posting a photo a day on Facebook, where I have now posted 1,176 photos.

Today, Bandcamp, the US online music service, is waiving its fees to help musicians, so please feel free to buy any of the studio recordings by my band The Four Fathers, including our brand-new online single, ‘The Wheel of Life’, a meditation on mortality and living in the moment.

An interview about my activism — involving Stonehenge and the Battle of the Beanfield, Guantánamo, the housing ‘regeneration’ industry in the UK, and the currently unfolding environmental crisis — as published in Gonzo Weekly and International Times, based on questions from the publisher and activist Alan Dearling.

Promoting the release of ‘This Time We Win’, the new single by The Four Fathers, which I wrote last year, inspired by Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, and which we recorded in December with Charlie Hart, who also plays Wurlitzer piano on it. Ironically, the arrival of the coronavirus has led suddenly to seriously reduced emissions, although our leaders are desperate to restore “business as usual” as soon as they can, a delusional position that we hope as many people as possible will resist.

One year ago, Extinction Rebellion activists (myself included) occupied several sites in central London, bringing traffic to a halt, in an environmental precursor to what the collapse of “business as usual” looks like under the coronavirus lockdown. How can we make sure that, as the crisis passes, we don’t simply return to the suicidally irresponsible culture that existed until just a month ago, which was speeding us towards environmental destruction.

In my latest article looking at the drastically changed coronavirus world, I flag up the dangers of the massive shift from employment to unemployment, call for rents to be written off for the duration of the crisis, and refer to a study in the journal Science to demonstrate that we need to be thinking about living with the coronavirus for years, and not just a few more months of lockdown.

100 days since the existence of the coronavirus was first announced to the world, I look at some of the many ways in which it has changed life forever – primarily by establishing that our societies’ obsession with corporate profits above all else has now been revealed as empty and worthless, when what truly matters is our health, and those who look after us. I also look at some of the many ways in which our economies, and our economic priorities, will need to change.

My latest thoughts on the coronavirus crisis, looking specifically at how it must change the way we operate forever – not only via the extinction of the cruise ship industry and the acceptance of a much-reduced airline industry, but also through a complete re-evaluation of capitalism and our own appetites. Some of this follows on from the demands of Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, but the virus has, in an unprecedented manner, thrown almost everything we thought was certain into doubt, presenting unparalleled opportunities for a new future in which we put the needs of the people and the planet before profit.

As the UK economy grinds to a halt as a result of the coronavirus, I’m finding myself wondering how the almost complete collapse of the global economy can be seen as a proportionate response to a virus that has, to date, led to less than 8,900 deaths worldwide.

My report on the welcome news last week that the High Court ruled that a decision by the Metropolitan Police to impose a blanket ban on Extinction Rebellion in London last month was unlawful – and my warning that we need to be vigilant, and to ensure that no draconian new law is introduced, as happened in the 1980s and 1990s, after the Battle of the Beanfield and Castlemorton, with the Public Order Act and the Criminal Justice Act.