Environmental crisis

Podcast: I Discuss the Shameful State of the World, and Resistance and Hope in 2025 with Andy Bungay for Riverside Radio

22.12.24

My latest interview with Andy Bungay, recorded for his Riverside Radio show in London as part on an ongoing series of monthly interviews, and made available here as a stand-alone podcast. In a freewheeling 80-minute discussion, we focused on some of the many profoundly dispiriting events dominating our lives as 2024 draws to a close — the imminent return as the US president of Donald Trump, the ongoing genocidal carnage being inflicted by Israel on the trapped Palestinian civilian population of the Gaza Strip, and the growing menace of catastrophic climate change. All are thoroughly depressing topics, of course, but our conversation was threaded through with resistance and hope, based on my assessment that societal tipping points may arrive unexpectedly when we are failed so persistently by our leaders, whichever political party they represent, as is very clearly the case right now.

World on Fire: I Discuss Gaza, Climate Collapse and the Collective Derangement of Western Politicians with Andy Bungay

13.11.24

My recent hour-long interview with Andy Bungay of Riverside Radio in south London, posted to my YouTube channel after it was broadcast, in which we discussed the ongoing horrors in the Gaza Strip, climate collapse and my contention that our leaders, unable to accept that, for 40 years, their beloved neoliberalism has actually been killing us, have suffered a psychic derangement and have embraced endless war instead.

The Failures of “Regeneration” Exposed on the 6th Anniversary of the Violent Eviction of the Tidemill Garden Occupation in Deptford

30.10.24

My reflections on the two-month occupation, and the subsequent violent eviction of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction as part of an ill-conceived and inappropriate housing development, undertaken by the housing association Peabody, in conjunction with Lewisham Council. Six years on, building work is still not complete, with most of the flats in the dense and unattractive blocks raised on the ghosts of the garden unoccupied, and work still ongoing on the conversion of the former primary school into ‘luxury’ flats and townhouses for private sale. I conclude that the Tidemill re-development — now known as ‘Frankham Walk’ — is part of a downturn in the whole wretched business of “regeneration” that has been so dominant over the last 20 years, and make particular reference to Thamesmead, the Brutalist estate on the outskirts of south east London, where Peabody’s £2bn plan for its “regeneration” is stalling, and where the developer is also in conflict with tenants who want their properties refurbished rather than destroyed. I also discuss how the new Labour government, despite promises to build 1.5m new homes, has no vision whatsoever about how to build genuinely affordable housing, and remains wedded to the private developer-led model that has been such a disaster over the last two decades.

Freeing My Mind on a Ten-Day Summer Holiday Digital Detox

25.9.24

My reflections on my recent family holiday in Sicily, in which I refreshed my mind and my general sense of well-being through a ten-day digital detox, which involved me being completely offline — away from the internet and from all social media, and without a phone. To balance my very evident privilege, I also assess the environmental cost of flying, the increasing recognition that summers are getting noticeably hotter in the Mediterranean, despite an “entitlement” culture that still believes that a foreign summer holiday is some sort of “right”, and the hidden environmental pressures of tourism — or over-tourism.

The Four Fathers Release New Album, ‘Songs of Loss and Resistance’, on CD and as a Download

22.9.24

Announcing the release of The Four Fathers’ new album, ‘Songs of Loss and Resistance’, on Bandcamp, featuring ten original songs — mostly protest songs, nine by me, and one by our guitarist Richard Clare — which is available to listen to for free, or, if you’d like, to buy as a download, or even as a limited edition CD. You can also buy individual tracks as downloads. The album covers tumultuous events in the UK and globally over the last eight years, including the existential threat to humanity posed by climate collapse, the Grenfell Tower fire, the Brexit referendum, the anti-gentrification Tidemill garden occupation in Deptford, the ongoing plight of Guantánamo’s “forever prisoners”, and the unjust imprisonment of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange. It was recorded sporadically, between July 2018 and January this year, with the great Charlie Hart, a multi-instrumentalist and producer, best-known as a member of Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance in the 1970s and ‘80s, who also plays electric piano and accordion on three of the songs.

If We Should Live, Our Scribes Will Record 2024 As The Beginning of the End for Humanity

1.9.24

This is meant to hit hard, and I hope it does. It’s my analysis of how, faced with the the gravest threat humanity has ever experienced — wildly accelerating climate collapse, which will make the planet uninhabitable for humans, and probably in the not too distant future — our leaders have, instead, suffered a massive psychic collapse, unable to accept that, as I describe it, “everything our neoliberal societies have worshipped and profited from over the last 40 years is killing us”, and have “collectively retreated into a broken psychic landscape in which, as so often in human history, if faced with something uncomfortable — as, in this case, our own wilful and self-imposed extinction — they have chosen to slaughter everyone instead, and to lay waste to human environments to make them uninhabitable.”

Podcast: I Discuss the UK’s General Election, Warmongering, Protest and Julian Assange’s Release with Andy Bungay

25.7.24

Linking to and discussing an interview with Andy Bungay of Riverside Radio, which I’ve published as a podcast on my YouTube channel. In the 50-minute interview, recorded on July 13, and featured on Andy’s weekly show, we spoke about the UK General Election, and my relief at being rid of the cruel, corrupt and incompetent post-Brexit Tories. However, I also expressed my doubts about the incoming Labour government led by Keir Starmer, with worries about his authoritarianism, his approach to protest (and here I discussed the recent draconian sentencing of five climate activists for a Zoom call), and his support for war in Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. We also spoke about the new political landscape in the UK — or England in particular — where there are now five main parties, but they are not adequately represented in Parliament because of the antiquated and unjust ‘First Past the Post’ voting system, and how we desperately need a proportional representation system to properly reflect voters’ choices. We also spoke about the release of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, after five years fighting extradition in Belmarsh, and how his release was a ray of light in an otherwise darkening world, and we also spoke about the ongoing injustices of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, where 30 men are still held, 16 of whom have long been approved for release.

After Punitive Sentences of Climate Activists, Labour Must Repeal the Tories’ Draconian Anti-Protest Laws

19.7.24

My response to the draconian and vindictive sentences — the longest ever handed down in the UK for non-violent protest — delivered by a British judge, Christopher Hehir, to five climate activists yesterday. Their crime? Taking part in a Zoom call to plan disruption to the M25 to highlight the climate crisis and to get the British government to commit to a ban on new oil and gas extraction in the UK. The sentences — of four and five years — are, as Michel Forst, the UN rapporteur for environmental defenders, explained, “purely punitive and repressive.” The reason Judge Hehir was empowered to deliver such punitive sentences was because of two horrendous Acts of Parliament, passed by the recently departed Conservative government, via two malignant home secretaries, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, which specifically targeted the right to protest, and essentially criminalised non-violent, mildly disruptive protest. This legislation needs to be overturned by the new Labour government, but as I explain in my article, I fear that “Keir Starmer — and Yvette Cooper, the new home secretary — fundamentally share the contempt Patel and Braverman had for any kind of protest that causes any kind of inconvenience whatsoever.” The right to engage in non-violent, mildly disruptive protest is at the heart of what separates supposed liberal democracies from autocratic regimes, and it is crucial that it is upheld in the UK, because, otherwise, those engaged in its suppression, to preserve a cosy capitalist status quo, are failing to accept that it is precisely this status quo that is killing us all, because, as I also explain, “man-made climate collapse is the greatest threat humanity has ever known, as is demonstrably true, and as is becoming ever more apparent with every passing day.”

Despite the Landslide, Labour Have No Vision and Only Won the UK General Election Because the Tories Lost So Spectacularly

5.7.24

My analysis of yesterday’s General Election in the UK, which, after 14 years, swept aside the Tories, and ushered in a Labour government under Keir Starmer, with a huge but disproportionate majority that didn’t reflect the number of votes received (less than Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 and 2019), but rather the collapse of the Tories, finally undone after years of cruelty, incompetence and corruption, and facilitated by the sudden rise of Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK Party, which helpfully split the right-wing vote. Wonderful though it is to see the back of the Tories, and also to see noticeable successes for the Green Party, the Liberal Democrats, and a number of independents including Jeremy Corbyn, power is now in the hands of Starmer and his cabinet, including his Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who secured victory despite having almost no policies that distinguish them from the Tories. I discuss my many concerns, criticising Labour’s adherence to neoliberalism, and urging it to be bold on re-nationalisation (especially of water), and expressing my shock that Starmer has so openly declared his opposition to any kind of rapprochement with the EU, even though Brexit has done more to damage the UK than anything else over the last eight years, wrecking trade, and leading to a disgraceful rise in racism, which, in the hands of the Tories’ parade of leaders in the years since, led to a morally repugnant fixation on making it illegal to be a refugee, and seeking to send asylum seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda. I hope this anti-immigrant hostility will be abandoned, and I also hope that other draconian Tory innovations — in particular, an attempt to ban all meaningful protest, through the criminalisation of climate activism — will be ditched, although on this particular point I fear that Starmer, as the former Director of Public Prosecutions, has troubling authoritarian impulses that may not augur well for civil liberties. I also urge boldness — true boldness — on climate collapse, and end by expressing my fears for foreign policy under Starmer, most noticeably because of his uncritical support for Israel and its ongoing and unforgivable genocide in Gaza.

The Limits of Polite Dissent: The Massive But Largely Ignored ‘Restore Nature Now’ March in London, June 22, 2024

1.7.24

My report about ‘Restore Nature Now’, a massive march and rally in London on June 22 calling for the urgent protection of bio-diversity, which was initiated by the beloved environmentalist Chris Packham, but which, because it was family-friendly and non-confrontational, was almost completely ignored by the mainstream media, unlike the global coverage days before, when two Just Stop Oil activists sprayed harmless cornstarch-based orange paint on Stonehenge, and were compared to ISIS. Although catastrophic climate collapse is already happening — and much earlier than the warnings made by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018, when we were warned that we had until 2030 to reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 to keep alive the prospect of a liveable planet — climate protest is in a parlous state, either sidelined or ignored when it is peaceful, like ‘Restore Nature Now’, or subject to hysteria and hyperbolic outrage when it involves even the mildest disruptive forms of direct action, along with the almost certain prospect of arrest, and possibly prison sentences, because of draconian laws passed in recent years aimed solely at climate protestors. Reviewing the last three decades of climate protest, I conclude that direct action remains the best way to try to effect change, but I struggle to understand how it can be undertaken when it faces increasingly draconian responses from government, and continued indifference or psychopathic hostility from the media and from the bitter and twisted ‘armchair warriors’ of social media. We truly seem to be living in the most demented end times imaginable, just a few years away from major collapse, and yet still encouraged to consume like never before, not to question the insanity of our leaders’ inaction, nor to question their psychically broken response — not dealing with the threat, but instead transferring all our energies into hideous proxy wars, in Ukraine and in Gaza, while our leaders prop up a neoliberal model that is so broken that ordinary people, confused and angry, are everywhere retreating into the false comforting arms of fascists with their dangerous explanations that the blame lies entirely with “the other”: immigrants, Muslims, and, increasingly I fear, everyone on the left. This is not a comforting time to be alive, and those of us with functioning brains, and with empathy, need to start working together like never before to create genuine solidarity as our civilisations collapse and the far-right become ever more empowered.

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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Stonehenge: Celebration & Subversion

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Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo

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