I’ve decided to stop feeling useless and start to do something about it.
Opinion Articles
Shortcuts to staunching catastrophic wildlife declines
Disrupting catastrophic wildlife declines won’t be easy. But by focusing conservation interventions on a small set of disproportionately important places and projects, we can still leverage our way out of the sixth mass extinction. This is exactly why conservationists have long preoccupied over “biodiversity hotspots”–35 areas that jointly cover just […]
Building societies that don’t suck
We have to design systems that will incentivise pro-environmental decision-making. It’s not enough to rely on individual choices. Individuals are busy. Individuals have kids, careers and favourite TV programmes. And individuals are constrained by the inefficient and wasteful industrial systems through which they can meet their daily needs. Much easier […]
Time for a Manhattan Project on biodiversity loss
The most important conservationists of the future probably won’t even abide by that name. Already today, it’s politicians that decide on whether biodiversity loss is taken seriously or pushed to the fringes. It’s engineers who are designing disruptive technologies for tackling climate change and ocean pollution. It’s pioneering economists who […]
Conservation isn’t “anti-development”
Perhaps the most common criticism targeted at conservationists and the environmental movement more generally is that it is anti-development. I find this frustrating, because from my experience, it’s exactly the opposite. Most of the conservationists I know: Don’t want to ban new oil palm plantations. They recognise that oil palm […]
Tidiness: the silent bane of wildlife conservation
Across Tasmania, farmers are erecting miniature wombat-high electric fences to keep the burrowing marsupials from “making a mess” of their cattle pastures. Ten thousand miles away, in Gloucestershire, the Forestry Commission have built shooting towers to help hunters take out wild boar, who are unpopular for the occasional damage they cause to […]
Artwork of extinction: the most important painting in history…that you’ve probably never heard of
I think a strong case could be made that the watercolour painting above is one of the most important pieces of artwork in history. It lacks the grandeur of a Michelangelo fresco or the detail of a Monet. In fact, judged on artistic merit alone, the Duria Antiquior is almost unworthy […]
Chinks in the armour of global food security
Last year, for the first time in its history, Tesco announced a three-lettuce ration on the purchasing of icebergs. A few months later, Brazil Nuts suddenly vanished from one of the UK’s favourite cereal bars, replaced with a package printed apology that read “Sorry no brazils!”. Some 7 years before […]
Should we save the fluffy ones?
In an ideal world we would protect the whole alphabet of animals, from aardvarks through to zebra sharks. But conservation doesn’t happen in an ideal world—it happens on a shoestring budget. Future extinction rates could get as high as three species disappearing per hour, which leaves conservationists with some very […]