..As an advocate for and expert on the Precautionary Principle, I should know..

by Rupert Read

The majority of the EU has now suspended the use of the AstraZeneca (‘Oxford’) vaccine, on ‘precautionary’ grounds. This makes no sense, for three reasons:

1. Most importantly, there is no evidence that the ‘precautionary’ grounds cited are any evidence at all against this vaccine. There appears to be statistical illiteracy in the case assembled against the vaccine. One would expect plenty of blood clots to occur anyway in a huge population at any given time. This point is decisive. …

LET’S NOT HAVE THE NEW CLIMATE WAR BE…BETWEEN US

Dear Michael;

In your important new book ‘The new climate war’ you call for an overcoming of the ‘tribalism’ that has come to shadow the debates around climate. In that spirit, I’m writing to you today in a vein of open and civil discussion. I hope earnestly for your response in the same way.

In your book, while praising Extinction Rebellion [XR] in some important respects, you also criticise them for allegedly adopting a ‘soft doomist’ frame at times. …

During the recent Extinction Rebellion, I had a wake-up call experience with the Murdoch press.

This piece concerns that nature of what I found.

It started when the Times published a piece that was headlined “Climate protests ‘threatened by parasitic hard-left groups’.” The article was basically an interview with me. The headline purported to quote me. But what it said was false. I never used the word “threatened” — indeed the body of the article quoted me as saying what I actually said: the opposite. …

on the need for truth-telling and its possible needful consequences

[*This blog post is based on the pamphlet: Truth and its consequences: a memo to fellow rebels on smart strategy written by Rupert Read. If you like this blog, then do read the whole pamphlet!]

Telling the truth

Extinction Rebellion’s (XR’s) first demand is for the Government to tell the whole truth about the gravity of the climate and ecological emergency. The time is now because everything is not going to magically sort itself out, everything is not going to be ok. What we are currently witnessing is climate spiralling…

Why they are significantly worse than the EU [i]

We have written this article not out of any love for the EU but because we feel duty-bound to explain to a still largely-unsuspecting public what ‘No-Deal’ would really mean, just how disastrous it would be — and what might stil be done to stop it.

By Rupert Read and Adam Woods.

For the first time in 40 years, the UK has to re-consider its trading policy. At the moment, there is plenty of talk about “falling back” onto World Trading Organisation (WTO) rules in the event of a no-deal Brexit…

Reflections upon the defeat of the Trade Bill

By Dr. Rupert Read and Baroness Jenny Jones

Last week, the upper House inflicted a historic defeat on the Government’s Trade Bill. This article explains the reasons for and the significance of the defeat, in the context of the struggle over Brexit and in defence of a precautionary approach to environmental- and public-health- protection.

In a time of rising anxiety with the possibility of a no deal Brexit looming, there must be assurances made in law that our future trading arrangements are not going to expose us to gross potential damage to…

While writing my new book on how some films are shared dreams which can help us to awaken, I had a dream: a dream which I think reflects the reality through which we are sleepwalking to collective self-destruciton…:

I’ve just published a book, called ‘A film-philosophy of ecology and enlightenment’. (You can read the early part of it for free here: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iNNyDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT7&ots=neRvyifi24&sig=EpCGrmDAUXwvxmWqXcT844CeCZE#v=onepage&q&f=false

…Don’t attempt to buy it unless you are independently wealthy — it’s madly expensive. Wait for the paperback next year — or, much better idea, order it for/through your library, now.)

I argue in my book that a…

A friendly critique of Bendell’s ‘Deep adaptation’ paper

Climate-nemesis is near-certain. But “near-certain” is not yet “inevitable”. On the contrary, it is still uncertain. By making it sound inevitable, we run the risk of fomenting inaction at the worst possible time. We need to prepare for what is near-certain. But if we give up trying to stop it then it will become inevitable. We need to try to stop it: roll on the eXtinction Rebellion.

The (exciting, but mainly terrifying) 1.5degrees report from the IPCC made (some of) the headlines; and now the media have mostly moved on. The mega-story…