The Climate of Folly
Last week, the World Meteorological Organisation published the State of the Global Climate 2020 report. What should we think of its findings? Who better to ask than Chris Rapley, a leading climate scientist, who leads the Climate Action Unit at University College London.
Financing biodiversity: What we Need to Do
Biodiversity deserves scrutiny. We are now losing species at 1000 times the natural rate. The financing of biodiversity is falling far behind. But the world is starting to recognize the value of nature, as reflected in a number of influential reports. Matthew Phan takes a closer look at the reports to pull together crucial takeaways we all have to pay attention to.
ESG is a dead end. Do we care?
ESG is a dead end. Yet, there is an increased demand for ESG investments as investors seek to incorporate socially conscious principles into their portfolios without sacrificing performance. Jyoti Banerjee investigates regenerative concepts as a better way of addressing our degenerative failures in investment and business.
Funding conservation without costing the Earth
The history of philanthropy is full of systemic disfunction. North Star Transition’s concern to accelerate systemic change immediately stumbles when the fundamental system, in this case wealth creation, militates against the secondary outcome, which is philanthropy. The system is quite simply broken. Peter Harris investigates.
Regenerative farming: Profits, people and Purpose
Modern agriculture evolved partly to meet challenges of food supply and affordability. Yet its use of chemicals has deplete the land and its biodiversity. Add in the growing challenges of climate change, as well as failing farms and sick farmers. Farming must change. One farm that has successfully transitioned from the methods of industrial agriculture is Bradwell Grove in southwest England. To understand this shift, Matthew Phan spoke to Charles Hunter-Smart, who manages the farm.
Negative Externalities: It’s time to change our viewpoint (Part II)
Negative externalities are mostly viewed as a macro-economic issue, but their poison percolates the entire economic system, including at micro-economic level, sending the wrong incentives to business executives and consumers. Olivier Boutellis argues that they are a fundamental flaw we have to fix now.
Negative externalities - It’s time to Change our Viewpoint (Part I)
Markets have been a fantastic driver of wealth and wellbeing... but for the small problem of negative externalities. Scientists worry that negative externalities threaten life on earth - yet we have not resolved the problem. In the first of a two part series, Olivier Boutellis asks why a hundred years of debate on externalities has not changed anything.
Wales Transition Lab: thinking differently holds the key
The Wales Transition Lab works cross-functionally with experts in a range of fields to reconnect food, health and nature across the entire region of Wales. Thomas Clegg interviews Andy Middleton, its leader, to find out whether the Transition Lab is meeting Andy’s expectations.
Partnering on systemic change: UCL and North Star Transition
UCL’s Prof. Chris Rapley was quite clear on his reason for collaborating with North Star Transition: he had spent thirty years trying to persuade policy-makers that scientific evidence required them to act on the emergent climate crisis, but with insufficient effect. He wanted to see a new approach taken in the push for climate action.
US agriculture: a case for systemic thinking
The US is regarded as the world’s bread basket. So are we acting on the systemic crisis afflicting US agriculture? Jyoti Banerjee explores an interesting example of the North Star Transition approach when applied to this situation.
Obstacles to change: why the system seems immovable
Why does the global human-economic system seem immovable, even when its participants face possible extinction through its working? Jyoti Banerjee explores tools that can help shift the system.