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Articles by Ben Shread-Hewitt
Myanmar’s Civil War Is Threatening A Major Peatland Discovery – OpEd
A 2024 satellite survey revealed Myanmar has 1,718% more peatland than previously estimated — one of Southeast Asia’s most significant ecological discoveries in years. The newly identified peatlands could store the equivalent of more than 40 years of Myanmar’s carbon emissions. Civil war has halted ground surveys, driven out international funders, and left authorities with no plan to protect them.
As rising seas threaten nations like Tuvalu, what does survival without land look like?
In 2025, Australia offered the world’s first ‘climate refugee’ visas to the citizens of Tuvalu—an island at almost certain risk of sinking beneath the waves in the not-so-distant future. Indeed, two of the archipelago’s nine islands are already , so it’s not exactly a theoretical concern. All the available visas for this scheme were snapped up within four days, with over 3,000 people (a third of the population) applying for the 280 visas available.
Yet another apocalyptic prediction…
For apocalyptic predictions, it’s been an unusually fruitful start to the year. The UK government—after some delay and weak attempts at obscurantism—released its National Security Assessment on global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, a terrifying though truncated document outlining how global ecological collapse could drive everything from an economic crash to nuclear war.
The Petrostate Proxy War
Two kingdoms, once close allies, are now locked in a sprawling contest — fought through proxy armies, megaprojects, and competing visions for a post-oil future. The party isn’t ending tomorrow, but both of them know it’s ending. The term ‘hybrid war’ gets thrown around a lot nowadays. Russia’s hybrid war against Europe, China’s hybrid war against Taiwan, America’s hybrid war against seemingly everyone but its adversaries. This is a new phenomenon.
Weak signals of the Venezuela war
In the immediate run-up to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I and a collegue were arguing about the possibilities of conflict. I can’t remember my logic, but I (foolishly) contended it would not happen. He claimed it would, and that it was imminent. None of his arguments struck me as convincing or new, save one: that Russia had moved huge reserves of medical blood packs to the border.
The Tehran snapshot
Iran is in the grips of a historic drought, which has been dragging on for (at time of writing) 5 long years. The situation has got so severe that the Iranian government is openly contemplating evacuating their capital city, with the president announcing, “If it doesn’t rain again, we will have to evacuate Tehran”. Would this evacuation be temporary? permanent? The answer to both is still a maybe.
“The Hellish and Dismall Cloud”: How Medieval Coal Sparked England’s First Environmental Laws
Long before the Industrial Revolution shrouded England in smog, the battle over dirty air had begun in the heart of medieval London. By the early 14th century, the capital was swelling with people, and with that growth came an ever-increasing demand for fuel. Wood, the traditional source of heat and cooking fuel, was becoming scarce. Local forests had been overharvested, and feudal supply chains struggled to feed the city’s growing appetite.
What happens to net zero if the trees don’t survive?
What happens to net zero if the trees don’t survive? Originally published in The New Climate Reality It was supposed to be a symbol of the UK’s leadership on the environment. In 2020, a major new road near Cambridge was opened, one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the UK in recent years. And at its heart was a bold commitment: to boost the local area’s biodiversity, including planting 860,000 new trees. Tree planting has long been one of the UK’s go-to climate solutions.
The Age of Functional Extremes
In his 1945 essay Notes on Nationalism, George Orwell lays out a taxonomy of what he calls “nationalism” — a term he applies not only to traditional patriotic fervour, but to an oddly wide array of ideological commitments. He defines nationalism as: By this definition, Zionism certainly qualifies. But pacifism? Political Catholicism? His definition was already stretched beyond what most would consider nationalism per se, but these inclusions extend the concept to its breaking point.
Slow Violence and the Hidden Cost of Climate Harm
The Invisible Crisis: How Climate Change Inflicts Lasting Harm Beyond Headlines Climate change is often seen as a series of dramatic disasters — hurricanes, wildfires, floods. But much of its harm is slower, quieter, and largely invisible. This is what Rob Nixon calls slow violence — a creeping, hidden form of climate harm that unfolds over decades and disproportionately affects the Global South. Violence is typically understood as immediate: explosive, visible, and fast.
Geoengineering in the Age of Distrust: Are We Ready?
The only publication for climate action, covering the environment, biodiversity, net zero, renewable energy and regenerative approaches. It’s time for The New Climate. Follow publication Why conspiracy theories could derail the future of climate engineering before it even begins. Last Christmas, I found myself at a family gathering, making the usual small talk with a family friend. Let’s call him Dave. Inevitably, he asked what I do for work.
The AI Derailment: How Artificial Intelligence Could Threaten the Climate Transition
The Paradox of AI, a Climate Solution or Sustainability Threat? At first glance, Artificial Intelligence looks like a miracle technology for the climate crisis. It can predict weather extremes with , optimise battery storage, manage electricity grids, streamline construction for low-carbon buildings, and accelerate the development of renewable technologies. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, has boldly claimed AI will ‘solve’ climate change.
Why America’s Privatisation of Climate Data Puts Us All at Risk
How climate data became the latest casualty in America’s war on public infrastructure The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is quietly gutting America’s public climate infrastructure. Backed by the radical vision of Project 2025, this movement is not just slashing budgets — it’s defunding, decentralising, and deleting essential climate services across the board. Federal programs are being eliminated. Climate scientists are .
Climate Change and the Collapse of Inle’s Indigenous Way of Life
How Climate Change and Pollution Are Threatening Myanmar’s Inle Lake and Its Indigenous People Hidden in the folds of Myanmar’s eastern mountains, cupped in the palm of the Shan Plateau, lies a lake that shimmers like a sheet of polished silver. Inle Lake is not deep — barely two meters on average — but it holds a richness that belies its size. Its waters cradle more than just fish, reeds and a thriving ecosystem; they carry an entire way of life that may soon vanish.
What Ancient Climates Can (and Can’t) Teach Us About Today’s Crisis
How ancient climate events reveal the risks — and limits — of using the past to predict our climate future. When trying to understand what the future might hold in the age of the climate crisis, we often look to the past. After all, the Earth has seen apocalyptic warmings, dramatic sea level changes, and mass extinctions long before humans ever lit their first campfire. These ancient chapters in Earth’s history are tempting guides.
Will ‘Thrutopia’ Help Us Navigate Climate Breakdown - or Normalise It?
As 1.5°C slips away, ‘Thrutopia’ emerges… It’s 2022. Sean Kidney, CEO and co-founder of the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI), steps onto the stage at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, preparing to deliver what was expected to be another rousing address on climate finance. CBI has long championed the transition of global bond markets toward green investment, aiming to align financial flows with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C temperature target.
Could Deep-Sea Mining “Save Biodiversity”?
As Trump signs executive order to fast-track deep-sea mining, scientists and economists warn of a flawed ecological promise. As demand for transition minerals surges, the Trump administration has issued an executive order aimed at accelerating deep-sea mining — a controversial practice that reaches into one of Earth’s most pristine and least understood ecosystems.
Are We on the Brink of the First Climate War?
Climate change, geopolitics, and the fracturing Indus Waters Treaty The escalating tensions between Pakistan and India serve as a stark reminder that climate change is no longer a distant — it is now a force multiplier for geopolitical instability. As the climate crisis accelerates, so too does its capacity to deepen existing rivalries, strain fragile agreements, and inflame long-standing disputes.
The Gauntlet. Where is Thrutopia?
COP27 at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, 2022. Sean Kidney steps onto’ stage and prepares to deliver his opening remarks. He is the CEO and co-founder of the Climate Bonds Initiative, a climate finance NGO dedicated to turning bond markets and other financial sectors ‘green’. This will, so the theory goes, provide both markets and governments with the financial resources needed to meet the 1.5C Paris Temperature Targets—and thus prevent catastrophic climate breakdown.
Working from First Principles: ‘Parable of the Sower’ (Octavia E. Butler, 1993)
A review of ‘Parable of the Sower’, by Octavia E. Butler (1993). The novel Parable of The Sower has a longstanding, dedicated fanbase. Lauded for its prescience and unflinching hopefulness in the face of dystopia, Octavia Butler’s 1993 novel remains a bestseller—and an almost canonical text for those of certain philosophical persuasions. But Parable is not confined to any of these worldviews, which is why it is so interesting.
Speed Is As Important As Scale
Heat records are falling almost daily. 1 in 1,000 year floods are becoming seasonal. The collapse of Antarctic sea ice, predicted to happen later this century, is now occurring in “real-time”. If you feel like climate breakdown has suddenly accelerated, then you are not alone. Many climate-induced tipping points —sudden, irreversible changes in climate and ecology — are .
Speed Is As Important As Scale.
https://www.rawpixel.com/image/3398476/free-photo-image-sea-animals-animal-box-turtle Heat records are falling almost daily. 1 in 1,000 year floods are becoming seasonal. The collapse of antarctic sea ice, predicted to happen later this century, is now occurring in "". If you feel like climate breakdown has suddenly accelerated, then you are not alone. Many climate-induced tipping points -sudden, irreversible changes in climate and ecology - are .
The Deluge, by Stephen Markley
The Deluge, Stephen Markley (2023) The Deluge is a tome, a vast and sprawling novel with myriad narrative threads. Tracking the future of American society between 2013–2040 against the backdrop of worsening climate change, the reader is shown a nation plunging fitfully into turmoil – with hard-fought moments of recovery and sudden, devastation catastrophes. Markley’s portrayal of the human condition is masterful, yet I am not the only person who struggled to follow this novel at times.
An Environmentalism that Plunders
Looting, it seems, has got a bad rap. Because to save the planet, we need to loot it. We must let nothing — not cultural artifacts, not ancient woodlands, nor even entire species — get in the way of this drive to save the planet from its number one threat: Climate Breakdown. This is one of the central points of a editorial by The Economist magazine, titled The Case for an Environmentalism That Builds.
A Review of ‘Navigating the Polycrisis’: A Map of Collapse, Utopia, and The Many Paths In Between
The Polycrisis is the breakdown of our future. It represents the end of established narratives and understandings, stretching from geopolitical rules to the biophysical basis of the planet itself. With old trajectories seemingly out of reach, speculation about the future has enjoyed a Renaissance — predicting everything from an AI utopia to a climate apocalypse. Into this setting emerges Navigating the Polycrisisby Michael J. Albert.
How Climate Fiction Reflects Reality
A comparative review of the climate fiction books “The Ministry for the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson and “The Deluge”, by Stephen Markley. Sci-fi is never really about the future. It’s about the present, reworking and rediting reality. Sci-fi is a reflection of present conditions and our social reactions to them, left to run off into an undetermined future.
How Climate Fiction Reflects Reality
A comparative review of the climate fiction books “The Ministry for the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson and “The Deluge”, by Stephen Markley. Sci-fi is never really about the future. It’s about the present, reworking and rediting reality. Sci-fi is a reflection of present conditions and our social reactions to them, left to run off into an undetermined future.
A Tale of Two Canals
In November 2023, the Houthis of Yemen began firing missiles at shipping in the Red Sea. This blockade has since escalated, with boarding actions commandeering entire ships, further missile strikes, and Western military retaliation. The response from the UK and US and their mission “to protect the free flow of international commerce” has not succeeded. The Houthis are not cowed, and the Red Sea — a vital shipping lane carrying — has seen its traffic drastically decline.
Yanis Varoufakis’s “Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?”
Socialists have been hotly anticipating the end of capitalism since at least 1848, when Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto – but the Manifesto also reminds us that capitalism is only too happy to reinvent itself during its crises, coming back in new forms, over and over again: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html Now, in Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis – the “libertarian Marxist” former finance minister...
United by the flow of the River Exe
Last month, the River Exe came alive with song, night swimming, stories and a wild salmon run for the first Festival of the River Exe. Transition co-founder Rob Hopkins hears about the three Transition groups who collaborated to protect, restore and celebrate their local river, harnessing public outrage at the state of our water and transforming it into local action.
Luke Gromen: “Peak Cheap Oil and the Global Reserve Currency”
Skip to content Insight and inspiration in turbulent times. Donate Subscribe Resilience is a program of the nonprofit organization Post Carbon Institute. Energy featured October 4, 2023 (Conversation recorded on August 29th, 2023) Show Summary On this episode, financial analyst Luke Gromen joins Nate to discuss how the availability of cheap energy has underpinned our current financial architecture and expectations – and what peak cheap oil implies for the future.
The convergence: climate and economy become one
Climate&Economy.com is a punchy roundup of news. Focusing each alternate day on one of its titular subjects (excluding Sundays), the blog is a vital resource for anyone studying either sector. Every day’s post is a collection of dozens of articles, with a short excerpt, explainer, and link to each — and occasionally a pithy comment by the blogs anonymous author.
There are No Gaian Teachers, Only Gaia
Hi all, Earlier in the summer I visited the LA Eco-village and continue to work on an essay on my brief visit with that community. But in the meantime, while in Los Angeles, I visited The Last Bookstore and found a short book on kōans. An LA Eco-village member also shared with me a powerful quotation. Together they sparked this reflection.
Ecological Cliff Edge
The numbers had already left impressionable marks on me, and as they swirled in my head for some months I certainly had a sense for the urgent warning they wanted me to hear. But it wasn’t until I rubbed the numbers together that the message really rang out. Then plotting the historical evolution shook me anew. I was staring at the ecological cliff we appear to be driving over. Let’s build the punchline from a few facts that were already rattling around in my head.
A Long Way to Venus
Don’t use doomers to downplay the danger A critique of Pilita Clark’s “The scourge of climate doomism” * In her recent article, Pilita Clark takes aim at climate doomers. She concedes that giving into doom is ‘alluring’, given the chaos we see in the climate system. But doomers are ultimately unhelpful, she claims. Their disposition and philosophy encourage lethargy and apathy, which are incompatible with real climate action.
Which future?
One of the more puzzling features of modern life is the starkly contrasting visions of humanity’s near-term future. Watch thirty minutes of commercial-filled TV and you get a cheery sense that all is well in the world. A BMW, an anti-depressant, or a Caribbean vacation—these will ensure ever greater happiness. At the same time, a 2021 poll in ten countries found that four in ten young people are hesitant to have children because of the climate crisis.
Ernährungsrat: The democratic potential of Food Policy Councils in Germany
This article first appeared on ARC2020.eu. ARC2020 is a platform for agri-food and rural actors working towards better food, farming, and rural policies for Europe. You can find Part 1 of this series on Resilience.org here. There is one sole EU Green Deal, but many ways to democratise local food policy. In part 1 of this analysis, we dissected the financial shortcomings of France’s Territorial Food Programmes (PAT).
The Past Can’t Tell You the Future
July 2023 was the . This period, which ended some 120,000 years ago, was about 1–2 degrees warmer than today’s pre-industrial baseline. In other words, it had an average temperature that is rapidly becoming our own. The Eemian world was one that might have looked familiar to us. Almost all the fauna and flora that exists today was already present, and hunter-gatherer humans were widespread. But the familiarity was only at a glance.
Why Intergenerational Thinking Is Essential to Heal the Planet
As humankind grapples with climate change, communities around the world show what’s possible by planning hundreds of years ahead. In the state of Meghalaya in northeast India, ingenious elders from the Khasi community spent decades, even centuries, building living root bridges known locally as jingkieng jri. The bridges were shaped by pulling and intertwining the aerial roots of the rubber fig tree (Ficus elastica) over a bamboo framework until the roots reached the opposite bank.
Fast Tracking Extinction: The Rush to Streamline Permitting for “Green” Energy
With more than three hundred billion dollars in the pipeline for alternative energy infrastructure, which is known to require huge amounts of land, Americans now confront the ecological reality of what all that industrial development means for their non-human cohabitants trying to survive on America’s increasingly fragmented landscapes. A recent study by the organization NatureServe throws the matter into grim relief.
The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse, and You
The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse… 305 million years ago, the Earth was a jungle planet. Swampy rainforests stretched across the earth, contiguous across a vast supercontinent called Laurasia. The world of the late Carboniferous era, as this period is known, was warm and humid. Its water-logged forests home to giant insects and amphibians; while our early synapsid ancestors were still small and lizard-like.
Can the CAP and Carbon Farming Coexist?
This article first appeared on ARC2020.eu. ARC2020 is a platform for agri-food and rural actors working towards better food, farming, and rural policies for Europe. Carbon Farming is the new hype in agriculture. A proposal for a Certification Framework of Carbon Removals was proposed back in November by the Commission and there is a strong push by the Swedish presidency and French government to make it happen quickly. But can a Europe-wide Carbon Farming program coexist with the CAP?
From Growth, through Degrowth, to a Pluriverse of Flourishings
Saurabh Arora Saurabh Arora is a Senior Lecturer in Technology and Innovation for Development (SPRU – Science Policy Research Unit) University of Sussex Business School. His research and learning journeys over the last two decades have focused on sustainability and its politics, particularly in relation to science, technology and innovation issues in agriculture and energy. More recently he has also worked on politics of urban transformations and of poverty alleviation.
Jerry Mander: 1936-2023
An author, bon vivant, and impresario of activism whose career of sensational campaigns reads like a history of the modern progressive movement. Jerry Mander’s life was a love letter to Life itself. No place better captured that spirit than 20th-century San Francisco, where Jerry made his home when he first stepped onto the SFO tarmac in 1960 and, upon filling his lungs with its sparkling air, knew that he wasn’t in Yonkers anymore.
Steppe-World
In a bizarre statement about climate change, the former head of Plymouth city council suggested that, rather than trying to find solutions, we should instead learn to live in “barren, sandy landscapes”. As a former member of the , this pivot from outright denial to ‘It’s real, but there’s nothing we can do’ is a common phenomenon. Though this abdication of responsibility is merely another tactic of predatory delay to climate action, there is a perverse kernel of truth in his statement.
No to reform!
This review is the personal view of the author. Review of Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism. Cambridge. £29.99 paperback. ISBN 9781009366182 pdf version Sometimes it has seemed as if the ecological movement and the socialist movement are inevitably at odds.
What Sound Can Tell Us About Our Changing World
As new technologies supercharge the field of bioacoustics, researchers can better listen to environmental changes — and use the information to guide conservation efforts. After Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico in 2017, photos showed downed trees, flooded communities, collapsed homes and buckled roads. But what did the aftermath sound like? Ben Gottesman, now a member of the K.
A Stranded Society: Fossil Fuel Infrastructure in a Post-Carbon World
Believe it or not, the fossil fuel industry used to be considered a bad investment. This is hard to believe in 2023, with the sector accruing gigantic profits on the back of the global energy crisis. As supplies tighten, profits increase and the expectation that oil and gas investments were stranded assets — destined to collapse against the rise of renewables — seems like a half-remembered dream. Firstly, what is a ?
Red States and the Inflation Reduction Act: Environmental Hypocrisy or Just Good Politics?
The budget battle brewing in Congress could see the US become a dead-beat debtor if the warring factions can’t come to some arrangement on raising the nation’s debt ceiling. In a proposed tit-for-tat deal, House Speaker McCarthy (R-CA) and members of the Freedom Caucus are looking to claw back the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) climate-related provisions, e.g., tax credits and incentive payments to homeowners to install heat pumps and other energy-saving improvements.
Banking on the Seaweed Rush
Seaweed farmers promise to feed us, combat climate change, support coastal communities, provide wildlife habitat, and more. Can seaweed do it all? Join Hakai Magazine and the Ocean Decade Collaborative Center for the Northeast Pacific on April 11, 2023, at 11:30 a.m. Pacific time for a panel discussion about the environmental and social benefits of the rapidly growing kelp farming industry—and what questions remain. Register now.
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