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Articles by Paul Mobbs
Are we missing something about the coming population decline?
Reactions to the now frequently predicted decline in worldwide human population range from mild celebration to panic. The mild celebration comes from those concerned about the huge environmental impacts a growing human population continues to have on the planet.
Is Kelp the Next Ocean Hero? Only if We Can Protect It
New research shows we’ve long underestimated the environmental benefits from kelp forests. Now these important ecosystems are threatened. Floridians are bracing for an unwanted visitor this summer: sargassum. A 5,000-mile-long island of this rootless seaweed is floating around the Atlantic, and large swathes of it are expected to wash ashore in Florida and other states in the coming months.
A Note on the Social Ecology of Capital
LINK TO THE BOOK Click the image to enlarge A Social Ecology of Capital is a contribution to the critical analysis of capitalist growth and its environmental contradictions. What environmental historians have named the Great Acceleration, both of growth and ecological destruction, can be described, experienced and understood in a myriad of ways. My book draws on the metrics of global material flows to capture and illustrate this growth process.
‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’
Some books get a ‘reputation’ as a result of what people believe they say rather than on a detailed reading of the text. Just a word in the title – for example, ‘collapse’ – can be enough for commentators to invalidate their content without any appreciation of what they actually say. Free download, via the Internet Archive.
The Unspeakable Death of the ‘Almighty Dollar’
Welcome to the third episode of my ‘ignored news’ blog. For some months the ‘specialist’ media have been tracking a major structural change in the world’s economy brought-on by the Ukraine War: Not the well-publicised crisis of food or energy prices; but of who controls the world’s financial payments system, and its use to enforce Western sanctions. Yet for some reason, the rest of the mainstream news just doesn’t seem interested in the consequences of this for every citizen of the affluent West.
Post-growth Europe: 400+ experts call for wellbeing economy
Authored by: Timothée Parrique Kate Raworth Vincent Liegey Signed by, among others: Milena Buchs Eloi Laurent Ekaterina Chertkovskaya Julia Steinberger Camille Étienne Adélaïde Charlier Nick Fitzpatrick Friends of the Earth Europe European Environmental Bureau European Youth Forum Wellbeing Economy Alliance Olivier De Schutter Giorgos Kallis Robert Costanza Jason Hickel Dominique Méda Eva Fraňková Sandrine Dixson-Declève Tim Jackson (see pdf for complete signatories) As political leaders...
Resisting cannibal capitalism
Extreme inequality, climate breakdown, war and crises of economics, democracy and care are intrinsic to capitalism, writes Nancy Fraser. A concerted anti-capitalist coalition is the route to integrative thinking and new political action It is increasingly common to hear of crises – economic, environmental and/or racial – in which the vast majority of the global population are confined to substandard living conditions while a global elite accrues wealth at a horrifying pace.
Accelerating recovery of wild European mammals brings hope of wider nature regeneration
In 2022, something happened in Britain for the first time in 6,000 years. Deep in the Kent countryside, a wild European bison calf was born as part of the Wilder Blean rewilding project. The last time wild European bison roamed Britain’s landscapes was after the last Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago, so it’s no wonder the calf’s arrival caused a stir. European bison were once a common sight across most of Europe.
Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change
Though, ‘Overshoot’, is ostensibly a book about biophysical limits, the theme that runs through it is about the human propensity for denying obvious facts: Our ability to deceive not only others, but more importantly, ourselves. As with the first review in this four-part miniseries, ‘Farewell to Growth’ (2007), any book that posits the ‘end of affluence’ will inevitably attract the misanthrope, and their arch-enemy, the Cornucopian.
Crazy Town: Episode 71. How Ecomodernists Hijacked the Environmental Movement: Technotopian Bullshit and a Raging Case of God Complex
Meet Stewart Brand and his band of merry dematerialists, the Silicon Valley salesmen who undermined environmentalism with planet-saving fantasies that reek of technofetishism. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation. Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language. For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD.
I was wrong to conclude collapse is inevitable…
I was wrong to conclude collapse is inevitable… because when I was concluding that, it had already begun. When I concluded that societal collapse is inevitable, nearly 5 years ago, it may have been one of the reasons my Deep Adaptation paper attracted unusual attention. Many people agreed and thanked me for expressing that conclusion publicly. They said it helped validate what they already felt, and so enabled their emotional processing and to change their lives accordingly.
Climate Action Epistemology Part 4: Technological Potential in the IPCC Mitigation Report
Ed. note: You can find Parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series on Resilience.org here, here, and here. Despite the IPCC report broadening its focus by including a chapter on demand management, the rest of its chapters primarily explore technological means of addressing the climate crisis. When climate mitigation literature maintains such an emphasis, it’s not surprising that many see decarbonization as purely an engineering issue.
Universal public services: the power of decommodifying survival
One of the central insights emerging from research on degrowth and climate mitigation is that universal public services are crucial to a just and effective transition. Capitalism relies on maintaining an artificial scarcity of essential goods and services (like housing, healthcare, transport, etc), through processes of enclosure and commodification.
On planning and disaster: Notes from an earthquake
How disasters are baked into Turkey’s developmental model—and what kind of opposition could emerge out of the ruins of the earthquake It has been nearly two months since February 6th, when two consecutive earthquakes of 7.8 and 7.7 magnitudes originating in the towns of Maraş and Antep took place. The earthquake has had a devastating effect across a large geographical area near the Turkish-Syrian border, that spans the historic lands of Kurdistan and Turkey as well as Northern Syria and Rojava.
‘Farewell to Growth’ Serge Latouche (2007)
Politicians and the media obsess about ‘economic growth’; but what if that ‘glorious thirty years’ of economic expansion from the 1960s has ended? This landmark text of the degrowth movement explores why growth’s ‘end is nigh’, and why this should be welcomed. To suggest that further economic growth has become near impossible is a ‘secular heresy’; one so great it automatically excludes that person from a leading role in politics or the media.
Reclaiming Salish Canoe Culture in the Shadow of Tech Giants
Jan. 6 was a typical overcast day in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. Few of the tech workers from the nearby offices of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft were outside at lunchtime. Only a few could be seen walking their dogs in Lake Union Park. The whining of car tires zooming along Aurora Avenue to the west and Interstate 5 to the east drowned out all natural sounds.
‘What Is Property?’
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activism Website Proudhon, Property, and the Political Panic over ‘The Great Resignation’ – how this classic text prefigures the contemporary debate over work and well-being. There’s no way a five minute review can do this complex book justice, so I will extract just one thread from its pages to examine, ‘What Is Property?’; and why that near 200-year-old question has become more important than ever.
‘Food!: It’s Political!’ (whether you like it or not)
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activism Website Food is the basis for lifestyle: Food is the connection to our authentic, biological nature as living creatures, sharing the world with a host of other creatures, in a complex global ecology. Get that right, and all the other things are ‘negotiable’. When I started ‘An Anarchist’s Cookbook’1, I was trying to push (ever so softly) a neglected debate in Britain: ‘The politics of food’2.
‘The Oil Machine’: How environmental grand narratives obstruct ‘real’ change
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activism Website The ‘ecological crisis’ is a big, technical, complicated issue; and all too often, therefore, how this is presented isolates and simplifies, and more especially, relies on commonly-held tropes to convey meaning. But what if those tropes are not objectively correct?; and so as the media feeds-back those tropes to the public, it increasingly distorts how we react to the ecological crisis.
‘Small is Beautiful - A Study of Economics as if People Mattered’
Some books are so well observed, so prescient, that even their supporters are seemingly overwhelmed by their material implications, and turn away from the truths they annunciate: ‘Small is Beautiful’ is such an example. View the YouTube video of this post Published fifty years ago, ‘Small is Beautiful’ was a highly influential book that, sadly, fell out of favour.
‘A Blueprint for Survival’
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activism Website Fifty years ago the editors of The Ecologist published a book that condensed their thinking on ecological problems, and the necessary solutions to them. Five decades on and the book’s prognosis has not only been borne out by experience, but many of the changes it proposed are supported by the latest academic research. Unfortunately the book, and its content, has largely been ignored.
‘The Shock Doctrine’ Naomi Klein (2007)
A landmark book which argues neoliberal free market policies have arisen as a deliberate strategy of ‘shock therapy’, exploiting national crises to enact questionable policies while citizens are too distracted to resist effectively. Though written 15 years ago, ‘The Shock Doctrine’ still has a lot to tell us about events today.
Why the lights are going out on Britain’s asset-stripped nation
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activism Website Electricity supply, one of the systemic flaws in the UK’s failing economy, looks increasingly like it could fracture this Winter – and without accepting why that model is broken that cannot be avoided. Fracking will save us! Nuclear will save us! Tax cuts will save us!… The Conservative leadership saga has a very meagre connection to reality.
Stone Age Economics
Given the various forms of public anguish about the ‘cost of living crisis’, I thought it would be a good time to do another three-part ‘special’ focussing on the nature of how we live our lives – both today, and in the distant past – to objectively question the basis of this ‘modern’ lifestyle. The first book is Marshall Sahlins’, ‘Stone Age Economics’ – published fifty years ago in 1972. ‘Stone Age Economics’: First hardback edition, 1972. ISBN 9780-2020-1098-4. First paperback edition, 1972.
The Great Coffee Economy Con
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activism Website Coffee, the addictive obsession of the affluent class, can tell us more about modern society than just retail trends; it is an indicator for how the modern neoliberal system operates, and its current shift toward new economic extremes. As an ‘indulgence’ (which today has the opposite sense1 to its original meaning), coffee is a great indicator of food culture.
Electric Shock! Technological Complexity and the Modern Lifestyle
What inspired this post was a recent comment in response to another posts. To paraphrase: ‘I’m not going to read that because other articles on that site are anti-technology’. Their point was that as some of my work questions resource availability1, or the net effects2 of green technologies when embodied energy3 or carbon4 are considered, then nothing I say can be considered valid because it questions ‘technological progress’.
‘Food for Free’
The 1970s surge in ecological awareness saw many books published on our relationship with the natural world. ‘Food for Free’, by Richard Mabey, was published fifty years ago in 1972. As a child it was a joy to be taken to country lanes to collect berries, in expectation of the sweet meal to come. This wasn’t an affectation; it was a traditional activity passed down generations of my semi-rural family. And when my parents bought a copy of ‘Food for Free’, I eagerly read it to learn more.
Kelly Kettles and the Practise of Zero Carbon Cooking Outdoors
In English, ‘kettle’[1] comes from the Saxon ‘ketel’ – a rare ‘loan word’ into Germanic languages from the Latin ‘catallus’, a deep pan for cooking. Why think about the origin of this word? Metal containers for boiling water are ‘ancient’; but what do you think ancient Greek (their word, ‘kotyle’) or Roman people used to heat their pans? Electricity? Kerosine? Compressed petroleum gas? Heating water is foundational to human society – a technology that defines us.
‘My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization’ (1994)
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activism Website This second in a techno-critical review trilogy might seem unrelated to the previous book on ‘The Luddites’; and yet it provides the same kind of criticism from a completely different angle – that of ecopsychology, and the trauma that the modern lifestyle creates for many of those subject to it. I could spend half-an-hour or more reviewing the depths of this book.
The deeper meaning buried in the data on carbon emissions - a data blog
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activism Website March 24, 2022 Rarely is there such a thing as, ‘just numbers’. Too often people look at statistics and just see the ‘magnitude’ of the numbers, not the ‘meaning’ that those numbers convey. In this next part of my ‘data blog’ series, I explain how a simple graph can show far more than just the raw numbers for carbon emissions – and what this tells us about why changing that trend is so hard.
DIY Oat Milk
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activism Website March 14, 2022 Contemporary ‘consumer’ veganism has an over-packaged/over-priced credibility issue. This is especially true of plant-based milks, and their impact compared to ‘DIY’ options. In this post I explore how you can avoid this by making your own oat milk – cheaply, easily, and with minimal waste. In this part I outline how to make one of the simplest plant milks – oat milk. It is SO simple to make oat milk.
Fuel Poverty, the Cost of Living Crisis, and Climate Change: A Data Blog
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activism Website February 1, 2022 Though often depoliticised by compartmentalising different problems, across society decisions on energy and the environment are innately tied to lifestyle and consumption. In looking at how we adapt to energy crises, or climate change, we have to focus on what relatively creates the greatest impact – nationally and globally.
A book in five minutes: ‘The Deep Ecology Movement’ (1980)
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activisim Website January 20, 2022 As philosopher Mark Fisher said, “people are more willing to think about the end of the world than the end of ‘capitalism’”. The fact is, though, the failure of ecosystems will directly cause the collapse of capitalism. The stark facts are that both cannot exist together indefinitely. ‘The Deep Ecology Movement’, Journal of Natural Resources, vol.20 no.2 pp.299-322, April 1980.
Banburyshire’s Ancient Sites: ‘Castle Bank Enclosure’ – Banburyshire Rambles Photo-Journal
Paul Mobbs’ photographic record of his walks around ‘Banburyshire’ and ‘The Irondowns’, and occasionally, as part of his work around Britain, the areas beyond. blog accessibility information ‘Castle Bank in the bare Winter trees’, March 2015 Banburyshire’s Ancient Sites: Castle Bank Enclosure The remains of a large, ancient enclosure sit above a large group of springs in a local hidden valley. Though not well preserved, it’s a lovely location to pause and take-in the surrounding landscape.
‘Diet for a Small Planet’ (1971)
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activisim Website September 22, 2021 In Thatcher’s Britain of the early 1980s, eco-vegans were about as welcome everywhere as they are on GB News today. Nutrition, let alone finding a diet to suit your needs ecologically, just wasn’t a thing in common discussion. Yes, there were lots of ‘fad’ exploitative diets, but there was little that took a hard look at the lifestyle consumer culture was telling us to lead.
Ecological Economics For Humanity’s Plague Phase (2020)
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activisim Website September 15, 2021 Each morning the Sun comes up. We instinctively know this. The problem is that in the modern world, people sometimes find it difficult to tell the difference between: Natural phenomena – like the Sun rising; and the grandiose myths we tell ourselves – like the functioning of the economy. In this series I don’t want to just look at big heavy books. I also want to review significant papers from academic journals.
The Autumn Raspberry Harvest
Preserving food is not just ‘cooking’; preserving food requires that you think about the future. Hence why growing and preserving food can be a window into planning a new future. Consumerism isolates & disconnects: The media hypes the desire for this lifestyle, while we struggle to obtain the cash to buy it; and in this process its hyper-individualism turns our focus inwards, isolating us from other people and the natural world.
‘The Limits to Growth’ (1972)
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activisim Website September 2, 2021 Published in 1972, and shrouded in controversy since that date, ‘The Limits to Growth’ is the most successful econometric projection ever made. The idea of these of blog posts is to introduce people to some ‘historic’ books and reports, which I think should be more widely read. To start, I thought I’d pick a book that for years has been vilified or deliberately ignored.
Bright Green Lies: Review
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Rambling Activist May 10, 2021 It’s been a year since ‘Planet of the Humans’ caused the leaders of climate campaigns to go into heated meltdown. By comparison, this film throws them an even greater challenge to try and respond to. Being ‘well known’ in eco-circles, you sometimes get strange, often unsolicited stuff arriving in your inbox.
‘The Tufton Street Brexit Nexus’ – Research & Writing – Paul Mobbs & MEIR – FRAW
‘The Tufton Street Brexit Nexus’, public version, April 2018 Paul Mobbs & MEIR: Every now and then you spot an astounding set of connections within other work. Sometimes that spawns a new research project. In this case, however, everyone I tried to sell the ‘story’ to did not want to know! ‘The Tufton Street Brexit Nexus’ is an analysis of the political and business lobby surrounding ‘Brexit’.
The Invisible, and Growing Ecological Footprint of Digital Technology
By Paul Mobbs, originally published by Free Range Activisim Website January 7, 2020 The elements of our lifestyle which we most closely identify with tend to be off-limits to any critical discussion. This is one explanation as to why recent research on the impact of digital technology is missing from the popular ecological debate. But as 96% of British adults have a mobile device{1} the footprint of digital technology can no longer be ignored.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics – The Gaping Hole in the Middle of the Circular Economy - Resilience
Why the latest buzz-phrase in consumer sustainability is not only failing to tackle the core problem, but why it is doomed to fail Listening to Radio 4 this morning I heard the two juxtaposed keywords that I’ve learned to dread over the last couple of the years; ‘circular economy’. It’s a great idea, and I can’t fault the true belief of those promoting it.
Taking the Fossil Fuels out of Camp Cooking - Resilience
They are some innocuous uses of fossil fuels which go largely unnoticed. One such example is camping outdoors. Camping shops sell a variety of stoves fuelled by gas, liquid petrol or methanol, or chemical-based solid fuel compounds. Thing is, if you’re outdoors, is the use of fossil fuels necessary? A few years ago I was walking along a canal and stopped for lunch.
Whitehall's Fracking Science Failure - Resilience
The UK government claim that fracking is a ‘clean’ energy source rests on the conclusions of a single scientific paper, writes Paul Mobbs. And now that paper has been conclusively invalidated: it uses misleading figures that understate the methane emissions from fracking, and subsequent findings have left it totally discredited. Yet the paper is still being quoted to justify fracking, and the fool the public on its climate change impacts.
Hummus and Mindfulness: Skills, Resilience and Relaxation beyond Consumerism - Resilience
We all have to consume; it’s a necessary reality of existence. However, in the ‘consumer society’ the most radical thing you can do is not to consume ‘as directed’ – by finding alternative options that meets your needs while enacting a set of principles in opposition to that overbearing and exploitative economic paradigm. This principle was self-evident during one of Britain’s darkest consumer crises of late … the hummus shortage. Honestly, I had to do a double-take.
Cellphones, WIFI and Cancer: Will Trump’s Budget Cuts Kill ‘Electrosmog’ Research?
Amidst concern over President Trump’s emasculation of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and cuts to the USA’s climate research, other ground-breaking areas of environmental research are being ignored. For well-over a decade, at a cost of $25 million, a US National Toxicology Program study has been assessing the links between the use of mobile phones and rare, though increasing forms of cancer. Unfortunately, before the results of this study are published, it may be ‘lost’ in the coming cuts.
Reader Letter: Cyclists have no choice but to use the road in certain parts of Norwich
Reader Letter: Cyclists have no choice but to use the road in certain parts of Norwich The cycle routes in Norwich city are great and we thoroughly enjoy using them, the cycle lanes which are part of the road lanes are also great. But! Cycle paths that are just pavements that have been now designated as cycle and pedestrian paths, such as those where we are now living in Hellesdon (Middleton’s Lane, for example). These are just not practical.
'Fracktured Accountability' | Paul Mobbs/MEI
Fractured Accountability represents the outcome of just over two years research on the the Government's role in promoting unconventional gas and oil in Britain; specifically, whether their actions are 'legal'. More importantly, it is not a report about "fracking" per se, but rather the highly questionable relationships between policy-makers in Government, the industry developing fracking, and the finance and PR industries supporting them.
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