Gases
Gases are essays published by Green House Think Tank which explore a particular, usually topical issue or subject.
Woodhouse Colliery. The Great Carbon Carbuncle?
Ciara Shannon considers some of the carbon risks if Woodhouse Colliery were to go ahead and highlights some alternative opportunities. She ends by thinking about the area's sizeable, historical carbon debt.
Nuclear Power and the contradictions of the UK’s Energy Security Strategy
UK's Energy Security Strategy backs nuclear over greater renewables and energy efficiency. It risks increasing prices and failing to meet future electricity demand. The tools used to make nuclear investor friendly should be used for energy efficiency instead.
The conversation isn’t where we thought it was
XR-UK has released its 2022 strategy As the World Looks Up We Step Up expanding on its 2019 list of demands. Prashant and Peter from Green House Think Tank core group briefly reflect on it's significance.
Stopping fossil fuel extraction – a lockdown approach
Chapman argues we should shift attention from carbon emissions to stopping fossil fuel extraction. The climate crisis requires we stop extraction now, but just as in the lockdowns there were exceptions to the general stay at home rule, there would need to be exceptions to the ban on fossil fuels
COP26: Asking the Wrong Questions?
This gas by Peter Sims asks whether COP26 will succeed and argues that it needs to stop asking the wrong questions in order to take the opportunity to change direction
Between XR and COP
On the spectrum from conventional activism and politics through to arrest-willing non-violent direct action, the most obvious vacancy is work. We need to be delivering the necessary transformative change via our day jobs: working to ensure that the job really is part of the solution, not the problem
Measuring what matters
Emma Dawnay's proposal outlined is that the Green Book is updated to require the key metrics of greenhouse gas emissions to be at the forefront of each and every project appraisal
Calling Jet Zero’s bluff
Jonathan Essex's gas examines the UK government's aviation strategy, and sees it as inadequate to deal with the scale and severity climate change
Preparing for the Improbable
An extended review by John Foster of Extinction Rebellion: Insights from the Inside, Rupert Read and Samuel Alexander (Simplicity Institute, 2020). Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century, Andreas Malm (Verso, 2020)
The Economisation of Nature and its Services
Reinhard Loske argues that the idea that the ‘economisation of nature’ represents the one and only path to salvation should be viewed much more critically.
Building Back Differently: A Climate Emergency Recovery from COVID-19
Jonathan Essex's gas examines the lessons we need to draw from the covid crisis in order to rebuild and ensure an equitable recovery from this crisis.
The UK government economic policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic: Three possible lessons for climate emergency planning
This gas looks at government economic policy. Could there be a radically different role for the state?