Articles

  The narrative of conservation and environment is often one of destruction and despair. Because so many big issues happen so far from our doorsteps, it’s easy to distance ourselves from it all and assume that nothing anybody does will make a difference. In this book the author, a Professor of Conservation Science at Cambridge, […]

A sequel to the 1991 Pulitzer Prize winning The Prize – an epic account of the oil industry from its early days to the modern times – this book’s central premise that peak oil is largely a myth, or at least so far in the future that we don’t need to worry about it just […]

Too much sugar is bad for you. Decades of research make that statement a pretty sure bet. High sugar diets depress immunity and raise your risk of stroke, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and just about every other modern ill. But anyone who thinks that artificial sweeteners are, by implication, good for you should think again. […]

  Frozen. Remote. Hostile. Extreme. Barren.  These are the usual adjectives usually applied the Antarctic. Most of us view it through a lens of ignorance, or romance, but for scientists like James McClintock, a renowned marine biologist with 13 polar expeditions, both overland and underwater, under his belt, it is so much more. In a […]

When our children ask us – and they will – what we did to make the future safe and healthy for them, what will we say? A large part of my own career was established when I became what some people dubbed the ‘Chemical Cassandra’. Long before it was fashionable, I was involved in exposing the toxic […]

You probably saw the story today: scientists have told the UK government to stop ‘over-hyping’ and ‘over-promoting’ the flu vaccine. But like good little soldiers most of these same scientists still recommended, according to the story in the Independent newspaper, “getting the jab as it is currently ‘the best we have’” – the implication being that […]

We have just published an exclusive video interview with Dr Philippa Darbre who, in a 2004 study, found parabens – ubiquitous preservatives used in cosmetics – in the breast tumour samples of women who regularly use paraben-containing under arm products such as deodorants. Earlier this year we reported on another study by Darbre and colleagues […]

  This is the latest offering by  the self proclaimed group of ‘Guerrilla Geographers’ – a collective of  activists, teachers, therapists, academics and artists who want to inspire young people to be more curious about the world around them. Unlike previous books from this group this is not a pocket guide. In fact at 270 […]

I’ve just returned from Slow Food International’s Terra Madre/Salone del Gusto conference and I’d like to ask you a question: Are you as sick as I am of hearing about how a good, clean, fair food system is just a frivolous preoccupation of the rich? In the Salone I was being jostled by grannies with […]

There are some people who believe that organic is just a lifestyle choice. I see it differently. Increasingly, organic is the only rational choice to maintain a sustainable and productive farming system, to preserve the essential diversity of the natural world and to ensure the quality and safety of the foods we eat. Now there’s […]