grieving for a world i thought i knew
Steeped in grief for what could have been, I still want to hold a flag up nonetheless - maybe idiotically. But whatever it takes to try and live with those simple ideas alive, I will try my best to give..
The Tragedy of the Superyacht Bayesian
On Monday morning at 5am the rapidly heating ocean made one billionaire, his family and colleagues pay a sudden and tragic price for humanity’s extravagant carbon-emitting habits and for the luxury emissions of the ultra-rich.
BREATHING, singing, writing
After rooftop journals and diaries from the future Hilary is writing again. Finding a way to sing and breath in the turmoil of now. To chart the steps towards growing and sharing the Power Station.
Who is this young radical? - he's taking no prisoners
Greetings from the sweltering London night! Don’t know about you, but it’s been hard to get up to much over this weekend, the heat is oppressive. I’m pretty sure my brain has melted - but if I type very slowly I’m just about able to think…
We’ve been singing - even as the world falls to bits
I'm writing this from the Captain's Cottage, somewhere in Wales (hope she doesn't mind). It's quite dark and cold, and I'm dashing off this update before running out to the pub.
The last few days we travelled through floods to get to Centre of Alternative Technology - it was really quite a dramatic trip with fields and roads just completely submerged………..
OUR STATEMENT ON GAZA
This may seem nothing to do with solar power or renewables or retrofit, filmmaking or art. We may, as many have found, lose a lot of people through this statement. But lives and work cannot be separated. We live in a world of cascading crises and everything is intertwined. We can't keep to our 'topic' as this is actually about how we live our lives on this earth, what we believe in and what we are willing to stand for.
I think we’ve been paralysed by the horror of it all……..
Our no more list - hang it on your wall
No more fossil fuel licenses for the North Sea
No more nuclear power stations either
No more pretending it's a glorious Indian summer
No more shouting at Just Stop Oil - admire their courage
No more being polite to climate deniers
No more allowing mainstream media to get away with playing down the threat
No more tolerance of political leaders watering down their commitments……….
TENSION - VISIONS & FEARS
Some of you wrote to me the other day that you think we should avoid tension and anxiety - one of you even wrote worrying that I'd lost it and should take a break from Power Station as the suggestion was clearly evidence I was frazzled.
But I disagree………..
Do you believe we can make an actual difference - and is anxiety useful?
Everyone says they have a plan till they get punched in the mouth. That's what Tyson said when asked about what he was planning in a forthcoming fight.
For those of us who believe that what 99% of scientists tell us is true……
A poem that really moved us today - enjoy this!
Harry Barker Impossible - I'm finding it too easy to tell myself it is too hard, when facing the end that it's too late to even make a start.
But if we take impossible to mean that we don't have a chance, we have lost sight of how unlikely it was we would get this far……..
A Grassroots Green Print - can we help kickstart a multi-billion pound energy revolution?
Can a small group of dedicated people help to kickstart a multi-billion pound renewable energy revolution that puts people and communities at its heart?
We've spent much of the day rewriting our crowdfunding text. Trying to get to the essence of the project……..
The way we see the world... a very moving story involving cameras and ways of seeing
Having worked through much of the weekend, Hilary had booked us into a film as a special treat. It was this amazing film by Ken Loach which has just come out - and you can see a trailer for it here…..
Success and failure are a choice - getting ok with failure
There's a moment where you make a leap from idea into action. It's irreversible - the gravity pulls you on and there's no going back.
It's a moment of terror the first few times - particularly when you build up an audience of onlookers, but you end up getting used to it.……..
Our campaign for the christmas no 1 just got off to an unlikely start... - clips from the chaos!
Enable your images if you need to on your browser to see some fun moments from our first sing along - the start of our bid for this year's top chart position...
5.52am I switch on my phone and am immediately confronted with an article that says the Swiss glaciers have lost 10% of their ice in the last 2 years!
With that in mind …….
Einstein’s jumper… - and what it can tell us about building our PROJECTs
I read a funny thing earlier - about Einstein.
He wore crazy ragged clothing, and his partner, Elsa, implored him to dress up when world leaders arrived to meet him - but he always refused.
"Einstein quipped that if the important visitors were coming to see him………..
Dealing with another week in Britain's troubled psyche - my anarchic Sunday sermon
If Britain was on the couch, I think the psychologist running the session would be extremely worried about her psyche at the moment.
It seems we can't agree on any sort of approach to the multiple crises engulfing us - or rather if we can, the people who hold the power and ultimately make the decisions are hell-bent on ignoring us and driving us towards the edge of the cliff……
Dark inversion storylines - why do we watch them?
When we enjoy things, we get hooked.. Stories and characters going through conflict and in the middle of grappling with important themes… We want to find out what happens next.
We understand that these characters are on a trajectory of emotional and psychological change and growth, and we want to see if they can get the change they need………..
This is my remedy for political failure - based on a moment where I myself failed
Nothing brings to mind the awful issues we're facing at the moment more than the disconnect between this intense September heatwave and the fact that both Labour and Tories are "rowing back from their climate pledges" while we've had more wildfires and flooding than ever in human memory.
The absurdity of politicians rowing away…….
Sticking a flag in it - seeding the future
One of the big things we learned when we blew up £1.2m of debt was that you have to stop waiting for other people or authorities to take action.
They won’t - at least not yet.
And this conversation was borne out when we visited Civic Square in Birmingham last week. Civic Square are this amazing organisation who are "demonstrating neighbourhood scale civic infrastructure for social………