The Great Quitting, many industries are going to be hard hit

• The great quitting is impacting all industries

• People in bad jobs have realised they are bad jobs and are not going back

• People remember how they were treated before

• Many business/organisations barely work even with low labour prices

• This is a massive challenge to eg theatre, truck drivers, cheap food retail etc.

• Well-paid jobs also have good non-monetary benefits, are basically good jobs

• This strengthens the case for certain Big Businesses eg tech, high skilled services
  

I’m having thoughts on the great quitting. No one is quite sure what is going on. But I am moved by this idea for US (and EU) workforce that low wage workers now can see how crap their jobs were and the current level of incentives is not enough - way not enough - to induce them back to work. It combines these observations:

Status Quo bias. We get stuck in a rut until we get knocked out of this rut by an outside force.

Workers in crappy jobs did not fully appreciate how crap those jobs were until they stopped doing them.

This we can see on the study on commuting patterns.  See eg economist Tim Hardford here on how people needed to be forced to change commuting patterns to realise their main commute was flawed. 

Harford draws a different conclusion on remote work patterns, but he offers no comment on what I see as the potentially more major observation 

“ A few hours of disruption were enough to make them realise that they had been doing commuting wrong their entire adult lives.”

This is not about “remote” but about these workers now can see how crap their jobs were and the current level of incentives is not enough - way not enough - to induce them back to work.

It’s not only pay/incentives now but how they were treated before…

You can see this in what Alice Saville has said on the “theatre hiring crisis” she writes:

As an anonymous senior backstage professional who’s struggling to hire technical roles put it, “It’s a perfect storm. People were made redundant during the pandemic and have found other roles. People have retired. And people who are still working in theatre don’t want to work the same hours as before, because the working conditions are worse and the money is less.” When the pandemic hit, theatres made redundancies swiftly and often painfully: many chose not to take advantage of the furlough scheme which would have allowed them to retain staff. And now, they’re feeling the burn. They’re committed to staging productions planned before the pandemic hit, but often with less money and less time. And their once-dedicated permanent staff have been replaced with a scramble to find workers, often on short-term contracts.

TV and film opened up before theatre, and they soaked up large numbers of talented technicians. Not everyone has fallen into new jobs they actually want to keep longterm. But workers who want to return are faced with a stark choice: stick with their secure non-theatre job, or chance it on a badly-paid, short-term theatre contract that may not be followed up by more work. One anonymous designer explained that a leading Scottish theatre can’t persuade its casuals to return after it programmed a series of short run works coming out of the pandemic: “it’s heartbreaking to me that there are workers getting more out of a full-time job in a supermarket chain than they do by going back to coming back to this industry.”

Where salaried roles are being offered, they can’t hope to compete with other sectors. Leeds Playhouse are currently advertising a senior lighting technician job at £18,000 – a surprisingly low salary for a role that requires a high level of experience and specific expertise. Meanwhile, the average salary for a professional electrician is £35,000, and a lighting technician in film or TV can hope for a similar or higher rate – as can similarly experienced staff in other departments of many theatres. As one designer said of the role: “the application package for the role talks in detail about the importance of diversity but we’ve seen again and again and again that the biggest barrier to diversity backstage is money.”

The current situation definitely isn’t the “building back better” scenario a lot of people hoped for during the pandemic.

Alice Saville here.

I can also tell you that London based electricians can earn much more and have a better time than #35K at the moment.

One counter argument is… was it not the furlough money? But, this doesn;t seem to be true:

“...Earlier this year many people insisted that enhanced unemployment benefits were reducing the incentive to accept jobs. But those extra benefits were eliminated in many states as early as June, and nationally in early September; this cutoff doesn’t seem to have had any measurable effect on employment or labor force participation. …”

Possibly you can argue this:

“...Another story, which is harder to refute, says that the extensive aid families received during the pandemic left many with more cash on hand than usual, giving them the financial space to be choosier about their next job…”

Both Paul Krugman in the NYT.  

If this insight is correct and not fully appreciated then this is the start of a transition in human capital…

 And at least for theatre, I am not hopeful at the moment and for a whole array of industries, I am very uncertain how this pans out.

Was 2020 a turning point year?

Why do I think 2020 may be a rare turning point year?
I still think there’s a decent chance that COVID will fade from memory and we will have learnt little (this would make it like Swine flu). But, I think that chance sits around 30% and moving lower. This is partly due to the length of time COVID will be affecting us and partly due to our response both innovation-wise and public health wise.

On the positive front we have had many science innovations not least on the vaccine and biomedical front:  mRNA technology looks set to prove long-term robust to make many kinds of vaccine. We have a malaria vaccine in late stage testing, Deepmind/AI has made advances in protein folding modelling, and new molecular entity drug approvals (excluding vaccines) was c. 51 this year in the US, which is in line with the last few years in terms of therapeutic innovations. With gene-editing technology and our increasing knowledge and comptuting power, biomedical advances for the next 10-20 years look promising to me.

Environment-wise: We’ve had China, Japan, South Korea commited to carbon net zero. Battery technology has continued to improve. Solar power is the cheapest form of energy in many places. Even Nuclear (mini) and fusion technology has continued to improve. Apple has joined the electric vehicle / driverless car race. 

Governance-wise: We had fiercely contested US elections that have essentially been peaceful and robustly managed given that over 161 million Americans voted. UK and EU managed to agree a Brexit trade deal. 

My guess is that certain people will be inspired by science and innovation as having some answers to our challenges that will make them place more bets here and invent more valuable things that will improve human welfare and the environment. That COVID has triggered an enhanced ability to work out of the office should help bring more productivity and people to work and develop and, hopefully, this should also bring about better welfare.

Many of these improvements are slow-moving - like our overall improvements in human life expectancy and welfare. Many of us both misjudge how far we have come, and perhaps if we understand our progress we misjudge the challenges which are still great.

But we will need both parts. To understand where we have made progress, where we still have challenges and to use the opportunities COVID has given us to do better while trying to defeat its catastrophic impact.

That's not to downplay the awfulness of COVID. That's with us. But how we react is still up to us.

I remain more worried about creative arts practitioners.While over the long-term creative industries have typically bounced back from hard times, I think 2021 will continue to be hard and I see many brilliant creatives having to leave the arts and related work. It’s hard to measure the value of arts and the financial rewards are low for the majority. There is little joy in a future generation of creative work when this generation is so hit.

Sustainability: Resources and ideas behind Thinking Bigly

Thinking Bigly - a guide to saving the world.

I take a look at the complexities around sustainability challenges and offer a combination of solutions, on both a personal and systemic levels. (If you are here from Thinking Bigly - thanks!) This is draft incomplete summary of the research sources, notes and ideas behind the project. If there is something you would like to add (eg letter templates) or comments message me as I will add them slowly as time allows.

Major sustainability ideas in Thinking Bigly are:

↠Reduce/Reuse/Recycle/Waste less

↠Support culture and behaviour change

↠Support Innovation

↠Advocate for carbon pricing

↠Advocate for performance/efficiency standards

↠Think second order.

↠Discuss ideas with people who don’t think like you

↠Petition

And they spring along side ideas of (1) Cultural/Behaviour Change and (2) Second Order thinking. They are supported by evidence that cultural change can happen fast enough (eg abolition of slavery, pink becoming a girl’s colour) and that the problem is manageable as it is concentrated in (i) 7 countries (50% emmission) and (ii) cities (50% of people) and (iii) 5 broad areas which policy can impact (buildings, industry, transport, agriculture and energy).

↠Reduce/Reuse/Recycle/Waste less

-Major emphasis on consuming/buying less or differently

Look for win-win or close substitutes

-eating/cooking with friends vs take out

-video call vs long distance travel to meeting

-second-hand clothes or technology, extend use

-junk modelling for toys

-hand-made gifts, poems, mix-tapes

-own-grown food

This list could be very long and is driven by a mix of personal and/or cultural change.

It’s typically what a frugally minded person would do overall. While individually the impacts are small, it adds signals.

Consider bending vs social norms

-wash clothes less (eg unless really smell)

-wash less

-travel slower (walk, bike)

-always take food leftovers from restaurants

-ignore best before dates and use cooking skills

Again this list is very long but bends closer to re-shaping or re-imagining the cultural stories and myths we’ve told ourselves (this is where the stories of the colour pink or making slavery illegal or how we wear our clothes and all other type of “intersubjective myth” come from - it’s true as many humans believe it to be true).

-Significant purchases go for quality/sustainability (even if costs more short-term)

-green energy; fridge; washing machines, cookers

-boilers, heating, insulation

-technology, furniture, mattresses

Major decisions will impact over long cycles eg the washing machine or fridge - sustainable energy and use pay back is significant for these items.

Those signals are targeted at an individual level that collectively signals but equally, if not more important is what we can advocate on the systems or wider level.

↠Support Innovation

Use your choices and conversation to support innovation

-consider innovation investments

-supporting friends ideas and job choices

-encourage innovation thinking and debate

-be wide and second-order in your choices

-encourage companies, leaders to innovate

As described below, innovation has to be a major part of the answer (even if we can’t or don’t want to change behaviours). This can be supporting innovation ideas (eg Drawdown) or policy.

↠Support pricing signals such as carbon pricing

While I hear arguments for non-market based ideas, my pragmatic view is that a market pricing signal such as a carbon price needs to be an important part of the answer. A pricing signal is not sufficient in itself it needs to be supported by innovations and performance standards and other supportive policies (eg urban design, labelling) but I don’t see any politically viable alternative at this point in time and even this policy has struggled due to its unequal impact (for those who support social justice) and its taxing nature (for those who dislike taxes).

↠Support performance standards

Performance standards or similar  will need to be wide ranging over several sectors eg industry efficiency, building codes and transport. But they are necessary alongside innovation and pricing signals, they help solve a split incentive alignment problem.

Eg Building owners vs building renters.  Owners/builders have to make the capital investment, but renters take the gains/losses of energy efficient buildings. A well-enforced building code is needed.

There are simple principles of good policy design that need to be thought through to avoid loop holes and second order unintended consequences.  These are:

i) Long-term certainty so business can plan

ii) Continuous improvement built-in because the world constantly updates

iii) Focus on outcomes not individual tech as policy can’t predict individual winners

iv) Simplicity to prevent gaming

Finally I support the collision and mixing of ideas so that we collectively grow the pie, as well as split it more fairly, and focus on the most impactful matters:

↠Be second order thinker and use influence

There are many unintended consequences of first order thinking, both negative and positive.

Go beyond first order thinking to second order

-Education over divestment

-Cultural behaviour change over sell-by dates

Consider letter writing or petitions to spread ideas

-to CEOs

-politicians

Discuss ideas with friends, research and innovate

-talk to those who don’t think like you

-find second order win-win ideas

-tell people

Part 1

Background and resources:

There are different components of Sustainability: Climate, Green House Gases, Water, Biodiversity, Waste, Air pollution, Land Pollution, Energy, Food, Innovation. They are summed up imperfectly here within the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

There are many components of the sustainability challenges although climate change and for instance plastic waste are two of the most high profile.

Many of the challenges intersect with one another and intersect with positive human development such as within education and equality. Some of these ideas are relatively newly accepted for humanity (eg equality) in the last 100 to 200 years.

Four broad frameworks which each provide a useful lens on the challenges are:

-The Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs)

-The Human Development Index

-The Peace Index

-The Happiness Index

A discussion on these broad indices of human development are beyond this article. But, do go to the relevant indices. (Other sources: Consider reading Amaryta Sen’s Development as Freedom and for a lay overview of human history, Harari’s Sapiens.)

Climate Change: Framing the challenge

I’m going to focus this next part on the challenges of climate change bearing in mind that other challenges intersect with climate change.

Out of this, it’s worth noting that the challenges go across mostly 5 sectors and and a large part of what humanity is involved in.

It’s not only energy production and direct use. Electricity use is about 25% of the challenge. That leaves 75% in other areas.

….Supposedly: 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions: why don't we take the fight there instead?

This statistic is correct, but misleading without context. It derives from the fact that 100 fossil fuel producers originate  71% of carbon emissions. It includes the use of the fossil fuels produced.

That means the person using a fossil fuel car or train and the manufacturer powering their factories (to make stuff for you to buy, or fertilizer for your food to eat) the emissions they produce are accounted as part of this 71%. While the fuel is produced by the oil and gas companies, the residual person responsible for the emissions is typically the end consumer.

Halting  these 100 companies would be banning the production of fossil fuel. (This is equivalent to a type of infinite carbon tax). This may work in the very long term, it is not a good transition plan if we want humanity to survive today (or the next 50 years)....

Many of the remaining areas will need to be solved by new innovation as well as a change in current practice.

While on an individual level our impact is small, in aggregate the “Demand” or the consumer side of the challenge is 60% to 70% of the pie. Supply side is  30% of the problem.

This is tricky for multiple reasons. A critical difficulty for human economic development is that “economic growth” has been a major factor in supporting people out of poverty but that many challenges ask humans to consume less (much less in wealthy nations) as well as innovate more.

Several solutions to asking people to consume less (eg carbon taxes, use less coal) fall unequally across rich / poor people and rich / poor nations.

Other solutions rely on innovation we haven’t invented yet.

Most of the solutions on reducing the demand side require behavioural change that humans have found difficult to do.

Certain solutions require second order (or higher) changes that go counter to other desired aims (for instance, food best before dates save a certain amount of lives from food poisoning (maybe a few hundred in the UK) but have increased food waste (in the hundreds of millions of tonnes, eg 720 million eggs wasted a year in the UK).

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/apr/09/britons-throw-away-720m-eggs-a-year-over-best-before-date-fears

….because we find behavioural change hard (but not impossible), I continue to view carbon tax with re-distributive elements (for political justice eg back to poorer people and perhaps into innovation) as useful on systemic basis. A carbon tax enables both business behaviour change as well as personal….

Part Two:

Household Sustainability Decisions

At the level of the household, we can look at these items:

-Babies & Nappies

Disposable nappies have a larger effect on waste pollution, re-usable nappies have a bigger impact on water use. Energy use is in the same bucket depending on temp. Of washing and how drying is achieved. But the largest impact is having a moderate family size.

-Food & Cooking

Efficient cooking in less developed countries can be an important impact, as well as minimising waste in the food supply chain. In rich countries, it is to be less wasteful on food and moderate ruminant animal use, and to consume a normal amount of calories. This would have a double impact on health.

-Clothing

In rich countries, we need to consume much less in clothing. And probably wash clothes well. But the value in clothing is in its social signalling not in its utility.

-Water

Use less. Behaviour change can be hard.

-Warmth and cooling

-Toilets

-Laundry

Air dry. Use efficient washing machines. Wash less. Consider the implications that its remains still typically a woman’s chore.

-Furniture

-Plastic bags

Single use plastic is often used at least twice (as a bin liner), so from an energy point of view paper bags need to be used 5 to 10x to break even. Cotton bags in the range of 50 to 100x. Shop less, consider what you place in the bag. Tha landfill/waste aspects of plastic bag are worse than paper which degrades/recycles.

-Cars

-Trains

-Flying

-Refrigeration

-Technology

-Mobile phones

-Gardening

-Christmas

-Work and retirement

-Death

Every single item is intersectional with

(i) cultural / behaviour change or norm

(ii) the need for less ie reduce/reuse/recycle

And in many cases (iii) a need for innovation to replace the current carbon intensive use

And in many cases would be supported by iv) innovation in urban design (eg mobility, waste use) and v) performance standards (building codes, vehicle standards) and  vi) carbon pricing.

[This is in draft as I will slowly elaborate on some of these choices]

A round up of household choices for sustainability (Australia govt sponsored) is found here:

http://www.yourhome.gov.au/housing/carbon-zero-carbon-positive

A book looking at this is here:  Household Sustainability: Challenges and Dilemmas in Everyday Life

https://amzn.to/2XdkHOG

(and in sum, https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/IJSHE.24915aaa.011)

Part 3

Letter Writing - power of letters

I think there is surprising strength in a well written hand crafted letter sent to people in positions of power.

These can be linked to consumer choices eg to CEOs of companies and products you buy and admire; or to politicians and policy makers; or to investment managers of your savings.

Typically CEOs do not receive many personal letters. A large number of well crafted letters can cause them to stop and think about why eg. a commitment to a more carbon neutral business model in the future would make sense.

[At some point draft letters and points could be shared here]

Advocating at the level of politicians and policy makers is also helpful. Awareness is there (school strike, XR, divestment) but policy is not yet there.

I’m not thinking a rote template, but a well-thought out letter. (If you write one, I will write one…)

Part 4

Policy

The three major policies would centre around:

-Carbon pricing / tax (pricing signals)

-Support for innovation

-Performance standards

And these would run alongside a raft of other complementary areas such as food supply/waste, transport infrastructure, power infrastructure, urban design, building materials and industry etc.

Carbon tax ideas are here: https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/carbon-tax

A list of innovation and technology ideas can be seen from Project Drawdown:

https://www.drawdown.org/

A collection of policy ideas can be found here:

https://energyinnovation.org/resources/presentations/

Part 5

Here’s a list of links to raft of ideas, arguments and counter-arguments about what we should be thinking about and doing. These formed source material behind Thinking Bigly.

BP to explain how business chimes with Paris climate deal

Pressure from investors forces UK oil and gas firm to be more transparent on climate change

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/feb/01/bp-to-explain-how-business-chimes-with-paris-climate-agreement

David Wallace-Wells on climate: ‘People should be scared – I'm scared’

The journalist and author has claimed climate change will soon render the world uninhabitable, leading his supporters to say he’s telling the terrifying truth and critics to brand him a reckless alarmist. Why is he so worried?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/03/david-wallace-wells-on-climate-people-should-be-scared-im-scared

Investing Prophet Jeremy Grantham Takes Aim at Climate Change

The veteran money manager will devote $1 billion to helping the world escape catastrophe.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-17/jeremy-grantham-s-1-billion-plan-to-fight-climate-change

How to stop the climate crisis: six lessons from the campaign that saved the ozone

Thirty years ago, all 197 countries got together to ban the gases damaging the Earth’s ozone layer. Now we need to unite to combat an even greater threat. What can we learn from 1989?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/20/how-to-stop-the-climate-crisis-six-lessons-from-the-campaign-that-saved-the-ozone

the carbon bubble. https://thenearlynow.com/trump-putin-and-the-pipelines-to-nowhere-742d745ce8fd

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-wildfires-and-the-first-climate-change-bankruptcy-11547820006

The case for “conditional optimism” on climate change - Vox

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/12/28/18156094/conditional-optimism-climate-change

The case for "conditional optimism" on climate change

Limiting the damage requires rapid, radical change — but such changes have happened before.

2020 Vision: why you should see the fossil fuel peak coming - Carbon Tracker Initiative

https://www.carbontracker.org/reports/2020-vision-why-you-should-see-the-fossil-fuel-peak-coming/

2020 Vision: why you should see the fossil fuel peak coming - Carbon Tracker Initiative

The peak in fossil fuel demand will have a dramatic impact on financial markets in the…

How to Shift Public Attitudes and Win the Global Climate Battle - Yale E360

https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-essential-front-in-the-climate-battle-altering-public-attitudes

The world is making progress in decarbonizing economies, but not nearly fast enough, says the former U.S. chief climate negotiator. Here he spells out what forces must come together to marshal the public and political will needed to tackle climate change.

https://www.ecowatch.com/how-to-reduce-food-waste-2628392195.amp.html

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/11/16/18096352/climate-change-clean-energy-policies-guide

Climate change policy can be overwhelming. Here’s a guide to the policies that work.

A new book from veteran energy analyst Hal Harvey simplifies decarbonization.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/magazine/climeworks-business-climate-change.html

The Tiny Swiss Company That Thinks It Can Help Stop Climate Change

Two European entrepreneurs want to remove carbon from the air at prices cheap enough to matter.

https://www.stockholmresilience.org/publications/artiklar/2019-02-04-options-for-keeping-the-food-system-within-environmental-limits.html

Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits - Stockholm Resilience Centre

An international centre that advances transdisciplinary research for governance of social-ecological systems.

https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2019/2/19/significant-major-cross-discipline-eat-lancet-commission-paper-on-sustainable-food

Significant Major cross-discipline EAT-Lancet Commission paper on Sustainable Food

Major cross-discipline EAT-Lancet Commission on Sustainable Food has published its findings (Jan 2019).

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2019/02/case-funding-green-new-deal-through-government-debt

The case for funding a Green New Deal through government debt

Humanity will not come to an end if we double debt to GDP ratios, but it could come to an end if we fail to combat climate change.

https://www.ft.com/content/2a0d4caa-337c-11e9-bb0c-42459962a812

The US debate on climate change is heating up

Two different plans to attack the problem could be combined in a workable compromise

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-017-0058-9

Nature Climate Change, The price of fast fashion

The fashion industry has changed rapidly in recent years with the increased prevalence of fast fashion, impacting the environment. Efforts to green this polluting industry require action from businesses and consumers.

https://www.thendobetter.com/investing/2019/2/24/new-zealand-looking-at-non-financial-capitals

New Zealand looking at non-financial capitals, more than GDP

The NZ PM talking about the problems with GDP and suggesting NZ should look at a broader set of indicators and changing the way it should make decisions, including a well-being budget in 2019

https://www.wri.org/blog/2017/07/apparel-industrys-environmental-impact-6-graphics

The Apparel Industry’s Environmental Impact in 6 Graphics | World Resources Institute

Growth of the multi-trillion-dollar apparel industry has been fed by "fast fashion," which makes clothing cheaply and quickly with a low price-tag. Six graphics show how this trend and others can add to water stress, pollution and other environmental impacts.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/climate-change-undeliverable-emissions-targets-by-bjorn-lomborg-2019-02

Faking It on Climate Change | by Bjørn Lomborg

Because honest and deep emissions cuts are staggeringly hard to make, achieving carbon neutrality anytime soon is an empty ambition for almost everywhere. But countries continue to make big promises and massage their emissions numbers to give a false sense of progress on combating global warming.

Steady investments in a changing climate - GOV.UK

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/steady-investments-in-a-changing-climate

Steady investments in a changing climate

Emma Howard Boyd, Chair of the Environment Agency speech at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

www.blog.google/products/earth/new-app-map-and-monitor-worlds-freshwater-supply/amp/

A new app to map and monitor the world's freshwater supply

In partnership with United Nations Environment, Joint Research Centre and Google, new tools for monitoring global freshwater resources are freely available.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212094718300495?via%3Dihub

Natural disasters over France a 35 years assessment

Using an exhaustive administrative database, we assess the impact of extreme weather events over French cities between 1982 and 2017.

https://sustainablebrands.com/read/new-metrics/coclear-develops-world-s-first-data-visualization-of-product-carbon-footprints

The World’s First Data Visualization of Product Carbon Footprints

By generating carbon-intensity data for each product, CoClear was able to identify industry trends, as well as track product performance improvements along value chains.

Resistance in the Anthropocene. – David Mattin – Medium

https://medium.com/@DMattin/resistance-in-the-anthropocene-6dde37f0f975

Resistance in the Anthropocene.

Should we turn to civil disobedience to avert looming ecological disaster?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/25/dont-know-how-to-save-planet-this-is-what-you-can-do

Don't know how to save the planet? This is what you can do

Should we become vegetarians? Is it OK to fly? The author of There Is No Planet B, A Handbook for the Make or Break Years, answers the big question

https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/climate-change-national-emergency-bad-idea.html

Climate Change Is Not a “National Emergency”

A Democratic president shouldn’t try to do the same end run around democracy that Trump is attempting.

https://www.iea.org/geco/emissions/

https://amp.ft.com/content/7889cb6e-501f-11e9-9c76-bf4a0ce37d49

Life after climate change: lessons from Cape Town

The city’s response to a three-year drought offers pointers to the coming ‘new normal’

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/26/climate/wind-solar-energy-workers.html

They Grew Up Around Fossil Fuels. Now, Their Jobs Are in Renewables.

These are portraits of seven people working in wind and solar, industries their families hardly imagined they’d go into. But as one of them put it: “It’s not ideology. It’s just math.”

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/business/commentary/article-the-energy-hungry-world-isnt-waiting-for-canada/

Opinion: The energy-hungry world isn’t waiting for Canada

The country must take a balanced approach to harnessing its natural resources and investing in clean technologies

6 Pressing Questions About Beef and Climate Change, Answered | World Resources Institute

https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/04/6-pressing-questions-about-beef-and-climate-change-answered

There are a lot of misconceptions swirling about beef—its environmental impacts, how it's produced and whether or how much to eat. We examined the latest research to separate myth from fact.

https://www.ft.com/content/9bcb1bf8-5b20-11e9-9dde-7aedca0a081a

Extinction Rebellion: inside the new climate resistance

A new movement plans mass civil disobedience — and its numbers are growing

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X19300807

Disaster on the horizon: The price effect of sea level rise

Homes exposed to sea level rise (SLR) sell for approximately 7% less than observably equivalent unexposed properties equidistant from the beach.

Mercer - investing in a time of climate change

ttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/15/david-buckel-lawyer-climate-change-protest

A lawyer set himself on fire to protest climate change. Did anyone care?

David Buckel hoped his death would catalyze action. But what is individual responsibility when confronted with the crisis of a rapidly changing planet?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/11/magazine/climate-change-exxon-renewable-energy.html

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/speech/2019/avoiding-the-storm-climate-change-and-the-financial-system-speech-by-sarah-breeden.pdf?la=en&hash=AC28DFEFED7B14A197E6B0CB48044D06F4E38E84

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/21/the-zero-waste-revolution-how-a-new-wave-of-shops-could-end-excess-packaging

The zero-waste revolution: how a new wave of shops could end excess packaging

Shops that minimise the environmental impact of our consumer habits are springing up across Britain. Could they help us avert catastrophe?

Over 4,200 Amazon Workers Push for Climate Change Action, Including Cutting Some Ties to Big Oil - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/technology/amazon-climate-change-letter.html

They say Amazon should stop offering custom cloud computing services that help the oil and gas industry explore for and extract more fossil fuels.

To Map a Coral Reef, Peel Back the Seawater - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/science/coral-reefs-mapping-biodiversity.html

To Map a Coral Reef, Peel Back the Seawater

This scientist couple created an airborne observatory to map tropical forests. Now they’re using it to identify threatened reefs.

Amber Massie-Blomfield: A love letter to Britain’s Theatres

A Love Letter... seems to me the better title of Amber Massie-Blomfield's passionate and insightful book on important British theatres  (better than the main  title of: 20 Theatres to see before you die)

If theatre spaces are important to you (or intrigued about how they can be) then this book is for you.

It is written with a practitioners insight, a useful knowingness. Perhaps that same type of knowingness Lorrie Moore brings to her essays when she writes “ In the words of the jazz musician Ben Sidran: “Critics! Can’t even float. They just stand on the shore. Wave at the boat.” Or as Aristotle wrote in Politics, “Those who are to be judges must also be performers.” Conversely, perhaps those who are performers must also be judges—once in a while.”

There is also a positive thread of female knowing.  AM-B on the Minack theatre “The theatre was Rowena’s life’s work. For more than half a century she kept at it, spending harsh Cornish winters hauling timber and ballast up from the beach, working tirelessly, late into the evenings, often alone. It was an epic undertaking and her tools were no more sophisticated than a wheelbarrow, a hammer and chisel.”

(CC) via Wikipedia, Minack Theatre, Cornwall

…It was long after she died in 1983 that the Minack Theatre began to thrive as a business. Still, she kept faith with her creation to the last, sustaining it with her own diminishing funds, making minor additions and necessary improvements. Rowena possessed a singularity of vision usually permitted only to men. How often she had been described as eccentric, even mad….

… Taking time to find a chair would be a waste. A wheelbarrow does just fine. That was Rowena Cade. All propulsion, forward trajectory; a restless creature in constant pursuit of her wonderful, confounding dream: a symphony in stone. She built it because it wasn’t there.”

Inside of Tara Theatre

And a thread of being rooted in community... on watching a performance at the Tara Theatre, a theatre with a rare earth floor (led by AD Jatinder Verna) she picks up on a verbatim work of local Earlsfield residents with

“One of the accounts belongs to Joseph, who came to Earlsfield from Guyana. He talks about how he arrived in the city in 1956, discovering, for the first time, the existence of the classes. From 1960 until his retirement in 2001, he worked for British Rail. He set up a record label too, Sun City, promoting artists from the West Indies and later, writing his own songs. He talks about meeting his wife —who had also moved from Guyana to London —how the first time he went to visit her at home, he took her beef instead of roses. “In those days it was difficult to get beef. They used to have horse meat or rabbit,” he explains, and when he does so, there’s a murmur of recognition in the audience. “That’s right, that’s how it was,” someone says, and it’s like that throughout the show, little ripples in the audience, the delight of seeing details you recognise from your own life acknowledged on stage. When Joseph first arrived, he’d go to Elephant and Castle tube station and hang about for hours outside, hoping to see another person of colour. If he did, he’d approach them, and they’d swap contact details, arrange to meet up. “Racial tensions were much higher then,” Verma told me, talking about that feverish summer of 1977. I’d like to believe he’s right —that things are much better now. But across town, while we are sitting in this theatre, there is a disturbance in Dalston. Bins are set alight, Molotov cocktails thrown at police in riot gear. When I get home, I watch a video of it on Twitter. A lorry crashes through a barricade of upturned industrial bins and is surrounded by masked protestors who bash the windows and eventually climb on to the roof, bringing it to a halt. They are protesting the death, a few days ago, of Rashan Charles, a 20-year-old black man who died after being chased and apprehended by police. The Crown Prosecution Service will ultimately determine police officers should not face prosecution for the death. But the anger, I think, is about living in a society where it seems —in the wake of the fire at Grenfell Tower and the shooting of Mark Duggan, Jermaine Baker and Azelle Rodney —that, unconscionably, the lives of people of colour are still valued less. In this context, the existence of this theatre feels radical and important. At the end of the show, the man in front of me —the man who was greeting the audience as they came in —gets up on stage. This, it transpires, is Joseph, and he is here to perform his song, ‘World Anthem One’, in public for the very first time. “I wrote three songs called World Anthem One, Two and Three. You may ask why three World Anthems —well, the world is a big place and circumstances are not the same all over the world, each event needs its own response.” He sits centre-stage, takes the microphone, and breaks into song, unaccompanied. He has a thin, sweet voice that seems to split him open and reach inside him. All around him, the audience is stilled by it, hardly breathing. It is difficult not to think, now, of the gap between these two moments unfolding on opposite sides of the city. Preaching theatre as a solution to the world’s problems might seem absurdly naïve, sentimental even —the tiny transformations I’ve witnessed here too little to matter. And yet I watch this man singing his anthem for the world for the very first time, his voice growing bolder as the song goes on. I look around at the faces of the audience, turned towards him, glowing orange in the light reflected from the floor. And I think: this is all there is, really. Making a clearing for a person in our midst. Allowing them to share what matters to them. Listening.” 

And later in the bar she notes a featured audience member saying:

“it seems that the universe is saying no. But actually, it is telling you that the things you want, you have to fight for.”

Verma in red, me centre, listening to Jonathan Meth (far right) sitting on the earth floor (visible though not obvious) hosting a panel on East Asian theatre and networks - another valuable use of the space.  Sadly, no petals. Tara Theatre.   

And “At the end of the show, Verma invited the audience to walk on the stage. People shuffled out of their seats and crowded onto to the tightly packed earth. Two women discarded their sandals in the front row, put their soles directly on the ground, as if they might earth themselves. When we were all gathered, Verma said, “I promise you magic on this stage.” Suddenly, a volley of yellow rose petals rained down, and we lifted our faces skywards.”

In talking about Camden People’s theatre (CPT) where she was Exec Director for several years she writes:

A space where you can always hear the outside...

“Hope… We need this more than ever, now. At its core, what we’re witnessing around the world —as borders close down, migrant communities are maligned, and cultural differences quashed —is a struggle over what it means to be together in the same place. In this context, a theatre is a symbol and an expression of an idea: that being with other people is better than being alone. That coming together to engage with different views and ways of living in the world is not only necessary —it enriches us. It is much harder to ignore the plight or destroy the life chances of a person whose gaze you have held. Sharing space is the beginning of kindness.”

CPT is where I met my to be wife as she came to see a play of mine (Lost in Peru) when CPT had Chris Goode as Artistic Director.

AM-B writes: “ Former artistic director Chris Goode wrote in The Forest and The Field of how, during his tenure, he came to see the noise from the street as a kind of ‘litmus test’ for the attitudes of visiting companies. ‘There were those for whom it was, without question, a black mark against the venue, a failure to show proper respect for their work by protecting and insulating it from the crude and inevitable (but unpredictable) intrusions of the urban environment around us; and there were those who accepted it with patience and equanimity and perhaps a little curiosity as to what would be visited on them in the next performance and how, if at all, they would respond.’ Sometimes it seems there isn’t much space in the city for places like this anymore, by which I mean to say, marginal places, places that are rough around the edges, places that don’t easily fit the narrative of growth and progress.”

Certainly I doubt there were many spaces to take on a piece like Lost In Peru. 

Having been away (and really still with no evening time for theatre currently ) from theatre spaces these last 9 years or so, it is interesting coming back to some of them - perhaps coming back to them still with hope.

“  What makes us hopeful? If we can find our answer in a theatre, we might find we understand our world a little better too. “

I am fairly sure I will never see all of these 20 theatre. In bearing witness to these spaces AM-B, and giving us a glimpse into the quirky, unique and important; she also offers a portrait of a different kind of Britain to one portrayed in the media.

In painting this theatre landscape and rooting it in history, community and the present time, she indirectly provides a defence for theatre - an art form, or discussion form, that some would say is not particularly thriving in diverse audiences and perhaps in decline - and in doing has written an important work for our time. 

Available on Amazon (Amazon kindle link here).  AM-B occasional Tumblr here and you can find her on Twitter.

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The current Arts blog, cross-over, the current Investing blog.  Cross fertilise, some thoughts on autism.  Discover what the last arts/business mingle was all about (sign up for invites to the next event in the list below).

My Op-Ed in the Financial Times  (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.

Some popular posts:   the  by Nassim Taleb (Black Swan author, risk management philosopher),  Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes;  JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.  Charlie Munger on always inverting;  Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.