Category Archives: Psychology
When scientific facts and corporate fiction collide
The article below ran in the Business Post in late January. Just days after the inauguration of a new US president, it seemed like an opportune time to explain to a wider audience how the blitz of malignant lies aimed at … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Psychology, Sceptics
Tagged Business Post, climate denial, Climategate, Exxon Mobil, Michael Mann
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Withdrawing the social licence of fossil fuels
The once all-powerful fossil fuel industry is, at last, on the ropes. Behemoths like Exxon Mobil are bracing for massive drop in demand for their products in the next decade and more, as the global transition to low-carbon energy, currently … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Psychology
Tagged climate denial, Exxon Mobil, fossil fuels, Tobacco
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Good grief: grappling with eco distress
The feature piece below appeared in this week’s Business Post Magazine, under the heading ‘Distress signals from Earth: the new condition of ‘eco-grief’. This is a subject that has long been close to my heart and no doubt for most … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Psychology, Sustainability
Tagged Ailise Bulfin, David Wallace-Wells, eco grief, eco-anxiety, John Sharry, Padraic Fogarty
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Long day’s journey into the ecological abyss
My review of Mark O’Connell’s ‘Notes from an Apocalypse’ was published on Cassandra Voices in May. It’s an intriguing, engaging and often hilarious read, leavened with plenty of graveyard humour. If, like me, you’ve been staring into the fast-approaching ecological … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Psychology, Sustainability
Tagged Mark O'Connell, Preppers, Refugees
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Coronavirus an appetiser for what climate breakdown has in store
The piece below ran on Thejournal.ie in early May, and to my surprise, made quite an impact, with over 83,000 views, 142 online comments and thousands of tweets and reposts on social media. Thejournal.ie is now very much part of … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Pollution, Psychology, Sustainability
Tagged Coronavirus, Green Party, IPCC, pandemic, Paris Agreement, WMO
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Out of the frying pan? A tumultuous decade draws to a close
The hottest month ever recorded on Earth occurred in July 2019, during what has been yet another year of record-shattering extremes. France was hit this summer by two ‘once-in-500-year’ heatwaves in rapid succession. Expect extreme weather to dominate the 2020s. … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Psychology
Tagged Amazon, Climate Strike, Greta Thunberg, JOCCA, Lorenzo
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How flawed logic puts the world in danger
Below, my review of ‘The Irrational Ape’ by David Robert Grimes, which was published in the Irish Times on September 22nd last. In an era of fake news, with crackpot theories and conspiratorial nonsense ricocheting around social media at dizzying … Continue reading
Posted in Irish Focus, Media, Psychology, Sceptics
Tagged David Robert Grimes, Homeopathy, Quacks
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2029 – A letter from the future
We live in consequential times. “What we do over the next 10 years will determine the future of humanity for the next 10,000 years”, is how former UK chief scientific advisor Prof David King put it recently. There is no … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Psychology, Sceptics, Sustainability
Tagged Arctic, heatwave, IPCC, Long Emergency, permafrost, Village Magazine
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Drafting a roadmap for a climate-altered world
I was delighted back in May to receive an email from Andy Revkin letting me know he was coming to Ireland in early June and offering to meet up for a chat when he was in Dublin. We spent a … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Psychology
Tagged Andrew Revkin, Dot Earth, New York Times
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A society of altruists, governed by psychopaths
Below, the article I filed for Village magazine’s first edition of 2019, which appeared in the middle of March. The Guardian’s George Monbiot has long been the gold standard for excellence in environment and climate reporting, analysis and campaigning. Like … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Psychology, Sustainability
Tagged George Monbiot, QUB
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A harrowing but narrow vision of our climate-wrecked futures
Back in July 2017, I wrote a précis of an astonishing essay published earlier that year in the New York magazine. Titled ‘The Uninhabitable Earth‘, it set out an uncompromising picture of the rapid unravelling of the global climate system … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Psychology
Tagged David Wallace-Wells, Irish Times, Uninhabitable Earth
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Pinker serves up a Panglossian three-card trick
“Things can only get better”, went the lyrics to the hit by D:Ream which became the anthem of the incoming New Labour government in 1997, fronted by the relentlessly upbeat Tony Blair. Six years later, Blair joined the US in … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Psychology
Tagged Bill Gates, Steven Pinker
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Can direct democracy succeed where politics has failed?
Earlier this month, I was pleased to have my third article appear on Guardian Environment. The topic was one I have previously teased around the edges, here and elsewhere, on numerous occasions. In a nutshell: once we’ve figured out our … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Psychology
Tagged Citizens Assembly, FIE, Guardian, Urgenda
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Eating the future, one bite at a time
Futurology is a favourite journalistic parlour game, usually reserved for a slow news week or the lifestyle section. When I saw the following bold opening statement in a recent Irish Times magazine cover story, “Half of the babies born today … Continue reading
Nuclear near-miss a chilling portend of our climate future
Below, my article as it appears in the current issue of ‘Village’ magazine. I’ve included links to watch the film in its entirety, as well as the subsequent ABC studio discussion. A third of a century later, it’s still strangely … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Psychology
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