Recommended Reading and Listening
With a backlog of longer pieces awaiting completion, here’s some suggested reading and listening as an alternative to Sunday doomscrolling…
Inspiring Examples of Environmental Activism
Many things to explore here, among them, the importance of the legal process as a key ingredient in the struggle for climate justice. Also, clearcut evidence (of which there was already plenty) that fossil fuel companies have actively tried to suppress climate action for decades.
Naturally, this is a topic we address in the game. Just like in real life, your corporate duty is to maximise shareholder profit. But does that have to be done by ruthlessly pursuing business as usual? Couldn’t the case be made that there’s a bright new future in renewables? And isn’t that what BP and others are doing in trying to corner various green energy markets? Although debates rage as to the sincerity of these positions, whether they’re just window-dressing, and their willingness to reverse course when the price of oil increases or geopolitics (eg. Ukraine) enable huge windfalls from natural gas.
The Colonial History of Pumpkin Spiced Lattes, and other joys from The BlindBoy Podcast
If he’s not already part of your life, we strongly recommend this weaver of magical journeys.
This week’s episode is a showcase of his creative and intellectual dexterity, bringing together the mundane everyday with ecological thinking, socio-economics, history and myth.
We’ll be doing a longer analysis of BlindBoy content in the coming months, in homage to this inspiring verbal artist.
The Economic Importance of Nature
Could you make the business case for investing in biodiversity? The logic is not immediately obvious to many people, as to why the diversity and number of species should be an urgent concern for businesses, unless they’re in agriculture perhaps. Well, this article makes an exemplary case for it.
Now, impact measurement is a highly contested area. This article is written by a company, Metabolic, selling software to businesses. We’ve not tested the software; we’ve got no links to them and this is not an endorsement. But their article is really clear and informative! And this is a vitally important sector because, if we are to protect the natural world and understand the environmental impact of our actions, we have to be able to reliably measure those things. And ‘the environment’ is just about as complicated and complex as it gets. Unlike in the economy, we don’t have one clear unifying metric that defines success when pursuing environmental goals. And even when we do agree on important indicators eg. the number of species in area x, it can be very hard to measure such things reliably. And every time we admit to these frailties, it gives the opponents of such work ammunition to shoot down our efforts. So, if you’re early career or a career changer, seeking to find an impactful job or start an ethical enterprise, making progress in the measurement of environmental impact could be a good area to investigate.
Food for cars, food for animals, food for humans
To find out the answer, check out another great article from
, where you’ll learn some surprising facts about how we use our land…and how we might be able to use it better.
The Largest Board Game Conference in the World!
We’re looking forwards to joining c.250,000 other people at SPIEL, in October in Essen, to celebrate the joys of board games. Naturally, we’re going to promote our game in advance of our crowdfunding campaign in the spring, with some help from our friends at DinaSaidSo and NaylorGames. We’ll be testing out some new features, showing off the first drafts of our illustrations from our artist partner Migy, and talking to manufacturers like LudoFact about how we can make the game as sustainably as possible, without breaking the bank!
We’ll be sharing more details about the game here and on our other social media channels. For campaign-only info, sign up to the Kickstarter list here.
