I have been out delivering promotional flyers for the Green Party. We stand a good chance of getting a Green County Councillor elected. But for that to happen, people need to know there is a candidate and understand what he stands for. So - to the streets! 28,000 steps later. Back pain Delivering leaflets through letter boxes in the UK means managing the aggressive letter boxes that seem to have been designed to rip apart any item of post that is inserted through it, including the hand that delivered it. And also torture the deliverer by placing the slot low enough to have to twist and bend double to get to the letterbox. So you come away with cuts on your hands and a sore back. So with the aim of continuing the campaign, here is a handy guide on why back pain is an issue and how you can avoid it. 👉 Leafletters Back

I am feeling overwhelmed. I wrote about the making of billionaires, and it is still valid for the old school billionaires of just one year ago. But now what is going on in the USA is creating a whole new batch of billionaires that is no longer constrained by any morality, concern for reputation, or sense of honour or duty. But it would be foolish to think that it is restricted to the actions of one person, one leader. But it is a step change in scale and speed. No longer do you have to wait a decade to become a billionaire, or another decade to 10x that. If you are willing to sacrifice people's lives, whole nations and not give a damn about the enviroinment ot legacy... You can become a billionaire within a year. The old billionaire system seemed so hard to change - the systems put in place over the last decades, the ones that allow tax evasion, offshore accounts, public subsidies, exploitation of foreign or domestic workers, were all constrained by the desire to look good and noble - there was at least a nod at public service, public good. Drop that, and can get rich so much quicker. You could get richer by buying shares in planet-destroying industries. But you can join the billionaire class by buying a drone company, then starting a war and then getting a share of a $35 billion contract for new armaments. You just need to ignore the impact on human lives, nature and the environment. And you need complicit political leaders who are willing to disregard the duties and laws that they swore an oath to uphold. That is the big - the world stage, the leaders of the world's richest and most powerful countries. Now to the small. We have managed to get a candidate elected to local office. Her first days in office have been beset by political shenanigans, as those in power felt threatened by her energy and demands, which made them look ineffective or incompetent. We have moved to elections for seats on a council two levels up, past the district level to the county level.

We can't afford to look away anymore. As a community of people who genuinely care about our planet, I wanted to share something that's been weighing on my mind. We're all familiar with the basics... rising temperatures, melting ice caps, extreme weather. But I've been reading deeper into the science recently, and honestly? Some of it is absolutely terrifying. Not in a vague, "future generations will suffer" way. But in a "this could genuinely unravel civilisation as we know it" way. Here are five facts I've come across that explain why burying our heads in the sand is no longer an option. 1. The 5°C "Unknown Territory" We hear a lot about 1.5°C of warming, the "safe" limit everyone's fighting for. But here's what's less discussed - scientists have actually created a new risk category for warming beyond 5°C. They call it "unknown". We haven't seen temperatures like that on Earth for 20 million years. At this level, we're talking about existential threats that our current models simply cannot predict. Over 7 billion people could be exposed to lethal heat conditions. Entire ecosystems would collapse. And crucially, we don't know what we don't know. That's why they call it unknown. It's a scientific admission that things could get unimaginably bad. 2. The Domino Effect Nobody's Talking About The really unsettling bit? It's not just about individual systems failing, but rather about them taking each other down like dominoes. Scientists call them "tipping cascades" and when the Greenland ice sheet melts, it could destabilise the Atlantic currents. When those currents slow down, it could damage the Amazon rainforest. The kicker is that research shows the vast majority of these interactions are destabilising. They reinforce each other in a negative way. Once these dominoes start falling, we might not be able to stop them. 3. The Gulf Stream Could Simply... Stop You've probably heard of the Gulf Stream. That warm ocean current that keeps the UK from turning into a frozen wasteland? Its full name is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and scientists are increasingly concerned it could collapse entirely after 2100 under high-emission scenarios.

The Climate Majority Project has created a video about the complexity of educating children about the crisis. It is hard-hitting and shows how this subject is both depressing and demoralising, yet so very essential. Children want to understand what is happening, how we got here, and why we are doing what we are doing about it. The more people know, the more willing they are to take action, either by voicing their concerns, pressuring (empowering) politicians to act, putting themselves forward for leadership roles, or building businesses that address the issues we face. We need more information so we know what is going on. We need more people taking leadership positions. That is what this group is about - The path thorugh Education to leadership.

This year, I travelled to Hamilton Island in Australia to see what was left of the Great Barrier Reef. I expected to see a mix: areas of healthy reef, patches of bleached coral, confused fish moving between them. Instead, what we found looked like a lunar landscape. The reef was dead — reduced to rubble and dust on the sea floor. There were a few corals left. Around them swam a few dozen brightly coloured fish. My kids didn’t know this wasn’t normal. They were delighted. I watched them, feeling distraught, horrified, and quietly terrified. In that overheated water, with the air hot above us and sea levels rising, I had a sudden thought I couldn’t shake: this might be the last time I ever see a coral reef. I took photos with a cheap underwater camera and had to wait weeks for them to come back. When they did, they were blurred and dull. I tossed them aside — too depressing to look at. A couple of days later, something clicked. The photos weren’t poor quality. They were accurate. The water was full of particles. The sea floor really was that dull grey-green. Without the coral — and the billions of organisms that live within a healthy reef — nothing was cleaning the water anymore. Dirt, dust, organic matter, all suspended. The system had lost its workers. Years earlier, while training as an architect, I worked on a project designing an oyster-farming community on the Norfolk coast. As part of that, I learned how oysters work — and how astonishingly effective they are at cleaning water. The Norfolk coast once held billions of oysters. For centuries they were cheap food, eaten in huge quantities by Londoners. As stocks were over-exploited, numbers collapsed. Oysters went from poor man’s food to luxury — but something else disappeared too. Billions of tiny workers stopped cleaning the sea. Water quality declined. Life retreated. Now, in the UK, in New York, and elsewhere, people are trying to bring oysters back — not just as food, but as function. To restore water quality. To allow ecosystems to recover. To let life return to places that have slipped into dead zones.