Essays

From the return of the airship to a new age of solar-powered sail Robinson’s latest climate fiction previews the technologies we may – before too much longer – be using in the real world.

My review of a new book arguing that the case for moving to a sustainable economic model should use the language of desire rather than sacrifice

What comes first, thought or language? Some notes on the philosophy of language with reference to Le Guin’s great science fiction novel The Dispossessed.

Dieter Helm’s latest energy transition manifesto puts a carbon tax at the centre of a programme for navigating the path to a carbon-neutral economy

A ferocious polemic by Andreas Malm summons the imagery of Soviet war communism to impress the urgency of acting against the runaway extraction that links corona and climate

A new book by Ashley Dawson argues that only public control can stop the drift and steer the world towards sustainability

A review of a new book providing a helpful reference guide to the complex economics of the hydrocarbons sector

A review of Sarah Stewart Johnson’s lyrical reflection on the hopes and fears generations of observers have projected onto the red planet

What traces of our energy infrastructure will be discernable in the far future? – a review of David Farrier’s Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils