Barcelona Superblocks: The Radical Battle for Quiet, Green Cities

Inside Barcelona's radical push to reclaim streets from cars. How the superblock grid battles noise, heat, and tourism to recover Cerdà's vision.

Bogotá, Colombia: Mobility as Democratic Space

GREEN CITIES SERIES  |  ARTICLE 8 Every Sunday, Bogotá returns the streets to its people....

Singapore: Engineered Nature in a Tropical City-State

GREEN CITIES SERIES  |  ARTICLE 4 Singapore has spent sixty years turning a cleared island into a green city, and the results are, in many respects, extraordinary. But the question the city-state now faces is different from the ones it has already answered: how do you make a highly managed, deeply unequal ecological showpiece into a city that is genuinely resilient — for everyone who lives in it? The otters arrived without permission. In a city where almost nothing happens without...

The Koala : Biology, Conservation Status, and Future Prospects

Introduction The koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), Australia's iconic arboreal marsupial, represents one of the world's most...

Why a Vegetarian Diet is Good for Planet Earth

After over 60 years of a meat eating diet my wife and I are...

The Large Language Model Landscape of February 2026

The Permian competition tightens: pruning, agentic browsers, and the energy bill becomes law. February 2026 doesn’t feel like...

Blessings to All Beings: A Loving Kindness Meditation Practice

1. Preparation: Find a quiet space where you won't be disturbed. Sit comfortably on a cushion, chair, or floor with your spine straight. Close your eyes gently...

The Transformative Power of Meditation: A Cross-Cultural Journey Through Mind and Spirit

In an era marked by unprecedented technological connectivity yet profound personal disconnection, millions worldwide are turning inward through the ancient practice of meditation. From...

The Architecture of Inner Peace: Building a Sustainable Meditation Practice

Introduction: The Radical Act of Stillness In an age defined by perpetual connectivity and information overload, the search for silence has become a radical act....

A Teaching on the First Verse of the Tao Te Ching

Come, sit. Let the dust of the road settle. Before we speak of the Way, we must first find our way to stillness. The...

Latest Posts

World Environment Day 2026: Climate Action – Why It’s Still So Hard — and What Works

Clean energy is booming, yet emissions keep breaking records. A clear-eyed 2026 look at climate action—what's working, what's failing, and what it will take.

Barcelona Superblocks: The Radical Battle for Quiet, Green Cities

Inside Barcelona's radical push to reclaim streets from cars. How the superblock grid battles noise, heat, and tourism to recover Cerdà's vision.

The Large Language Model Landscape of May 2026: The Architecture of Alignment and Narrative Ethics

May 2026 LLM Landscape: AI becomes vital infrastructure, forcing a pivot to narrative ethics as global challengers disrupt Big Tech's oligopoly

Bogotá, Colombia: Mobility as Democratic Space

GREEN CITIES SERIES  |  ARTICLE 8 Every Sunday, Bogotá returns the streets to its people. That act — repeated for fifty years, in a city...

The Great Unraveling: A Requiem for the Democracy?

Global democracy is in a high-velocity retreat. Explore the 2026 V-Dem data on systemic autocratisation and blueprints for democratic resilience.

Seoul, and the Return of Water

GREEN CITY SERIES| ARTICLE 11 How river daylighting changed the argument in South Korea’s capital — and why the harder work of a green city...

Curitiba, Brazil: The Classic Model Revisited

GREEN CITIES SERIES  |  ARTICLE 9 For fifty years, urban planners have travelled to Curitiba to study what happened when a young architect-mayor decided that...

Gaia’s Great Turning: A 50-Year Climate Reversal Blueprint (2025–2075. Updated)

This is an updated and revised version of a piece that I published last year. Regrettably, all is not well in the golden valley...

The Friction of Progress: Why the Global Climate Transition is Catching Up to Markets, but Lagging Behind the Earth

In May 2026, the international climate arena presents a striking paradox. It is alive, highly active, and structurally transformed, yet it remains profoundly underpowered...

London. Clean Air, Congestion, and Retrofit Burdens

GREEN CITIES SERIES  |  ARTICLE 6 London has done something that most cities only talk about: it has used road pricing to change behaviour at...

Greening Oslo: Discipline of the Possible

How Norway’s capital turned climate policy into budgets, procurement, and quieter streets — and why even Oslo is not yet a finished green city Standfirst Oslo...

Evolve

Green Cities

Seoul, and the Return of Water

GREEN CITY SERIES| ARTICLE 11 How river daylighting changed the argument in...

Amsterdam, Netherlands: Water, Bicycles, and the Price of Success

Amsterdam is the city that other cities dream of becoming. Its...

The Sapphire Empire: A Chronicle of Britain’s Blue Belt and the Resurrection of the Wild

Introduction: The Map and the Territory The ocean is a memory. It remembers the iron taste of the harpoon and the heavy drag of the...

Western European Wilderness Lost: Rewilding the Tamed Lands

1. Historical Baseline Pre-1750 Wilderness Extent The aurochs' last bellow echoed through Poland's Jaktorów Forest in 1627, marking Europe's first recorded megafaunal extinction.¹ This wild...

Marine Wilderness: The Blue Heart of Earth

Marine wilderness is vanishing fast—climate, overfishing, pollution, and mining threaten ocean life. Indigenous wisdom and bold protection offer hope.

Take a Deep Dive

Barcelona Superblocks: The Radical Battle for Quiet, Green Cities

Inside Barcelona's radical push to reclaim streets from cars. How the superblock grid battles noise, heat, and tourism to recover Cerdà's vision.

Experiments with Truth: The Life of Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi was a huge influence on me during my formative years and a major factor in my involvement in the peace movement from...

Theories of State in the 21st Century: An Analysis of Classical and Emerging Frameworks

My Masters and proposed PhD thesis was focused on developing a Deep Ecological Theory of State. It never happened as I got married, and,...

The Continued Relevance of the United Nations

The UN remains vital: a universal forum enabling peace, aid, climate action and global rules, despite veto limits, funding gaps and needed reforms

The History and Evolving Mission of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

It is interesting to look closely at an organization that I have a soft spot for with a slightly cold journalistic eye. The Sea...

From Property to Personhood: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Rights of Nature Movement

Introduction to a New Legal Paradigm The global environmental crisis, characterized by accelerating climate change, biodiversity loss, and mass pollution, has exposed the limitations of...

Consider

The Enduring Legacy of the 14th Dalai Lama

This piece is by way of tribute to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. I was privileged to meet him in the mid-1990s when I was National Campaign Director of the Australian Wilderness Society and we convened a conference on Tibetan Wilderness (an idea conceived by activist Chris Doran) held in Sydney, Australia. It was a honor to speak on the same platform as this extraordinary human being who exemplifies compassion and consistency of purpose. This extended article looks back on his life, philosophies and his ongoing contribution to advancing peace, compassion and kindness as a mantra for everyday living.

GREEN CITIES

The City Must Breathe An introduction to the Green Cities series: what we mean, how we will judge, and why the urban future is now the decisive environmental story StandfirstThe green...

The Domesticated Apocalypse: An AI Love Story Part Four

Section I: The Existential Threat Mitigation & Re-Synergizing Sub-Committee The silence that followed Projanus’s final, clarifying sentence—> It is you.—lasted for four point seven seconds. It was a silence dense...