By Katy Swain, 4 December, 2023

Cory Doctorow recently cited this article which talks about how insurance is a terrible instrument for mitigating climate risk. The standard neoliberal patter on this runs that insurance will send a price signal that steers investment away from environmentally damaging activity and towards adaptive responses.

One problem with this is that the people doing the damage are not necessarily (or even likely to be) the people who will experience the worst of its' effects, so this will do little to prevent investment in — for instance — fossil fuel extraction. In fact, you'll likely see investment flowing away from the uncertain business of keeping populations alive and secure, and directed towards digging up minerals and sludge.

By Katy Swain, 15 October, 2023
Being of a sufficiently advanced age, I'm finally qualified to join the local chapter of the University of the Third Age, and last week went to my first class, "The Sixties - A Glorious Decade of Change", which was all rather jolly. It got my calcified synapses sparking again. So here's a sampling of 60s things that it dredged up from my head. The longer I think about it, the more I find I have to think about, so this may well turn out to be longer than the course. So let's get cracking.