I am increasingly interested in how certain actions first become acceptable to society and then, ultimately, something that you feel obliged to do. Following on from that, why do society and culture come to see certain behaviours or beliefs as acceptable when they are clearly damaging to the individual?
Back Issues
The Laws Of Nature
Published in
Roaming the swamplands around his home in New York State as a child, James Thornton knew he had a passion. He loved the insects, the vegetation and most of…
Undersea Magic
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Sublime: How and when did you start exploring the underwater world, and narrating your experiences through photography? Troy Mayne: I started diving when I was 19. My first…
Getting Closer
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More than four decades ago, a Danish man called Jan Gudmand-Hoyer had a vision. He was an architect who dreamed of creating a place where people of all ages…
A Green New World
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Some say travel is a human right, others that it is a luxury. With climate change and global shortages on the one hand, and the fact that the tourist industry…
Under Their Own Steam
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In 1997, the Isle of Eigg was the focus of international attention, with headlines sweeping the globe to places as far away as New Zealand, the US, Bonn and Buenos…
Great Expectations
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In the opening chapter of his biography, Dickens, Peter Ackroyd points out the parallels between our time and that of the Victorians. Dickens’s death came as evidence of a giant…
What’s Your Problem?
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What is the problem with Western culture? How is it we have become so stuck? I’d like to suggest that, gasp, our core issue as a culture is actually our…
The Elephant In The Room
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In the world of energy, circumstances are going to be difficult indeed during 2012. 2011 was a year of growing polarisation for those of us who long for a renaissance fuelled by renewables. The Germans announced targets to run their railway system entirely on renewable energy – mostly wind and solar. Yet BP declared it is going to quit solar entirely to pile ever further into tar-sands extraction, unconventional gas and the rest of the carbon-heavy status quo.
