Columns – Sublime

Making Lemonade

John Grant — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 16:32:05 +0000

It is starting to sink in. The housing market, or retail spending, or affordable commodities … these may never return. A cushy retirement may never come. The Western economies may never recover.

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Beyond Clever

David Buckland — Sat, 05 May 2012 17:28:49 +0000

This past month has been a roller-coaster ride of success and struggle for the climate agenda. Nature Climate Change has just published a feature on Cape Farewell: Climate is Culture, plus we’re on the cover. Success! The UK government is dragging its feet over its climate commitment – ‘we are going to be the greenest...

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It’s What’s Inside That Counts

John Grant — Sat, 05 May 2012 17:24:56 +0000

If we could only persuade people to be more dutiful, more moral, more ethical. The trouble is – on the evidence of numerous past attempts – we can’t. And the irony may be that we don’t have to. Armed with the right information and understanding, most people will do the decent thing, most of the...

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Bigger and Not Better

Jeremy Leggett — Sat, 05 May 2012 17:20:30 +0000

The concept of duty is defined in the workplace easily enough with a tightly drafted job description. But that covers only my duty to my employer. What of my duty to society, beyond employment? Here there are no bullet-point templates. As for going beyond duty – surely an objective a good society would encourage in its citizens – what might that mean, in today’s world? The Financial Times recently ran a series of articles entitled ‘Capitalism in Crisis’.

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The Joy of the Job

Wayne Hemingway — Sat, 05 May 2012 17:16:24 +0000

The Romans always aimed to leave a place better than they found it. Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’. When you hear of someone who’s up for an award in the Queens Honour’s List, or being noted for their bravery for saving someone from a house fire, the phrases ‘beyond duty’ and ‘going the extra mile’ are typically rolled out. But to my mind, it’s pretty hard to get through life and to find some form of peace of mind without going the extra mile.

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In a Barbie World

Frances Corner — Sat, 05 May 2012 16:00:59 +0000

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?

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Great Expectations

Frances Corner — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:19:33 +0000

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 transition; in these last decades of the 19th century, the English people were witnesses to the fatal disruptions of an old order and the uneasy...

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Our Future In The Making

David Buckland — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:06:43 +0000

The climate conference in Durban has come and gone, and there is a proposed agreement to start curbing greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020. I am tempted to reflect on Rome burning while Nero fiddled, but that is just my cheap take on, or total frustration with, the situation. Economist Lord Stern has now called for a...

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What’s Your Problem?

John Grant — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:58:08 +0000

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 obsession with solving problems. We are a self-help society, and not just in the New Age section of the bookshop, but in the entire Western...

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The Elephant In The Room

Jeremy Leggett — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:33:53 +0000

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.

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