Introduction Alick Bartholomew, author of The Spiritual Life of Water, describes four geologic periods when forests thrived on this planet. The first was the Carboniferous, 350 million years ago, when land vertebrates established. The second was the Jurassic, 170 million years

Article updated 17 February 2019:  protests are petering out, down to 45,500 in the 14th week since they began - they peaked at 282,000. Meanwhile Macron's popularity has risen to 34% according to the latest Paris Match poll.  Macron condemned the

Trump is the face of populism in America and the midterms have shown that a Democratic “blue wave” could stop and even defeat it. How about populism in Europe? After the traditional parties on the left collapsed and the center

How will the future play out? Will Europe follow America’s example and sink into nationalist populism that will inevitably tear apart the European Union and open the way to Trump’s divide-and-conquer America First strategy? Will America’s trade war with China

The midterms handed the House to the Democrats but not the Senate, despite receiving some 12 million votes more than Republicans in Senate races. As a result, Trump’s ability to pursue his conservative agenda is largely crippled. But where he

Previous articles about why populism is dangerous have addressed the issue of austerity (here), the public health crisis (here),  the false “migrant crisis” (here), and the propensity for war (here). This article explores Trump’s midterms strategy to drive voters to

Populism is dangerous and has shown overtime an irresistible propensity for war. Public safety, health and the economy are at risk. But populist propaganda is hard to resist. Populist politicians thrive on fake news: it is so much easier to

Populism is dangerous and puts public health and the economy at risk. But it is hard to resist. Populist politicians thrive on fake news: it is so much easier to fuel people’s emotions if you feed them fabricated news of

This Sunday 9 September, all eyes were on Sweden, where elections for a new parliament were taking place and where populists, playing on widespread and rising hostility to migrants, seemed set to win a decisive victory. And they did. Almost

Six years ago, Boyan Slat, at the time an 18-year-old aerospace engineering student, appeared at TEDxDelft to present his idea of what we could do to tackle one of the most demanding issues of global sustainability: plastic pollution. Merely a year