One of the most visible effects of COVID-19 in Brussels, where I live, has been the creation of a bunch of new cycle paths. Given that space in a very dense city is limited, these have tended to be overwhelmingly taken from areas previously designated for cars. In some cases, where there used to be […]
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The Difficulty of Slowing Down
The Great Acceleration has been proposed, with good reason, as the proper kicking into gear of the Anthropocene. Long story short, across virtually all indicators of production/consumption (energy, land use, commodities, and so on), the post-WWII world has hit the accelerator hard. Speaking about it in the past tense is misleading, as all indicators currently show […]
Ecological Depression
Ecological depression may become an acceptable diagnosis for an increasing number of people. It is characterised by feelings of impotence and despair when confronted with the massive scale of socio-environmental destruction in our world. It leads to paralysis. In today’s news cycle, not only are environmental problems under-reported, they also tend to be assimilated to […]
Gratitude
I have spent the last three months in New Zealand, immersed in a world very different from the one that defines my usual daily life. I have had the luxury of time-to-think, something that, even though I became an academic for it, is rarer by the day. I have also had the opportunity to start […]
On Mediocrity (happy new year)
I had often thought about keeping a blog, but it is only this year that I finally gathered the strength to do so. I had massed a pile of research and accompanying thoughts that no longer wanted to sit in a drawer. Looking back on this year and its modest amount of posts, I am […]
The Civil Animal 