Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

For those who have spent any time with me will know I am a huge comic fan. Some have found themselves being dragged to comic shops in different cities and had to wait as I looked through the latest deliveries. Last year I had the pleasure with Michael Strauss and John Charles and with the support of Sean Southey at PCI Media and UNICEF of co-writing and editing my first comic 'Santa's Green Christmas' out just before Christmas. My interest in comics like many people goes back to my childhood and to watching on TV Batman with Adam West playing the Caped Crusader. The series has been criticized for being a little humorous, simplistic morality (aimed at its largely teenage audience). If compared to the Dark Knight that is of course true but it also harks back to a simpler time. Its not surprising that when DC comics rebooted in 2016 Geoff Johns described  DC's future while celebrating the past and present." It even brought out a series entitled Batmen '66 whi...

Guest Blog from: A Statement of the Parliament of the World's Religions from David Hales Chair of the Climate Action Task Force and Trustee Dr. Larry Greenfield Executive Director Dr. Robert P. Sellers Chair of the Board  The 21st century presents no greater moral challenge than addressing the threat of human-caused climate change.  President Donald Trump has utterly failed that test . The Parliament of the World’s Religions condemns in the strongest possible terms the President’s decision to renege on the commitment of the United States to the Paris Climate Agreement, a pact signed by 195 nations and formally ratified by 147 nations. The decision is wrong from every relevant perspective: Scientifically, it is unsound and indefensible.  Economically, it undermines the ability of the United States to build a competitive economy for the future, sacrificing US jobs at almost every level of production and service, sacrificing American competitiveness in ever...

This Blog is from the Plastic Pollution Coalition to coincide with the UN Oceans Conference Ocean, Culture, Environment We were heartened to see Margaret Atwood’s column in The Guardian , detailing the ever-increasing perils we are facing from our worldwide dependence on single-use plastic. We are polluting our own food supply by dumping plastics into the environment at an alarming rate. We are damaging our own health and our children’s development by taking into our bodies the chemicals leaching from single-use plastic packaging of our food and drinks. Ms. Atwood advocates for reformation of the somewhat nebulous “institution” of plastics, with which we consummately agree: the reverence we’ve built toward this expensive, destructive material might very well be our undoing as a global society. We undoubtedly must find a way to collect, clean, and recycle the plastics we’ve already made and dumped worldwide. But plastics are only one cog in a larger system, a single-use cu...

Guest blog by Liz Thompson: Liz is  a sustainability consultant. She has served as Assistant Secretary-General of the UN for the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development, as an elected Member of Parliament, Senator and Minister of Energy and Environment of Barbados and most recently as Interim Executive Director of the SUNY-UWI Center for Leadership and Sustainable Development. Reactions to the decision of the president of the U.S to withdraw from the voluntary climate pact known as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, have ranged from surprise, to dismay, to disappointment, to chagrin, to relief, to elation. The decision to withdraw should have come as no surprise, for three principal reasons. First, on some matters, President Trump seems determined to keep the campaign promises of candidate Trump, at all costs. Second, his Party and his base are in the majority, climate change deniers and therefore see no need to take corrective action, despite the clear science...

Open letter to the international community and parties to the Paris Agreement from U.S. state, local, and business leaders We, the undersigned mayors, governors, college and university leaders, businesses, and investors are joining forces for the first time to declare that we will continue to support climate action to meet the Paris Agreement. In December 2015 in Paris, world leaders signed the first global commitment to fight climate change. The landmark agreement succeeded where past attempts failed because it allowed each country to set its own emission reduction targets and adopt its own strategies for reaching them. In addition, nations - inspired by the actions of local and regional governments, along with businesses - came to recognize that fighting climate change brings significant economic and public health benefits. The Trump administration's announcement undermines a key pillar in the fight against climate change and damages the world's ability to avoid the m...