Carbon emissions down to 2006 levels due to coronavirus
Carbon dioxide levels fell 17 percent in April of this year compared to 2019, though the sudden drop isn’t expected to last. It turns out that coronavirus is having more widespread effects that many of us probably imagined when early headlines started spilling from China in January. The international lockdown...
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#DrawFor: the new charity helping artists and key workers
Spun out of the coronavirus pandemic, DrawFor is a new non-profit organisation that’s giving back to NHS key workers through artist donations, and anyone can get involved. Do you fancy yourself as a bit of an up-and-coming artist? Have some work you’d like to share on social media? Would...
Mental Health Awareness week: ex-footballer discusses media bullying
Luke Chadwick's retrospective candidness on the effects of bullying has drawn attention to how our times have changed. If you don’t know who Luke Chadwick is then I can hardly blame you. If you weren’t a big fan of football or born before 1995 (neither of which I was)...
Conservation and COVID-19: how the virus could spell trouble for endangered species
As the ecotourism industry shuts down and protection projects grind to a halt, years of conservation work in the world’s most precarious environments could be undone. Conservationists the world over are warning that coronavirus could have dire consequences for the world’s endangered species and habitats. This has left many...
Migrants struggle to send money home during COVID-19 crisis
The rate of global remittance is set to decline sharply thanks to the harsh COVID economy. This could have dire consequences for the world’s poorest communities. Looking at the worldwide coronavirus statistics, it’s easy to see the virus as a western issue. Deaths and rates of infection are, if...
Online dating during lockdown- can love thrive while we’re apart?
Lockdown has accelerated the transition of online dating apps to purely online hangout spaces. Should this trend continue beyond quarantine? If modern communication falls broadly into two categories – the online and the offline – then where do we place online dating? Pre-COVID, it occupied some strange liminal place between...
‘A people’s vaccine’ – 140+ global leaders call for virus vaccine to be free
Global leaders pre-empt efforts of the wealthiest corporations and governments to privatise the eventual coronavirus vaccine.
Over 140 global leaders and experts issued an open letter on Thursday this week urging all world powers to unilaterally guarantee that, once scientists discover a cure for the COVID-19 virus, it will be freely available to all global citizens equally and without national bias.
Entitled ‘Uniting Behind a People’s Vaccine Against COVID-19’, 
Quality of life indicators more important than GDP, says UK poll
Economic indicators have fallen out of step with our lived values, and according to a recent poll the UK has noticed. This week the UK’s latest GDP figures will be published, covering the period from January to the end of March. GDP is calculated by taking the sum total of a nation’s spending, investment, and trade balance (imports minus exports) then representing this as a single number. Essentially, it shows...
Plant-based meat soars in popularity during lockdown
COVID-19 is giving consumers the time and headspace to become more socially conscious. Recently I wrote on the atrocities of factory farming. Writing the article was, if I’m honest, an existential nightmare that painted a bleak picture of the deep hole we’ve gotten ourselves into with our insatiable appetite for meat. I came to the same conclusion that many others had come to before me: whilst...
COVID-19 will transform the workplace Gen Z is entering
As humanity comes to redefine its social structures in the wake of a global shakeup, the concept of a 9-5 adulthood might be blinking out of existence. Throughout history there have been pockets of time where people have unwittingly become part of a social experiment. In ancient Sparta, society asked what would happen if every person was trained in the art of battle from birth. The Indus civilisation asked...
