You join me in the middle of another climate anxiety freakout, the beginning having begun several years ago and the end expected roughly forty minutes after my death. As deadly heatwaves clobber half of Europe, deadly wildfires clobber half the world, and global temperatures reach record highs every other day, I’ve relocated my climate panic from background hum to front, centre and screaming in my face. I’m not containing it well. It’s leaking out. People talk about their summer holidays, I grimace. People dig into a steak, I wince. A couple of weeks ago I truth-bombed a family Facetime, cas ..read more

Having been assembled from rancid cast-offs by Frankenstein’s work experience kid I’ve spent a fair amount of time unable to work, choosing instead to focus on loafing. When I was finally able to enter polite society I wanted to do something useful. It was unfathomable to me that I’d have waited a decade on the sidelines only to end up flogging dog monocles to rich arseholes, making money for Big Monocle and contributing nothing to the world around me. What I’m saying is, Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber appeals to me on a midichlorian level. Summarism Graeber has a theory that hundreds of mil ..read more

Among my many terrible qualities – the face, the hair, the personality, the things I say, the stuff I do – I am one of the world’s foremost ditherers. With a combination of anti-materialism, enviro-guilt and a neutral, Might-Do attitude I can turn the simplest of pleasures into the most agonising of ordeals. Dither And so it was, back in January 2022, you found me hand-wringing about maybe getting an electric car on account of how Covid tried to murder me and made off with my pep, vim and most of my mobility. I did a bunch of maths to figure what I could afford, whether I should buy or lease ..read more

The Corporation by Joel Bakan – reviewed a while back because I’m pretending reading do-gooder books in bed counts as activism now – was a big deal to a little Zero. Now, a generation later, here’s a sequel to make me feel old and tired. Summarism The first book pitched the idea that corporations behave as amoral, antisocial psychopaths that put their own interests above any piddly human crap that might get in their way. The sequel takes on the myth of “new” corporations, the ones that pretend to give even half a shit about the disposable fleshpods that make up their customer base. The ones ..read more

Bashing out articles for the new Big Bidness section of this here website, I’ve gone back to one of the tippiest, toppiest, most foundational Zero texts, one that inspired one of the big three epiphanies of The Grand Zero Awakening: The Corporation by Joel Bakan. Summarism Most humans on earth are aware of how Big Bidness stomps all over humanity’s face in search of its next shabby cash-grab. The Corporation helps explain why: Corporations are legally bound to pursue profits for themselves and their shareholders, placing their own self-interests above all other considerations. They are, in h ..read more

Back in the early days of The Zero there was a whole section devoted to the Nestlé boycott. It was one of the first bits of explicit do-goodery I indulged in, along with going veggie and lobbing C-bombs at George W Bush any time he popped up on my telly. The boycott kicked off in the late 1970s on account of Nestlé’s fondness for babies shitting themselves to death. I joined it in around 2004, after which I didn’t give it much thought other than to occasionally mourn the loss of a Shreddie or a Rolo. Given I’m putting together a new section on the general awfulness of Big Bidness I figured I ..read more

With the longest of Long Covids still twatting me good and proper, my activism is now mostly made up of writing about other people’s activism, reading about other people’s activism and tweeting about other people’s activism. It’s all very fulfilling. These past few weeks I’ve been reading Leah Thomas’s The Intersectional Environmentalist, and figured if I reviewed it as if this was a proper website maybe I’d feel all my non-work ain’t been been in vain for nothin. You read this blog, you buy her book, you do some stuff, you avert climate breakdown: That’s on me, that is. That’s mine. That’s ..read more

Among the million things we need to do to reduce emissions and avert climate breakdown, kicking the arse out of plastic is one of the most urgent. Plastic comes from dirty-bad oil, gas and coal, all of it spewing greenhouse gas emissions into the air. A 2015 study reckoned plastic accounts for about 4.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions and uses about 6% of coal-fired electricity in its production. We’re bringing on the sixth mass extinction for the sake of shrink-wrapped broccoli. Once we’re done with it we dump it: Into landfills, into rivers and seas and, eventually, into our own bodies ..read more

In my withered, Covid-infested state I find myself doing less and less for the big battles we need to win: Yer climate breakdown, yer rise of fascism, yer eating the rich. Still, I’m looking for ways I can make an impact even if I can’t be hands on. After all, says I, when Voldemort was just a wispy mess knocking about the back of people’s heads he was still getting shit done. I can’t plant trees myself but I can give to tree planting organisations. I can’t take to the streets but I can shit-talk in tweets. Recently I’ve discovered a critical area of climate activism that requires even less ..read more

In my withered, Covid-infested state I find myself doing less and less for the big battles we need to win: Yer climate breakdown, yer rise of fascism, yer eating the rich. Still, I’m looking for ways I can make an impact even if I can’t be hands on. After all, says I, when Voldemort was just a wispy mess knocking about the back of people’s heads he was still getting shit done. I can’t plant trees myself but I can give to tree planting organisations. I can’t take to the streets but I can shit-talk in tweets. Recently I’ve discovered a critical area of climate activism that requires even less ..read more