People & Nature

Raging against Putin’s war machine By Simon Pirani. Republished from Jacobin, with thanks On May 16, 2022, the Ukrainian artist Bohdan Ziza poured blue and yellow paint – the colours of his country’s flag – on to a municipal adminis…

Trials of anti-war protesters “provide a snapshot of Russia’s wartime lurch towards a form of fascism”
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Dave Temple, mineworker and militant Dave Temple, who died on 13 September aged 81, was a lifelong militant in the labour movement. He worked as an electrician at Murton colliery, county Durham, and played a leading part in the minewo…

A tribute to our comrade Dave Temple, who worked at Murton colliery in county Durham and played a leading part in the mineworkers’ union for several decades, and died on 13 September aged 81
peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/10/14/d...

Technological transition, the ideology of capital Review by Simon Pirani of More, More and More: an all-consuming history of energy, by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz (Allen Lane, 2024) We really are in climate trouble now. The intergovernmental climate ag…

False assumptions about past 'energy transitions' support comforting but illusory narratives about how we might quit fossil fuels. Transition as a shift of technologies, 1st to nuclear power, has become dominant, false “solution” to global heating.
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The courtroom rebels standing up to warmonger Putin Voices Against Putin’s War: protesters’ defiant speeches in Russian courts is published this month by Resistance Books. Here is the Introduction to the book, by Simon Pirani, first published on lin…

"Capital’s need for social control underpins near-fascist methods. From Russia’s dystopian punishment of dissenting citizens as 'terrorists' & 'traitors', patterns are retraced in the witch-hunts in USA & Europe, against opponents of Gaza slaughter."
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Bosnia: Unite for mineworkers, for land and for water. No to unjust transition A guest post by BOB MYERS An amazing meeting of mineworkers and environmentalists from across the former Yugoslavia was held on 12-14 September in the small mining town of Breza. We came together o…

"Under the guise of 'green transition', a new colonial plunder is taking place." "We need a form of transition that doesn't harm us." "We categorically reject sowing discord between workers and nature defenders." Bob Myers reports on a meeting in Bosnia peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/09/25/b...

Opposing Labour’s climate vandalism is difficult – and vital By Les Levidow. Reposted with thanks from the Ecologist A basic contradiction runs through UK climate policy. The government accepts that oil and gas extraction will increase, and that domestic use…

Les Levidow: Labour has lulled some campaigners with a narrative combining 3 false promises, that (1) novel decarbonisation technologies (e.g. carbon capture and hydrogen) + (2) more renewable energy will (3) achieve Net Zero Emissions (NZE).
peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/09/08/o...

Building support for zero-fares will strengthen the case for publicly-owned transport By Simon Pirani. Reposted with thanks from the We Own It! web site More rail and bus fare increases are on the way – and they threaten to undo much of the good promised by wider public ownership an…

"Public transport finance could & should be radically overhauled, to release it from dependence on fares. We in @farefreelondon.bsky.social advocate a system that is not only publicly owned, and generously funded, but also free at the point of use." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/09/04/b...

Free public transport in Ukraine: the common weal versus capitalist modernity Free public transport can open cities to all. It combats social injustice and can also help to tackle climate change, by moving away from car-centred urban transport systems. Public transport has b…

How zero-fares succeeds & fails in Krivyi Rih, Ukraine: "Buses & trolleybuses are perceived as belonging to the public domain or common weal, while [privately-run minibuses] are something new, modern and non-socialist, harbingers of capitalist modernity"
peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/08/29/f...

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Decarbonising the Built Environment People & Nature has published three pamphlets by Tom Ackers, about the social, political and technological challenges involved in ridding the built environment of fossil fuels and of their use …

Our free-to-download pamphlet, Remaking Home Heating in the UK, is here on the People & Nature site. peopleandnature.wordpress.com/decarbonisin... In it, Tom Ackers argues for wholesale electrification (including district heating & heat pump installation), & a universal programme of deep retrofit

Retrofit our homes, for social justice and climate action □ TOM ACKERS puts the case for a universal programme to retrofit the UK’s housing stock with insulation, in this edited excerpt from his new pamphlet. In a linked article here, he argues that a str…

A universal programme of retrofit is needed to stop UK homes leaking heat. Here Tom Ackers shows that the Low Energy Transformation Initiative proposals are a convincing alternative to the government's lukewarm promises
peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/08/13/r...

Electrify home heating and phase out gas □ Electrification and the installation of heat pumps should be the principle technology for decarbonising homes in the UK, TOM ACKERS argues in this edited excerpt from his new pamphlet. In a linke…

Electrify, electrify, electrify, Tom Ackers argues in this excerpt from our free-to-download pamphlet, Remaking Home Heating in the UK. District heat networks and heat pumps can keep us warm
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Heating homes: we need electrification and universal retrofit □ Heat pumps and insulation are the keys to decarbonising home heating in a socially just way, TOM ACKERS argues in this edited excerpt from his new pamphlet. In a linked article here, he surveys f…

"We need a 'twin track' approach to remaking home heating: wholesale electrification (incl. district heating & heat pump installation), & universal programme of deep retrofit" - Tom Ackers in a free-to-download pamphlet, Remaking Home Heating in the UK
peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/08/12/h...

Fuel poverty and leaky homes: the monitoring system is broken □ Fuel poverty in the UK is exacerbated by the poor condition of millions of people’s homes – and methods such as the government Energy Performance Certificates are woefully inadequate, TOM ACKERS …

Homes leak heat & people suffer as a result, writes Tom Ackers. Fabric efficiency is poor, & the govt's awful monitoring system, based on Energy Performance Certificates, should be replaced. Free-to-download pamphlet, Remaking Home Heating in the UK peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/08/12/f...

Climate change is an injustice multiplier. Not an asteroid Review by Simon Pirani of Climate Injustice: Why We Need to Fight Global Inequality to Combat Climate Change, by Friederike Otto (Greystone Books, 2025). Republished, with thanks, from the Ecologis…

Climate Injustice by Friederike Otto reviewed. In mainstream discourse, global heating "is gutted of content, stripped of its origins in economic activity & social hierarchies". The responsibility of powerful humans in corpor'ns & gov'ts is concealed.
peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/08/07/c...

How protesters use Russia’s courts to denounce the war on Ukraine “I am using this trial as a tribune from which to denounce the war publicly”, Dmitry Ivanov told a Moscow court, just before it sentenced him to eight-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for circulating…

“I am using this trial as a tribune from which to denounce the war publicly”, Dmitry Ivanov told a Moscow court, before it sentenced him to 8.5 years in prison, for 12 social media posts. More than 30 others have used the Russian courts to speak out peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/07/28/h...

Ukraine: the ups and downs of workplace organising Review by Simon Pirani of A Socialist Activist in Industrial Workplaces under Ukrainian bourgeois democracy 1998-2003 (Sotsialistichnii aktivist na promislovome pidpriemstv v umovakh Ukrainskoi bur…

"Oleg Dubrovsky concludes that his efforts at socialist propaganda failed almost completely, but his organising around wages, hours and workplace conditions had some success." Review of a memoir by a lifelong workplace activist in Dnipro.
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Russian anti-war prisoner Alexei Rozhkov: I acted out of conscience, against the state and its all-powerful machine The Russian anti-war protester Alexei Rozhkov was last month sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment on charges of committing a “terrorist act”, “justifying terrorism”, and circulating false informatio…

Alexei Rozhkov, kidnapped, tortured & sentenced to 16 years for protesting against Putin's war: "Truly, culture and freedom are what make us human. They are things that are so hard to obtain, and so easy to lose. It’s impossible to remain indifferent." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/06/10/r...

People and Nature | Simon Pirani | Substack I write a blog about the climate & ecological crisis, social & labour movement resistance, Russia's war on Ukraine, and more. Author of Burning Up: a global history of fossil fuel consumption (2018) a...

I am on substack now, as well as at peoplenature.org. People and Nature peopleandnature.substack.com?r=5toglo&utm...

This article was published 25 years ago, including interviews with Grossman's daughter and his friend Semyon Lipkin. I have dug it out to counter the tidal wave of hypocrisy that will wash over us like Thames Water sewage next week 2/2

Vasily Grossman: a human “can be a slave by fate, but not a slave by nature” I am not looking forward to the tide of political hypocrisy that will wash over us like Thames Water sewage next week, on VE Day, the 80th anniversary of the end of the European war in 1945. So I h…

Kremlin propaganda, using Red army victory in 1945 to justify ethnic cleansing in Ukraine, would have Vasily Grossman turning in his grave. So would Labour politicians who facilitate genocidal war crimes in Gaza talking "democracy" on VE Day. 1/2 peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/05/02/v...

The heroic war photographer punished by Soviet antisemitism This week, amidst the nauseating hypocrisy of official VE Day celebrations, you may well see the iconic photograph of the Soviet flag being raised above the German parliament building in Berlin. Th…

Yevgeny Khaldei, who took that iconic shot of the Red flag in 1945, as a Ukrainian Jew suffered official Soviet discrimination & censorship. In 1999 I interviewed his children & wrote this: a counterweight to the VE Day hypocrisy coming up next week peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/05/02/t...