Transition St Albans began in January, and as it’s my home town, I’ve been helping out. I’ve been tracking our progress in a series of articles, which began here and continues here.

We held our first public meeting last week, which went very well. Here’s my flyer.

As you may be aware, bee populations across the world have been in freefall over the last couple of years. The West Coast of the US has lost 70% of its bees, the East Coast 60%. British bees succumbed a little later, and last year 1 in 3 bees vanished.

The disappearances are known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and it is a mysterious phenomenon – bees just disappear, sometimes overnight, leaving the queen bee and the larvae alone. The worker bees are gone, and nobody is sure where they go or why.

Read on at Make Wealth History

It’s 07:49am and I’m standing on an escalator, flanked on both sides by streaming commuters and flashing LCD screens. Easyjet suggest I go skiing. Armani want me to know that their new mobile phone has ‘night effect’, whatever that might be. I deserve more TV channels, and Virgin would love to supply them to me. I am barely an hour into my day, and already I have seen dozens of these visions of commodified happiness. Where, in all this buzz of hype, is the promise of real life?

The consumer dream is, in essence, the promise that happiness will come to us through our consumer choices. I will be a more fulfilled person if I have a larger house, a faster car, and newer clothes. I will feel better about myself, and others will like me more.

Read the rest of my article for Slipstream here.

Been doing a bit of design work for a change, with this flyer for the Breathe Conference 2009.

Click here for the conference details.

I love the way the Pantone people wax lyrical about colour. Here they describe their choice of ‘Mimosa’ for their official colour of 2009:

“In a time of economic uncertainty and political change, optimism is paramount and no other colour expresses hope and reassurance more than yellow. The colour yellow exemplifies the warmth and nurturing quality of the sun, properties we as humans are naturally drawn to for reassurance. Mimosa also speaks to enlightenment, as it is a hue that sparks imagination and innovation.”

While the atheists rev up their bus in protest at aggressive Christian advertising, here’s a refreshingly different approach, from the Quakers. I found this as a full page spread on the back of Ecologist magazine.

Nice design job – a combination of ancient and new, lots of white space, open and inviting.

My wife got me a lemur for Christmas last year, through Whipsnade Wild Animal Park’s adoption scheme. You don’t get one to take away unfortunately, but you do get a pair of free tickets to the zoo. We finally got round to visiting on the weekend, and I wanted a photo of my lemur.

I like photographing animals. I just wish they’d hold still.

Peak oil and National Security
for Celsias

A quarter of all mammals now endangered – the 2008 Red List
For Celsias 

Metavista 
Blogging services for theologian Colin Greene 

UK creates new Department for Energy and Climate Change
for Celsias

Christmas resources website
for SGM Lifewords

Urban Wilderness – the spirituality of the city
with Church on the Corner, for Greenbelt Festival

In 1909 Louis Bleriot flew across the channel in an aeroplane, inspiring a generation and proving that air travel was a real possibility. Within five years the first commercial air service was up and running. 

Yesterday Yves Rossy flew across the channel with a jet-powered wing, inspiring a generation and proving that personal jet travel is surely imminent. I expect my jet-pack within five years.

I am a freelance writer based in Luton.

I specialise in news and features on consumerism, development, poverty, the environment, climate change and conservation.

My main project is Make Wealth History, which deals with all of the above. I am on the steering group of Transition St Albans, and I also contribute regularly to climate change website Celsias.

Recent work

Article on Celsias, What costs 300,000 lives and $125 billion every year?; New website for Breathe; Posters and Flyers for Dignity, Luton; Waking from the consumer dream, for EA’s Slipstream; Flyer design for Breathe Conference 09; Book review for No Sweat Belching out the Devil, by Mark Thomas; article for Celsias, Biodiversity, climate change and Henry David Thoreau ; news for AirportWatch I demand action on aviation emissions (from someone else)