Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
Image description: Monument at Chernobyl I am afraid- desperately afraid- of global warming. For a period in February, after those few days when it was hot, so hot you could walk home from the club in a t-shirt because the air was climate-change balmy, and after reading David Wallace Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth, I became […]
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The UK government has set its most ambitious climate goal ever: a net zero emission by 2050. On 2nd May, the official adviser to the UK government, Committee on Climate Change (CCC), revealed this new target in a 277-page report. Its carbon budget even includes international aviation and shipping, typically not taken into account for […]
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The Wilberforce Club hosted an Alien themed drinks event in St Giles’ Church on 10th May in honour of the Oxford academic Dr Young-hae Chi, who has joined the society as a Senior Member. Dr Chi is an instructor in Korean at Oxford’s Oriental Institute who has spoken and written about the presence of invisible […]
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There is nothing that twenty-somethings love more than a good trend. The latest and greatest topic making its way through the media is climate change, and it’s about time that eco-consciousness left the realm of hipsterdom and into the mainstream. Caring about the planet is for humans, not just hippies. It doesn’t matter what I […]
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Dr Chi claims that aliens share our biosphere and are acting to overcome the effects of climate change. Dr Chi outlined his views in a 2012 lecture and has since written a book. In April 2018, Dr Chi approached The Oxford Union to propose a debate on the subject. The proposal was not accepted. The […]
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Oxford City Council is to become the first UK local authority to establish a citizen’s assembly with the aim of helping address the issue of climate change, by considering the measures that should be taken in Oxford. This follows the unanimous declaration by Oxford City Council members of a ‘climate emergency’, in a decision that […]
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Image Description: UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who has called for a World Climate Summit scheduled for September 2019 Greta Thunberg, the sixteen-year-old Swedish student who inspired the recent climate marches, has, without a doubt, furthered the cause of climate change. The passionate response from hundreds of thousands of young people is certainly encouraging as to […]
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A man statue made out of trash was left on the top of the Radcliffe Camera this morning with the sign “WHAT HEIGHT WOULD U GO 2 4 THE WORLD OX RISE UP” next to it. The event was reported in a recent Oxfess that said: “Shout out to the person who left a giant […]
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Climate change. Two little words that we all hear ever so often. To many, climate change has lost its meaning, a hidden spectre we all know is lurking in the shadows. However, not many of us have witnessed any tangible events brought about by the process. Indeed, in case you haven’t noticed, it has been […]
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A recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has made it very clear that drastic, immediate cuts to greenhouse gas emissions are needed to limit global warming to 1.5° C. With the absence of a technological silver bullet, this requires rapid changes at unprecedented scale across all sectors of the global economy. Just as […]
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Image Credit: Oxford Climate Justice Campaign The Oxford Climate Justice Campaign marched in protest on Wednesday for a “divested, disarmed and decolonized university”. The protest, which will take place on the National Day of Action on Divestment, will start at 12pm at Pembroke College. Protesters will then march to Exeter and New College. According to […]
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Image credit: Pixabay How to Save a Rock With A Circle is exploratory. It has a think about individual versus collective action, about whether the last polar bear should stay in its natural habitat or be confined to a zoo, about how one piece of information (the carbon footprint generated by having a child) can […]
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Picture Credit: Willem van Aken, CSIRO (CC BY 3.0) Description: Dripping Tap As 2018 began in the South African city of Cape Town, water levels rapidly declined in its reservoirs, marking a continuing trend since a drought began in 2015. In early January, the city issued plans for “Day Zero”, when if a lower limit […]
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Image credit: Hydrosami (CC BY-SA 4.0)- Description: Dry, cracked earth Food security is one of greatest challenges of the 21st century: by 2050, food production must increase by 70% to meet the demands of 9 billion people. Progress towards this target must occur in a climate with higher temperatures, more variable rainfall patterns and more frequent […]
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Image Credit: Hydrosami-Description: Dry, cracked earth Food security is one of greatest challenges of the 21st century. By 2050, food production must increase by 70% to meet the demands of 9 billion people. Progress towards this target must occur in a climate with higher temperatures, more variable rainfall patterns and more frequent episodes of extreme […]
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Image Credit:Jami Dwyer Tropical forest constitutes the most diverse and complex biomes on Earth. Since Humboldt to the present day, the ecology of these biomes has been captivating and challenging scientists. The speciality of the ecology of these biomes reaches further than pure natural history; they are of key importance to the world: from timber, […]
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Image Credit: Oxford Climate Justice Campaign/Facebook With the arrival of the recent news that fracking will restart in the UK this weekend following a seven year hiatus, a protest formed in Radcliffe square to protest government policy on fracking, both at a local and national level. A group of sixteen people from environmental activism groups […]
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Image Credit: CDC Global We all know that coughs and sneezes spread diseases. The problem is that these days, things are getting a bit more complicated than that. As our lives become more interconnected, and global travel shrinks the world village yet further, it is only inevitable that our diseases will be coming with us […]
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In his famous allegory of the cave Plato suggests that there are a group of people, prisoners, facing a wall, unable to direct their vision at anything else. Behind them lies reality, which has its true form projected onto the wall the prisoners are doomed to watch indefinitely. The prisoners only see the shadows and […]
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