Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
We were warned this might happen – pandemics are not new, and we should have been ready. Yet, why were we left so unprepared? With the NHS having only 5,000 intensive care beds, one of the lowest rates per heads in Europe and half that of Italy, it will inevitably be overwhelmed soon. The number […]
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Nearly 800 University of Oxford alumni have signed an open letter to the President and Principal Bursar of the College, threatening to withhold donations until the college commits to divesting in fossil fuel companies. This follows a five-day occupation of the College’s quad by protesting students, which ended on Sunday 2nd February. The letter, which […]
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Jackie Brown reflects on the climate crisis close to home. On my journey home this Christmas Vacation, my plane descended into a landscape I no longer recognised. An unfamiliar sky where clouds had been replaced by a thick, impenetrable blanket that seemed to be suffocating everything beneath it. A blurred, dark outline of a city […]
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What is the relationship between modern films and climate change? Ask most people this question and they’ll say that there’s little overlap. Too few films have tackled the issue and cinema in general is often seen as a means of escape, a place to take a break from the real world. Others acknowledge that cinema […]
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Image Description: Pollution being emitted from factory chimneys Last year, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that we only have 10 years to avoid irreversible damage from climate change. Last week, world leaders failed to answer UN secretary-general Guterres’ request for renewable industry plans. This inaction is the reason why six million […]
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Having converted to a meat-free lifestyle in my first year at Oxford, I felt I could live with a level of environmental smugness – I didn’t need to feel bad about my personal contributions to climate change because I hadn’t eaten beef in a year and a half. However, deep in the depths of long […]
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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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