Pharmaceuticalization as the Tobacco Industry’s Endgame

by | Feb 21, 2024 | Conflicts of Interest, death, Discursive Gap, duh, e-waste, Industrial Epidemics, Industry Documents, Perverse Incentives, Priorities, Public Health, Publications, Tobacco Industry

A new article I wrote with colleagues at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has just been published in BMJ Global Health.   It investigates the multi-decade plan of various tobacco...

The first modern ‘War on’ was a War on Smog funded by the fossil fuel industry

by | Feb 9, 2024 | beyond liberalism, Climate Change, Conflicts of Interest, Decolonization, Discursive Gap, duh, Environmental Justice, fake loops, Greenwashing, Industrial Epidemics, Industry Documents, Oil Barons, pollution, Priorities, Public Health, Syndemics, Systems thinking, the real, Verschlimmbessern, Wolves in sheep's clothing

A new exposé by Rebecca John at DeSmog Blog shows that as early as 1953 industry was up to capturing popular outrage and dishing out placation. To mollify disgust of Angelinos at the mounting smog in Los Angeles, industrialists got ahead of the public action curve to...

When Institutions start arresting or firing climate scientists, government is infested

by | Jan 28, 2023 | Climate Change, Communication, Conflicts of Interest, Dante Alighieri — 'The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.', death, Decolonization, Discursive Gap, Environmental Justice, Environmental Political Theory, Fake Freedoms, folly, Industrial Epidemics, Normal is Over, pollution, Priorities, Public Health

Governments are supposed to help us live better, survive. You know, all that crap Hobbes went on about, keeping us from killing each other. But when government systematically shuts up those who try to help us from committing collective suicide through broken Nash...

Reflections on EUR’s Roundtable on Academic Freedom and Sustainability

by | Dec 18, 2022 | beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Bureaucratic quixotic, Climate Change, Communication, Conflicts of Interest, Dante Alighieri — 'The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.', death, Decolonization, deep ecology, deus ex machina, Discursive Gap, duh, Energy, Environmental Justice, Environmental Political Theory, exploitation, Fake Freedoms, fake loops, folly, Greenwashing, Industrial Epidemics, Industry Documents, Naturverlassenheit, Normal is Over, normalization, Perverse Incentives, philosophy of science, pollution, Priorities, Public Health, Systems thinking, University Life

After the 28 November, 2022 occupation of the Sanders Building at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where I work, by OccupyEUR, the students involved in the very nonviolent protest were violently removed by riot police at the Executive Board’s behest. Not the finest...

What do we mean by thinking ‘upstream’? A look at 3 levels

by | Dec 2, 2022 | Bad Advertising, beyond idealism, beyond liberalism, Communication, Conflicts of Interest, Discursive Gap, fake loops, folly, Industrial Epidemics

The Abbott Baby Formula catastrophe is what I’ve been writing about for years: it doesn’t matter if you’re making nuclear missiles or baby food, the industrial model predictably results in industrial epidemics. Here, I will look at how this story is...