In October 2022, two young people from the environmental activist group, Just Stop Oil, walked into the National Gallery in London carrying tins of soup. They opened one tin and hurled it over the glass protecting Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting Sunflowers. The painting itself was unharmed. The seventeenth-century Italian frame was splashed. It needed some… Read more »

If you do a search for the word ‘local’ in Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ letter on the care of our common home, you will discover that the document is peppered with references to all sorts of local concerns, actors and solutions.

In April 1815, the Mount Tambora volcano in Indonesia erupted with a force unmatched in recorded history. A massive plume of ash and gas reached the stratosphere, darkening the skies. The year before, a lesser eruption in the Philippines had already primed the atmosphere. Together, they ejected extraordinary quantities of debris into the environment. The… Read more »

My last post focused on localism as practiced by small farmers, but localism is as much an urban phenomenon as a rural one.

A rallying cry heard throughout the 20th century was “Bread, not bombs.” The original phrase captured the moral demand to prioritise human need over militarism, often in Cold War and anti-poverty contexts. But in the face of climate collapse, biodiversity breakdown, ecological injustice, and environmental racism, a reframing is badly needed. The drums of war… Read more »

It’s been almost six months since I’ve been welcomed onto the JCFJ team, so I thought I would report on some of the highlights in what has been an intense time of learning, reflection, challenge, and connection.   As well as helping the team with environment-related submissions, assisting with our publication Working Notes, and promoting my… Read more »

As we accelerate towards climate chaos, more and more people are looking to ramp off the globalist superhighway and make their way through life more slowly and simply on winding localist trails.

On Wednesday evening I took part in a Hedgerows Cycle in Dublin 12 to mark National Biodiversity Week 2025. Funded by the Irish Environmental Network and co-organised by Dublin Cycling Campaign and Hedgerows Ireland, the event aimed to celebrate the biodiversity benefits of hedgerows, showcase some of the area’s hedgerows, and explore how hedges can… Read more »

If a more populist right Government, than the incumbent coalition, were to emerge in Ireland, then they have an arsenal of tools to further suppress peaceful democratic protest and respond punitively to protestors.

A Presbyterian Appreciation of Pope Francis Sometimes people ask me how I ended up directing a Jesuit social research centre, as a Presbyterian theologian. At this stage, the polite answer rolls out of my mouth with barely any thinking required.  But if I was to tell the truth, I would have to say that it… Read more »