John Foster

John Foster

Honorary teaching fellow in the Politics, Philosophy and Religion department at Lancaster University. He has been an environmentalist for forty years.

John Foster

Changing the world with four MPs?

A response by John Foster to Rupert Read's piece on the Green Party's post-electoral options. It was presented to a fringe event at the Green Party Conference on 7th September 2024, at which Read also spoke.



John Foster

Review of 'Why Climate Breakdown Matters' Book

Green House Core Group member John Foster reviews Rupert Read's new book for Cambridge University Press.



John Foster

Climate and Justice

John Foster links climate, justice and morality in a way which readers may not be expecting. He argues that instead of seeing our responsibilities here as obligations of justice, now very much the standard story, we need to contrast them with the kind of obligation which justice imposes on us.



John Foster

Averting climate catastrophe – can democracy cut it?

How should people respond to the Climate Emergency? This gas is an exchange between Jem Bendell, and John Foster around a critical question of our times: Can democratic action now avert climate and ecological catastrophe. If so, in what form? If not, shouldn’t we be considering alternatives?



John Foster

Beyond the Fish Tank

John Foster considers the illuminating thought-experiment and homely but compelling analogy in Dougald Hine's book 'At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics, and All the Other Emergencies'.



John Foster

Do You Want to Know the Truth?

John Foster reviews Rupert Read's 2022 book, written for all who find themselves confronted, in the stark glare of climate truth, by Lenin’s famous question: what is to be done?



John Foster

Event: Confronting Climate Crisis - Where is the New Normal?

Green House will host journalist Zoe Williams, climate scientist Kevin Anderson and Profressor Rupert Read at this central London event on the evening of Wednesday 23rd November.



John Foster

Rethinking consumerism

In this extended review article, John Foster considers some recent thinking on living within limits, and discusses the implications for Green House’s current ‘Rethinking Demand’ project.



John Foster

The Climate Majority: Apathy and Action in the Age of Nationalism

John Foster's review of Leo Barasi's book examining 'the swings'- people who accept climate change but are apathetic towards acting to mitigate it.



John Foster

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

John Foster's review of Bill McKibben's book examining the possibility of the ending of 'the human game' and the declining significance of humans in the face of rising AI.



John Foster

Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos

'Deep Adaptation' (2021), highlights the dangers of trying to cover too many bases. Deep Adaptation serves to illustrate the deep truth of our times: that, desperate as our plight may appear, hopeful adaptation however characterised cannot be of the self to an inevitably collapsing world



John Foster

Preparing for the Improbable

An extended review by John Foster of Extinction Rebellion: Insights from the Inside, Rupert Read and Samuel Alexander (Simplicity Institute, 2020). Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century, Andreas Malm (Verso, 2020)