Whetstone.

Rainham marshes

Whetstone assembles vital responses to our environments and to our search for a place within them. We must find liveable lives for all 8 billion of us – and for those who come after. But the ecosystems on which we depend are finite and vulnerable and we are mortgaging them.

The scale of environmental challenge demands a response from all relevant disciplines: science, philosophy, politics, economics, art from all genres – wherever thought and response can make a difference.

The site is divided into ethics, nature, place and health. Ethics because the challenges are always moral. Nature because our relationship to the non-human world is central. Place because global as they are, these questions are also always local, and health, because human wellbeing is deeply implicated.

These are some of the most urgent issues of our time. I hope this site will help you engage.

Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings… the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal? 

Rachel Carson – Silent Spring

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