Latest 10 additions

Out of the box and Into the future - A lecture to the Peterhouse Politics Society, Peterhouse College, Cambridge: 24 January 2012.

Thinking differently - A lecture to the British Psychological Society conference on "Crisis and Consciousness" at St Anne's College, Oxford, 2 September 2011. "We all know how difficult it is to think differently. Partly through nature and even more through nurture, our brains work on the basis of ideas and patterns of behaviour drawn from the society in which we live. To change them is inevitably painful, and can even be antisocial. No wonder that we all suffer from the disease of what has been called conceptual sclerosis ... "

The human future - a speech to the Mensa Conference on Population, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, 24 July 2011.

Sea level rise and its implications - a lecture to the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, 1 May 2011.

Natural Disasters - a lecture at the Norman Lockyer Observatory, Sidmouth. 30 April 2011.

Climate change: the science and the politics - opinion piece published in The Times, 6 December 2010, during the run-up to the Cancun climate conference.

Societal responses to the Anthropocene - published in the Theme Issue of the Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society, 13 March 2011: "The Anthropocene: a new epoch of geological time?". "The idea that humans could so transform the land surface, seas and atmosphere of the Earth to establish a new geological epoch in their own name is startling in itself, and would have amazed earlier generations. Yet, since the beginning of the industrial revolution some 250 years ago, humans have profoundly affected the Earth and all life on it. The consequences are becoming more evident every day, but in the longer term remain almost unknowable ... "

Gaia or Medea? The choice is ours - a review of Here On Earth: A New Beginning by Tim Flannery: Allen Lane, 2011: 316 pp., £14.99. Published in the Financial Times, Saturday 5 March 2011.

Humans: a reflection - an address to a private gathering, 19 January 2011.

Natural disasters through the ages - a lecture given as part of the Mary Anning Weekend at Lyme Regis, 24 October 2010. "We tend to classify most sudden change as disastrous ... But without disasters we would not be here. The history of living organisms, so far as we know it from the fossil evidence, shows a pattern of relative evolutionary stability, punctuated by relatively sudden departures of some species and the arrivals of others. Few ecosystems or species last more than a few million years. Extinctions are an essential element in evolution."