It can also be quantified. The World Inequality Report (WIR) 2026 shows that about 56,000 people – 0.001% of the global population – corral three times more wealth than the poorest half of humanity.

Most of what you eat is sausages. I mean, if we’re going to get literal about it. Sausage derives from the Latin salsicus, which means “seasoned with salt”. You might think of a sausage as a simple ...

I know what “civilisational erasure” looks like: I’ve seen the graph. The European Commission published it in March. It’s a chart of total fertility rate: the average number of children born per woman ...

It felt like walking up a mountain during a temperature inversion. You struggle through fog so dense you can scarcely see where you’re going. Suddenly, you break through the top of the cloud, and the ...

I began by trying to discover whether or not a widespread belief was true. In doing so, I tripped across something even bigger: an index of the world’s indifference. I already knew that by burning ...

If this were just a climate crisis, we would fix it. The technology, money and strategies have all been at hand for years. What stifles effective action is a deadly conjunction: the climate crisis ...

Let’s begin with the fundamental problem: Bill Gates is a politics denier. Though he came to it late, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about ...

I was lucky. Last week, I was cycling downhill at night when I hit a pothole. The front wheel folded into an infinity symbol. I went over the handlebars and, with no time to put my hands out, landed ...

Forgive me if I’ve got this wrong, but I seem to recall the country voting the Tories out last year. Part of the reason, if I remember correctly, was their staggering incompetence and insouciance, ...

The election of Zack Polanski as Green Party leader could be the moment our political drought begins to break. Nor can the government point out the blindingly obvious: that it is not asylum seekers ...

I packed a toothbrush, books and a notepad in a small rucksack, took my laptop from the house and hid it, gave my phone to a friend to look after and put a “bust card” (lawyers’ details and legal ...