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Nick Robins

@robins.n

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This is what #climatebreakdown looks like in a very small and intimate place, my home #wimbledon

This barren patch of mud & stone is all that remains of one of the many ponds that are now starved of water after this summer’s #fossilfuel’d heatshock. A place once full of joy & life, full of ducks and geese and moorhen. Now crows crowd in around this dead place, killed by our continued use of fossil fuels

This is not as dramatic as the wildfires that scoured the #cairngorms or the terrible floods that killed so many in #nepal.

But it is my reminder of the utter urgency of replacing fossil fuels fast and with real fairness

What will you do, we do to restore our habitats and build that wonderful world beyond coal, oil and gas?

As Susana Muhamad from Colombia told me this year ‘We will win and it will be beautiful’

@fossilfreelondon @fossilfueltreaty @kuminaidoo @christchurchwestwimbledon @andrewsimms.uk @priceofoil @pippamaslin @friends_earth @wimbledonputneycommons @sustainablemerton @merton_council @resurgencetrust @theecologist_org taken in Wimbledon Common by @robins.n

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5 days ago

“Where the mind is without fear

and the head is held high

where knowledge is free…

These wonderful lines from #Tagore’s 1913 #Gitanjali rang out again in #London today as a new generation of young Indians seek their own freedom #azadi

And they dug deep into the loss & the bravery shown in India’s struggle for independence from Britain as inspiration for what lies ahead

“… into that heaven of freedoms, let my country awake” taken in Palace of Westminster by @robins.n

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8 days ago

Merton Greens (along with some Waltham Forest and Bristol Greens here) were back in Holborn and St Pancras this weekend to help get @greenpartyzack elected this Thursday!

If you can spare some time this week, there are still many ways to get involved with the campaign, see link in bio! 💚 by @robins.n

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14 days ago

Fantastic to be at the @kyivindependent_official London session: just about to start

The best and bravest journalism out of #Ukraine by @robins.n

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16 days ago

🟢 Book now for our next OPEN MEETING on Tues 27 October, 7.30pm at Merton Arts Space, Compton Road, Wimbledon SW19 7QA 🟢

We're delighted that Shireen Asaw, newly elected Green councillor in Lewisham, will chair our panel focusing on London's legacy of colonialism.

Historian and green investor Nick Robins will take us back to the East India Company, examining how this London-based shareholder-owned corporation extracted vast wealth from India and pushed opium into China - and what this means for cultural activism today. Nick is the author of Reckoning with Britain’s imperial legacy: time to search for new heroes (New Weather Institute) and The Corporation That Changed the World (Pluto Press).

Fevzi Hussein, lifelong trade union activist and podcast presenter, will shed more light on the story of black migration to Britain, in particular the Windrush generation, with some fascinating data and first hand accounts from the migrants themselves. His talk will celebrate the contribution this group of migrants made to rebuilding Britain following the second world war.

Saqib Desmukh, Director of Insaafi CIC, will tell us a little about his work looking at local history and in particular those Merton residents who profited from the slave trade or the East India Company.

🟢 This event is open to the public - please scan the QR code above or click the link in bio to register 🟢

We look forward to extending a very warm welcome to everyone who joins us 🌱 by @robins.n

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19 days ago

For the past 50 years, #SatishKumar, the former #Jain monk & #Gandhian activist has been editing the fiercely resilient magazine of sustainability, spirituality & transformation, @resurgencetrust

The invitation came from Fritz Schumacher, arguing: 'there are many Gandhians in India, but we need one in England.'

Now turned 90, he has just published his fantastic new book, 'Peace is Possible' (https://lnkd.in/eJAeBTjC).

First and always, Satish is a peace activist, living out the prayer he learned from his mother: “Shanti, Shanti, Shanti”.

The first Shanti focuses on the need for peace within ourselves, and the second seeks peace with the whole of humanity, particularly to end war.

“For me, all wars are unjustified,” he writes, “all wars are immoral, irrational, uncivilised and unnecessary.”

And the third Shanti is to deliver peace with Nature, “our greatest teacher” & according to his mother, “greater than the Buddha.”

Satish is best known for his epic pilgrimage for peace in 1962, a 8,000-mile trek with his friend E.P. Menon from Delhi to the then 4 nuclear powers, the USSR, France, the UK & the USA, calling on them to ban the bomb. They crossed frontiers with no money and a commitment to eat only vegetarian food.

For me, the most memorable encounter was with a group of women tea workers they met in the Caucasus.

The women gave them four packets of Peace Tea to deliver to the Kremlin, the Élysée Palace, Downing Street & the White House, with a message: if the leaders should ever get close to using their nuclear weapons, they should pause and have a fresh cup of tea. Satish & his friend duly carried out their instructions

Great to see Satish again last week in Oxford.

You can read my review of his book here: https://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article6685-pilgrim-for-peace.html

@carolinelucasbrighton @theecologist_org @satish.kumar.foundation @schumachercollege @liviafirth @hughfearnleywhittingstall @vandanashiva1 by @robins.n

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a month ago

I was walking along the #riverwye in search of one poet and found another.

After hours high above the river on the path from Chepstow to #Tintern, I sensed I was getting close. Along the wall of a deserted building, I saw this extraordinary question written on a hoarding:

What more could creation say?

This hit me like an accusation from the Earth, probing why we have not acted in the face of all the signals the atmosphere, the forests and the waters have been sending us about the #climate & nature crises?

And then I saw that there were lines and lines like this, an entire poem in Welsh & English by @grahame_davies called the Road Begins. Some of it goes like this

Leave all you have behind you
Your past, your pain
Your knowledge and your name.
Or bring it all.
Your freedom will still find you.

This seemed such good & heartening advice. It turns out the poem marks the beginning of the Marian Way pilgrimage, which goes up stony Paths of Sorrows into away from the river and then swings down the jaunty Path of Joys

All this put my quest for William #wordsworth in perspective. In the summer 1798, he and his sister Dorothy had walked the Wye up past @tinternabbey and sat under a dark sycamore both to process his own sorrow at the failure of the French Revolution and to throw out his own answer to the question, ‘what more could creation say?’

In the magical poem he wrote on the banks of the Wye, he was clear that he had switched sides from the repressive faith of his times and become

“A worshipper of Nature!” with a capital N, ‘knowing that Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.’

His ‘Lines Above Tintern’ bookended the Lyrical Ballads he released later in 1798 together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose own extraordinary nature poem, The Ancient Mariner opens the collection.

We know we need to phase out fossil fuels, crank up renewables, transform our diets, renew public ownership of water… But a dose of nature worship could also go a long way, for example through river pilgrimages like those of @formedway_ along the Medway.

@andrewsimms.uk @anitaroywriter @nickysaunter @zofiapage @riveractionuk by @robins.n

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2 months ago

The Scottish bard #robertburns has given so much to the world.

One of his greatest gifts is a vision of how people can live in friendship & respect with other species in the community of #nature

For me, two of his poems are particularly inspirational

The first is ‘To a Mouse’ composed when he was a tenant farmer at #mossgiel. Ploughing the winter soil in November 1785 he sliced through the nest of a field mouse. His response in Scots and English has real warmth and commonality, particularly the first two verses.

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion,
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

Visiting this summer, it was good to see that the land is now run by the @mossgiel.farm organic dairy. The grass was full lush and green!

The second poem is his sorrowful, On Seeing a Wounded Hare, written at his next farm Ellisland, beautifully located beside the River #Nith @burnsellisland

It tells of his horror seeing a hunter shoot a hare, crying out in the first line: ‘INHUMAN man! curse on thy barb’rous art’ before lamenting in the final verse:

Oft as by winding Nith I, musing, wait
The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn,
I’ll miss thee sporting o’er the dewy lawn,
And curse the ruffian’s aim, and mourn thy hapless fate

The Nith is a wonder and visiting the Ellisland museum was a perfect way to root the poem in place – and also hear @ruasoul sing one of his songs!

So much of Burns’ work is nature-centred and more than 200 years on, it still provides a strong cultural foundation for building the new relationships we so desperately need

@andrewsimms.uk @nickysaunter @anitaroywriter by @robins.n

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2 months ago

With the ‘green & pleasant land’ of #williamblake turned to dust by the fossil fuel’d climate crisis, I needed to attend today’s commemoration of his death in 1827, organised by the @blakesociety

Blake is England’s greatest artist - poet, painter, engraver, visionary - but someone who was hardly known in his own time. Best loved for ‘Jerusalem’, our alternative national anthem, these stirring lines were only set to music decades after his death. Its quest to build the holy city in place of the ‘dark satanic mills’ of the Industrial Revolution has inspired so many to fight for environmental regeneration.

One of those with Blake at his death alongside his dear wife, Catherine, was the painter George Richmond, who closed his eyes ‘to keep the vision in’. He also named one of his sons, William Blake Richmond, as he was due to be born on his hero’s birthday. William Blake Richmond also became an artist and like many grew disgusted at the environmental apocalypse engulfing late Victorian London. In response, he set up the clunkily named Coal Smoke Abatement Society in 1898. Changing its name to the snappier Clean Air Society in the last century, it became one of the main civil society organisations pressing for pollution curbs on coal.

This year is the 70th anniversary of its great success, the 1956 Clean Air Act, the first of many steps that had to be taken to drive the killer coal out of our energy system. So it was really inspiring to hear William Blake Richmond’s descendent @maryshackle speak today, reading one of her own poems.

Blake is a global figure now and we heard how Blake inspired Indian spiritual leader #sriaurobindo; I also chatted with a man from Lebanon who spoke of his huge influence on the poet #kalilgibran

Such a rich celebration it was - with @tamsyn_challenger reading from her Blake inspired poems as well as @johndriordan with his own cartoon biography of Blake just out.

With #climatebreakdown unfolding before our eyes, we know where ‘our arrows of desire’ need to be fired: no new oil and gas in the North Sea & clean energy for all.

I get the sense that Blake would have stood right behind the #justtransition taken in London, England by @robins.n

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2 months ago

So our 10 day #pilgrimage is over - from the source of the river #Medway to the sea, with song, prayers, activism and laughter. All crafted to perfection by @formedway_ & led by @zofiapage

We walked but this was not just a walk in the countryside.

Our purpose was to re-establish a relationship with the river, to build reciprocity and acknowledge our utter dependence on her waters for what we drank, for all the green around us and thus the shade that cooled us from the fossil-fuelled heatshock.

We camped on hillsides and would set off early to the river, stopping after a while to reflect on the peace, the sounds of her chucklings and collect a few of the flowers and leaves nourished by her water, place them on the flow, and then move on.

This has been a valley of pilgrimage for thousands of years, stretching back to Kits Coty and William of Perth in @rochestercathedral

We focused on the practical too, picking up the ever present litter (O dear Lucozade!) and testing water quality with our brilliant #citizenscience team. We engaged with local councils to see how laws will be enforced & the #rightsofnature respected. Hats off to @maidstonebc for being the 1st British council to recognise the rights of nature @rachelrodwell @paul.powlesland

And guided by Ellen and Julia, drummed along by Laura, Olivia, Vandita and Vanessa, we layered a last offering of Medway abundance onto a wicker raft that Wouter had built - before launching it high into the river.

And where the river mingled with the salt waters of the sea, we sailed on the Raybel Kent barge to mark the end of the pilgrimage in the estuary.

So, what aspects of this way do I want to carry forward? Two main things:

First, the joy of living rivers and delight of sharing this with others, particularly through song @oliviadot24 There is such wonderful creativity that flows from being surrounded by natural vitality.

Second, the sacred nature of the task we have before us to restore the nature of which we are part (which of course means phasing out fossil fuels fast and fair)

@pilgrimtrust @andrewsimms.uk @anitaroywriter @nickysaunter @sacha_spirit @resurgencetrust @sarahjlouise.m taken in Medway by @robins.n

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3 months ago

A rousing end to the 7th day of the 2026 #River #Medway #Pilgrimage with an unplugged concert upon Aylesford bridge

Two of the founders of @formedway_ revived George Gilbert’s classic Kentish folk song from the 1970s, Medway Flows Softly, with @zofiapage on bouzouki and @tristram_stuart on the harp: ‘twisting turning, wandering free, flows Medway softly to the sea…’

And singing her own composition @oliviadot24 with Vanessa gave us ‘Listen to the Medway’ a song that has entered our souls these past days: ‘she’s humble and free, breathe in and breathe out, she’s got what you need’

All helping to confirm the pledges we gave to the Medway to ensure that the rights of rivers become a reality. For me, this means making the world of finance respect nature’s rights and also exploring how the wonder of pilgrimage, combining the practical and the spiritual, can be adopted in the #wandle valley

@pilgrimtrust @greenmaidstone @millward_rachel @paul.powlesland @mertongreenparty taken in Aylesford, Kent by @robins.n

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3 months ago

How can we build the momentum we need to restore our rivers?

Well, one way would be to host a river pilgrimage in every catchment area across the UK.

The 2026 #medway #river #pilgrimage hosted by @formedway_ has been a brilliant way of bringing together the practical, legal and sacred drivers of transformational change.

As we’ve walked from the source of the Medway to the sea, we’ve done litterpicks and citizen science to check the health of the water, getting a really positive reaction from local communities.

At each confluence with the Medway’s tributaries (such as the Grom and the Eden and the Len) we’ve held ceremonies to rebuild a relationship of gratitude and reciprocity with the river. This has involved making simple but beautiful offerings to the river - leaves and flowers and seeds as well as hanks of sheeps’ wool caught on tree thorns.

And today a super practical Rights of the River conference is taking place, bringing together pioneers such as @paul.powlesland @southeastriverstrust @maidstonebc @mrs_meg_avon & of course @zofiapage the leader of the pilgrimage

Tomorrow we walk to Rochester to begin the closing of this wonderful walk which will take place on Sunday.

And I will head home thinking how we could also hold such pilgrimages along the #wandle & Beverly Brook in south-west #London by @robins.n

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3 months ago