Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
Renewable energy is the elephant in the Tory and Labour rooms
Faced with an unprecedented existential threat to humanity politicians churn out platitudes while opting for inaction, agues ALAN SIMPSON

IN HER book Men in Dark Times, the philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the notion of inner emigration. What was it that stood in the way of so many prominent/influential people challenging the rise of Hitlerism or organising escape routes from it?

From the biographies she explored, Arendt concluded that many found the external realities of the time so discomforting they opted instead for “an invisibility of thinking and feeling” – living a form of inner exile; fleeing without fleeing.

Faced with the scale of today’s climate emergency we are in danger of doing the same.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
A Typhoon FGR4 at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, March 27, 2026
Features / 22 April 2026
22 April 2026

While politicians fixate on defence budgets, the real answers lie in peace-building and economic justice, says ALAN SIMPSON

climate
Book Review / 19 December 2025
19 December 2025

IAN SINCLAIR recommends an important and timely book for climate politics right now and in the future

INTERMINABLE DELAYS: The lifting of a 245-tonne steel dome onto Hinkley Point C's second reactor building, at in Bridgwater, Somerset on July 17 2025 - scheduled to be finished by 2025 it now won’t be until 2031
Features / 6 December 2025
6 December 2025

The Communist Party of Britain’s Congress last month debated a resolution on ending opposition to all nuclear power in light of technological advances and the climate crisis. RICHARD HEBBERT explains why

Cartoon: Lewis
Features / 18 November 2025
18 November 2025

The collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation poses an existential threat — but do today’s politicians have the capacity to deliver the more resilient and sustainable economics of tomorrow, wonders ALAN SIMPSON