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Beware of hyperbolic headlines. But in this case, I’m afraid, as Ulrike Herrmann’s very readable book The End of Capitalism makes clear, the choice between capitalism and civilisation really does seem to be either/or – and the end will probably come a lot sooner that we thought.

Review: The End of Capitalism: Why Growth and Climate Protection are Incompatible – Ulrike Herrmann, translated by David Shaw (Scribe)

Anyone who isn’t alarmed about the rapid and well-documented decline in the global environment, upon which we and our atypically comfortable lifestyles depend, really hasn’t been paying attention. You may not enjoy reading a book like this, but you really should read it – if only for your children’s sake.

The End of Capitalism appeared in Germany a couple of years ago, but it has lost none of its relevance or urgency. On the contrary, with Donald Trump in the White House promising to “drill, baby drill”, it could hardly be more timely.

Could capitalism end?

The majority of potential readers are likely to disagree with Herrmann’s central claim that “climate protection will only be possible if we abolish capitalism”.

This is unsurprising. We have known nothing other than capitalism in the West for several hundred years. Attempts to do things differently in other parts of the world, such as the Soviet Union, generally did not go well socially or, more importantly, environmentally.

One of the reasons it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, as philosopher Fredric Jameson famously claimed, is that people everywhere like the abundance of stuff that capitalism has been instrumental in producing. Living standards, especially in the West, but also in China, India and elsewhere, have risen unimaginably in a remarkably short space of time. It is not surprising that the beneficiaries have generally been pleased about this unprecedented change in their material circumstances.

Ulrike Herrmann argues that ‘climate protection will only be possible if we abolish capitalism’.
Scribe Publishing

True, contemporary capitalism is characterised by a growing gulf between the richest and the poorest, both within and between countries. This is an awkward problem for “communist” China, but one that Australians and especially Americans seem relatively unconcerned about. Herrmann, too, is surprisingly relaxed about it. She argues that “capitalism made democracy possible – and it can be democratically controlled”.

This idea is currently being subjected to a searching real-time examination, as the Trump administration systematically eviscerates and transforms America’s system of governance to a point where sober and serious analysts consider it to be headed toward authoritarianism. Herrmann does not consider such a possibility, but she does provide a clear explanation of the rise of capitalism and the social and technological forces that have made it the most transformative force in human history.

More hyperbole? Lots of people have given up on organised religion, but not many have renounced consumerism. Unlikely as such a renunciation might seem, Herrmann argues that endless consumption is something we will have to give up if the environment is to remain habitable. The argument is simple and has been around since the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth, half a century ago: a system that is predicated on ever expanding growth is incompatible with a world of finite resources, especially if one of those resources is a functioning natural environment.

Lots of people have spent the intervening 50 years pointing out why the authors of that book were wrong. It is likely they will be queuing up to tell Herrmann she is wrong, too – especially when she argues that “‘green growth’ does not exist”.

Read more:
Is inequality a natural phenomenon? Thomas Piketty argues it isn’t – and proposes a way forward

The unpalatable options

We have been repeatedly assured that technology will come to the rescue. But Herrmann contends that “we no longer have the time to wait for possible technological breakthroughs. We must act immediately if we are to avert climate collapse.”

The seemingly irreconcilable problems, she argues, are highlighted in the cost of removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it somewhere. Despite all the hype, such technology has yet to be viably demonstrated at scale. This means “humanity will be forced to move away from fossil fuels and towards green energy”.

Unfortunately for the likes of Peter Dutton, Herrmann is scathing about the prospects for nuclear power. There is some debate about precise figures, but the German experience, which is central to the book’s main arguments, suggests that even when Germany had 19 commercially run reactors, they could only provide around 13% of total energy consumed. Herrmann points out that “the nuclear energy sector is the only branch of industry in which costs consistently rise”. Reactors are, consequently, not viable without government subsidies.

Before admirers of green energy and especially “green growth” start feeling smug, it is important to note that Herrmann is equally sceptical about wind and solar. She claims that, between them, they provide less than 10% of Germany’s energy needs and won’t be of much use in periods of dunkelflaute: the “dark doldrums” when the sun doesn’t shine (much) and the wind doesn’t blow.

In 2024, however, after the publication of the German edition of Herrmann’s book, Germany generated 59% of its electricity from renewables, including 31.9% from wind and 14.7% from solar.

Nevertheless, energy storage is expensive and difficult, and the transition to green solutions is fraught. One example: it takes 35 kilograms of scarce minerals to make a traditional petrol driven car and 210 kilograms to make an electric one. Manufacturing the batteries for them generates a further 15–20 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

As a result, “our planet is being ransacked […] Around one-third of all raw material consumption since 1900 took place in the short time between 2002 and 2015.”

The manufacture of electric vehicles requires large amounts of scarce minerals.
Es sarawuth/Shutterstock

This is why Herrmann argues that simply moving to green energy sources will not be sufficient, either to guarantee current needs or to adequately reduce our collective impact on the environment.

It is not only the automotive sector that will have to shrink. One of the industries that will be difficult to reform, much less shrink, is aviation. Over a single year, 90% of the world’s population will not fly at all and 1% will account for half of the global aviation emissions. This mirrors the grotesque levels of inequality in global wealth distribution. It means the rich will have to join the poor in “saying goodbye to flying”.

Other examples of politically unpalatable sacrifices are given throughout the book. And the message is clear:

The challenges will grow, and the funds [to address them] will shrink. Consumption must fall, which immediately begs the question of who should cut back and by how much. Distribution conflicts will be inevitable.

Given that “technology will not enable us to produce enough green energy sufficiently cheaply to fuel ‘green growth’ […] the only remaining option is green shrinkage: fewer new buildings, fewer cars, fewer chemical products”.

This is a message that no policymaker anywhere in the world, democrat or autocrat, will want to hear. It is not just the rich industrialised countries that are wedded to the idea of economic expansion. Many developing countries would like nothing better than to join their wealthy counterparts. So would the people of the global south, which is why so many of them risk their lives to flee hopeless poverty.

In any given year, 1% of people are responsible for half of global aviation emissions.
Muratart/Shutterstock

Improbable precedents

Unlikely as the necessary reforms are to be realised, Herrmann suggests that wartime Britain offers a model of what can be achieved if the dangers are sufficiently immediate and existential. She points out that “rationing was so popular in Britain because everyone had exactly the same entitlement” – though no doubt the legendary “spirit of the Blitz” also had something to do with spending nights cowering in underground stations with hundreds of strangers while people dropped bombs on you.

This is not a flippant point. Without a dramatic change of consciousness on the part of “ordinary” people generally, and policymakers in particular, it is impossible to imagine the sorts of sacrifices that seem necessary to achieve the “shrinkage” being considered, much less enacted as “necessary prohibitions”.

Given that any actions would also need to have a global, rather than just a national rationale, a radical change of collective direction also seems improbable, to put it delicately, especially if it involves something resembling central planning.

And yet Herrmann argues that there is no choice other than radical and seemingly unimaginable change if we are to survive in anything like a civilised condition:

There is no alternative for the industrialised countries. Either they end growth voluntarily, or the era of growth will end violently, when everything that forms the basis of our way of life has been destroyed.

For what it’s worth, I agree. I am not a climate scientist, but I recognise that there is an intellectual division of labour that is a central component of modernity. None of us is capable of knowing everything about the increasingly complex world in which we live. But if something like 99% of climate scientists agree on the causes and likely consequences of climate change, I am happy to take their word for it. What possible basis could I have to disagree?

Herrmann may not be right about everything, but she is right about enough to cause any open-minded reader to think seriously about what the future looks like, especially for younger generations who will have to deal with the decisions we make – or don’t make – today.

This is hardly a novel insight. But it is striking that, for all our real understanding about the nature of the unprecedented challenge we collectively face, there is still an equally remarkable unwillingness or inability to act.

Like many before her, Herrmann thinks that salvation could come from “below”, because “parties do not lead their voters, they follow them”. But given what is currently happening in the United States and elsewhere, the durability of democracy itself is uncertain. In a world where democracy is already in retreat, the environmental emergencies that will inevitably increase without meaningful action could make authoritarian responses even more likely.

Still, what do I care? I’m a baby boomer with no kids. I live in one of the wealthiest, safest places on Earth. In Western Australia, we don’t even care about the rest of the country, let alone the rest of the world. Local politicians are planning to make an even bigger contribution to destroying the planet than we already do, because Woodside Energy wants to speed up the approval process for the controversial North West Shelf project. Good to know who’s running the state, at least.

It might have been useful if Herrmann had given a bit more attention to the politics of self-absorption or the slightly optimism-inducing literature on “degrowth”.

These are minor criticisms of what is a significant contribution to the literature on the climate crisis, though I fear The End of Capitalism may only be read by an already sympathetic audience. This remains a seemingly insurmountable obstacle faced by would-be reformers. I know it is considered de rigueur to strike an optimistic note when concluding discussions of this sort, but it is not easy, and may be dishonest.

There is no doubt that unmitigated climate change and environmental degradation will transform our lives and the political systems that circumscribe them. By the time they do, it may be too late to do anything useful, other than keep a lid on social breakdown. It won’t necessarily be the end of the world, but it may be the end of any human civilisation worthy of the name. Läs mer…

Cats and milk often go hand in hand in popular culture. But on dairy farms, cats do much more than enjoy a saucer of milk – their mousing skills are essential. That’s because dairy farms often have a problem with rats and mice due to their large grain and feed stores and a continuous supply of water and shelter.

Cats are thought to have been domesticated to protect granaries from rodents some 9,000 years ago. In our time, cats are widely used to keep rat and mouse numbers down around houses, farms, horse barns and factories.

But while you can make tax deductions on the upkeep of your working cats in the United Kingdom and United States, Australia’s thousands of working farm cats are not eligible. By contrast, farm dogs and horses in all three countries are recognised for the work they do. Their care is a tax-deductible business expense.

Our new research explores how cats are used as working animals on dairy farms. We found many dairy farmers preferred using cats over using poison for rodent control. For all farmers, the cost of sterilisation was too much, which can create problems of unchecked breeding. Registration fees are also a barrier.

If the care and upkeep of working cats was tax deductible, Australian farmers could manage their cats better without extra financial strain.

Rats and mice are a common problem for dairy farmers. This photo shows a mouse plague on a farm in New South Wales in 2021.
Rick Rycroft/AP

Why are working cats needed?

Dairy farming is Australia’s third-largest agricultural industry after cattle and wheat, and Australia is the world’s fourth-largest dairy exporter.

Within the industry, there are major changes underway. Small dairy farms are declining due to economic pressures. Financial returns are dropping and recent natural disasters have taken their toll.

To find out about how small and medium scale dairy farms rely on cats, we interviewed 15 dairy farmers in New South Wales and Queensland who had between three and 60 cats on their farms. Our sample of farmers is not representative, as we restricted the study to dairy farmers who had enrolled their cats in a free desexing program.

The dairy farmers we interviewed had come to rely heavily on their cats for ratting and mousing. Cats were not optional – they were essential for pest control.

Dairy farms are increasingly automated, with automatic milking machines taking over from humans. But rodents can cause real problems by nibbling through crucial wiring and rubber hosing, causing expensive and disruptive equipment breakdowns. As one farmer told us:

cats are cheaper than an electrician bill.

Another said:

we haven’t had [an equipment] breakdown in seven years since the cats turned up […] That on its own is worth thousands, plus no [downtime] with the milking machines out of action […] yeah, the pluses are just massive.

Dairy farms are increasingly automated – but rats and mice biting through wiring can derail a farmer’s plans.
Tracey Nearmy/AAP

Rodents also eat and contaminate cattle feed and can spread diseases to livestock and humans. More mice and rats means more snakes, posing risks to humans, working dogs and cattle.

One farmer told us:

the cats […] work everyday where baits are only ever any good while you’ve got bait out.

Most of the farmers we interviewed said they would never farm without cats. “We couldn’t do without them now. Otherwise, you’d be overrun with rats”, one said.

Of our 15 interviewees, ten had previously relied on rat poison. The farmers told us poison was less effective, expensive and unsafe. Rat poison poses risks to wildlife, working dogs, pets and children. Rats and mice are also developing resistance to some poisons. Rat poison has to be continuously applied and can be expensive.

One farmer said:

baiting’s not great for the other wildlife, and we’ve got dogs and I’d prefer not to use the baits.

By contrast, the farmers told us working cats offered a long-term, low-maintenance solution. Farmers reported fewer rodents and fewer snakes.

Farmers clearly saw their cats as working animals. As one said:

they’re dead set working cats because of […] the saving on repairs, the saving on baiting and yeah, the cats are doing their job, they’re basically working for
me.

While some farmers saw the cats as purely functional, others appreciated their companionship, especially during solitary early morning milking.

For some farmers, cats provide companionship during early morning milking.
Aleksandr Lupin/Shutterstock

Is it time for cat deductions?

While our interviewees reported strong upsides to using working cats, there are downsides.

Registration fees and permits can cost thousands of dollars, as an average sized dairy might have 20 or more working cats. There are other costs too, from desexing to tick treatment to vaccination to microchipping. Our recent research suggests desexing would reduce the risk from cats going feral.

As one farmer said:

the cost is too great to have to get all those cats done [sterilised] ourselves.

For farmers, these fees may be having unintended consequences such as added stress from financial worries and damage to mental health if farmers are forced to euthanise cats and kittens for population control. Waiving registration costs for working cats and providing funding to ensure cats are desexed would reduce the impact on wildlife.

At present, the Australian Tax Office recognises horses and dogs as working animals – provided they have been “trained for their role from a young age” and are not pets.

State and federal laws would have to be updated so working cats would be considered domestic cats, not feral cats, and biosecurity laws in states such as Queensland would have to be clarified. Tax rules would have to be changed too, as working cats would not meet the training requirement for working animals, given cats are natural predators of rodents.

But if these changes were made and farm cats were legally recognised, dairy farmers would have clear incentives to ensure their working cats are desexed, vaccinated and cared for. Läs mer…

What actually was the biggest dinosaur?

– Zavier, 14, Tauranga, New Zealand.

Great question Zavier, and one that palaeontologists (scientists who study fossil animals and plants) are interested in all around the world.

And let’s face it, kids of all ages (and I include adults here) are fascinated by dinosaurs that break records for the biggest, the longest, the scariest or the fastest. It’s why, to this day, one of most famous dinosaurs is still Tyranosaurus rex, the tyrant king.

These record-breaking dinosaurs are part of the reason why the Jurassic Park movie franchise has been so successful. Just think of the scene where Dr Alan Grant (played by New Zealand actor Sam Neill) is stunned by the giant sauropod dinosaur rearing up to reach the highest leaves in the tree with its long neck.

But how do scientists work out how big and heavy a dinosaur was? And what were the biggest dinosaurs that ever lived?

Calculating dinosaur size

In an ideal world, calculating how big a dinosaur was would be easy – with a nearly complete skeleton. Standing next to the remarkable Triceratops skeleton on permanent display at Melbourne Museum makes you realise how gigantic and formidable these creatures were.

By measuring bone proportions (such as length, width or circumference) and plugging them into mathematical formulas and computer models, scientists can compare the measurements to those of living animals. They can then work out the likely size and weight of dinosaurs.

Calculating the size of dinosaurs is easy when you have near complete skeletons like this Triceratops at Melbourne Museum.
Ginkgoales via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-SA

Every palaeontologist has their own favourite formula or computer model. Some are more accurate than others, which can lead to heated arguments!

In palaeontology, however, we are not always blessed with nearly complete skeletons. In a process called “taphonomy” – basically, what happens to the bones after an animal dies – dinosaur skeletons can be broken up and bones lost.

The more fragmented the remains of a dinosaur are, the more error is introduced into size and weight estimates.

The reconstructed skeleton of a Patagotitan on display in London’s Natural History Museum.
Getty Images

Enter the titanosaurs

If we could travel back in time to South America during the Cretaceous period (about 143 million to 66 million years ago), we’d find a land ruled by a group of four-legged, long-necked and long-tailed, plant-eating sauropods. They would have towered over us, and the ground would shake with every step they took.

These were the titanosaurs. They reached their largest sizes during this period, before an asteroid crashed into what is now modern day Mexico 66 million years ago, making them extinct.

There are several contenders among the titanosaurs for the biggest dinosaur ever. Even the list below is controversial, with my palaeontology students pointing out several other possible contenders.

But based on six partial skeletons, the best estimate is for Patagotitan, which is thought to have been 31 meters long and to have weighed 50–57 tonnes.

A couple of others might have been as big or even bigger. Argentinosaurus has been calculated to be longer and heavier at 30–35 metres and 65–80 tonnes. And Puertasaurus was thought to be around 30 metres long and 50 tonnes.

But while the available bones of Argentinosaurus and Puertasaursus suggest reptiles of colossal size (the complete thigh bone of Argentinosaurus is 2.5 metres long!), there is currently not enough fossil material to be confident of those estimates.

An artist’s reconstruction of Spinosaurus, thought to have been the largest carnivorous dinosaur.
Getty Images

Spinosaurus rules North Africa

An ocean away from South America’s titanosaurs, Spinosaurus lived in what is now North Africa during the Cretaceous period.

By a very small margin, Spinosaurus is currently thought to have been the largest carnivorous (meat-eating) dinosaur, weighing in at 7.4 tonnes and 14 meters long. Other Cretaceous giants are right up there, too, including Tyranosaurus rex from North America, Gigantosaurus from South America, and Carcharodontosaurus from North Africa.

Spinosaurus is unique among predatory dinosaurs in that it was semi-aquatic and had adapted to eating fish. You can see in the picture above how similar its skull shape was to a modern crocodile.

Palaeontology is now more popular than ever – maybe because of the ongoing Jurassic Park series – with a fossil “gold rush” occurring in the Southern Hemisphere.

The latest Jurassic Park movie – in cinemas from July 2025 – is about finding the biggest prehistoric species from land, sea, and air.

Members of the public (known as “fossil forecasters”) are making new discoveries all the time.

So, who knows? The next discovery might turn out to be a new record holder as the biggest or longest dinosaur to have ever lived. There can be only one!

Hello curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au Läs mer…

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the government will deport lawful permanent residents who support Hamas and came to the U.S. as students “with an intent rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, antisemitic activities,” referencing the Palestinian rights protests at universities in 2024.

“And if you end up having a green card – not citizenship, but a green card – as a result of that visa while you’re here and those activities, we’re going to kick you out. It’s as simple as that. This is not about free speech. This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with,” Rubio said on March 12, 2025.

That policy has now ensnared Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia University and a leader in the Palestinian rights protest movement at the school. Khalil, a Palestinian who was born in Syria, faces deportation after he was arrested on March 8, 2025, in New York City. The Department of Homeland Security said that the secretary of state had determined Khalil’s presence or activities in the country posed “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

Khalil, a Palestinian who was born in Syria, entered the U.S. on a student visa in 2022. In 2024, he received a green card and became a lawful permanent resident – meaning he has the legal right to work and stay in the U.S. There are an estimated 12.8 million lawful permanent residents in the country.

Khalil’s lawyers say that his arrest and pending deportation are unconstitutional.

In many respects, the rights of lawful permanent residents and citizens are similar. Yet citizens and lawful permanent residents do not enjoy equal status under the law.

The Supreme Court and other courts recognize that lawful permanent residents have First Amendment rights to free speech.

Yet the Supreme Court upheld deporting lawful permanent residents in the 1950s based on their political activity, in particular membership in the Communist Party.

So, while lawful permanent residents may not be criminally prosecuted for their political speech or activity, what they say or write may well affect their ability to remain in the U.S., if the government determines that they are a security risk.

I’m a scholar of immigration law. Here are three major differences between the rights of citizens and lawful permanent residents.

Court officers watch protestors demonstrating for the release of Mahmoud Khalil at Foley Square in New York City on March 10, 2025.
David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

1. Limited political rights

Lawful permanent residents are people born in other countries who can legally work and live in the U.S. for as long as they like. They may enlist in the U.S. armed forces, apply to become U.S. citizens, and are legally protected against discrimination by private employers.

States also generally cannot discriminate against lawful permanent residents – though states may require certain groups of people, such as teachers or police, to have U.S. citizenship.

Between 1820 and 1920, noncitizens routinely participated in different aspects of government, including voting, holding office and jury service in many states and territories.

These days, states and the federal government generally allow only citizens to serve on juries, hold political positions and vote. With a few exceptions, such as voting in some local elections, permanent residents are not able to do any of these things.

2. Limited public benefits

The distinction between noncitizens and citizens extends to other areas of life, such as public benefits.

The Supreme Court has frequently stated, “In the exercise of its broad power over naturalization and immigration, Congress regularly makes rules that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens.”

In practice, this means that the federal government – and to a much lesser extent, states – do not offer public benefits, such as Medicaid and other kinds of government support, to lawful permanent residents and other noncitizens on the same basis as citizens.

For example, lawful permanent residents must generally wait five years before becoming eligible for certain programs intended to support low-income people, such as Supplemental Security Income and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

3. Reversal of immigration status

Finally, unlike citizens, lawful permanent residents can lose their legal immigration status.

Congress has enacted many grounds for deporting a noncitizen, or stopping them from entering the country.

Some courts have found that the U.S. government can deport a lawful permanent resident because of national security or terrorism concerns, even if the person has not committed a crime.

The Trump administration argues that they can deport lawful permanent residents like Khalil under
the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which states that a lawful permanent resident can be deported if the secretary of state has reasonable ground to believe that this person “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

The Trump administration had initiated deportation proceedings against Khalil on this ground.

U.S. law also provides that any non-citizen can be deported if the secretary of state and the attorney general jointly determine that the person is associated with terrorism, or poses a threat to the U.S. In addition, the law says an immigrant can be deported if they “endorse or espouse terrorist activity or persuades others” to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.

Still, lawful permanent residents are entitled to certain basic rights, such as retaining a lawyer to represent them in administrative hearings and court before they are deported.

By contrast, the U.S. government cannot deport a U.S. citizen for any reason. However, sometimes U.S. citizens are deported by mistake.

Indeed, the Supreme Court has found that while it is constitutional to execute a military member for desertion in wartime, it would be cruel and unusual punishment to deprive them of citizenship.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seen on March 12, 2025, in Shannon, Ireland, has said that the U.S. will deport any noncitizen who supports Hamas.
Saul Loeb/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Legal grounds for deporting noncitizens

There have been few recent court cases testing the scope of deporting lawful permanent residents on national security grounds based on pure speech.

In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that if a person is deportable, they are deportable – even if there is some other reason that motivated the government’s deportation proceedings, such as a suspicion that the non-citizen is involved with crime or terrorism.

The Supreme Court also then held that the government could deport non-citizens for technical visa violations, even if the case was based on the government’s belief that the non-citizens were associated with a terrorist group.

There is also some precedent arguing that deportation based on “adverse foreign policy consequences” is too broad and nonspecific to be constitutional.

Indeed, Marianne Trump Barry, the sister of the president, held this opinion when she was a federal judge in the mid-1990s. But Samuel Alito, then an appeals court judge, overturned Barry’s ruling on procedural grounds in 1996.

For its part, the Supreme Court has occasionally held that very broad and indeterminate deportation grounds are “void for vagueness,” meaning so sweeping and imprecise that they are unconstitutional.

Khalil’s lawyers appeared with U.S. government lawyers before a federal judge in New York on March 12. Their goal: to get Khalil moved from internment in Louisiana back to internment in New York. But that may well be just the beginning of a long haul for the Palestinian student. Courts have proved reluctant to second-guess security grounds rationales in immigration cases. For these reasons, cases like Khalil’s may go on for years. Läs mer…

The Trump administration announced on March 12, 2025, that it is “reconsidering” more than 30 air pollution regulations in a series of moves that could impact air quality across the United States.

“Reconsideration” is a term used to review or modify a government regulation. While Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin provided few details, the breadth of the regulations being reconsidered affects all Americans. They include rules that set limits for pollutants that can harm human health, such as ozone, particulate matter and volatile organic carbon.

Zeldin wrote that his deregulation moves would “roll back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden ‘taxes’ on U.S. families.” But that’s only part of the story.

What Zeldin didn’t say is that the economic and health benefits from decades of federal clean air regulations have far outweighed their costs. Some estimates suggest every $1 spent meeting clean air rules has returned $10 in health and economic benefits.

How far America has come, because of regulations

In the early 1970s, thick smog blanketed American cities and acid rain stripped forests bare from the Northeast to the Midwest.

Air pollution wasn’t just a nuisance – it was a public health emergency. But in the decades since, the United States has engineered one of the most successful environmental turnarounds in history.

Thanks to stronger air quality regulations, pollution levels have plummeted, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. And despite early predictions that these regulations would cripple the economy, the opposite has proven true: The U.S. economy more than doubled in size while pollution fell, showing that clean air and economic growth can – and do – go hand in hand.

The numbers are eye-popping.

An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the first 20 years of the Clean Air Act, from 1970 to 1990, found the economic benefits of the regulations were about 42 times greater than the costs.

The EPA later estimated that the cost of air quality regulations in the U.S. would be about US$65 billion in 2020, and the benefits, primarily in improved health and increased worker productivity, would be around $2 trillion. Other studies have found similar benefits.

That’s a return of more than 30 to 1, making clean air one of the best investments the country has ever made.

Science-based regulations even the playing field

The turning point came with the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970, which put in place strict rules on pollutants from industry, vehicles and power plants.

These rules targeted key culprits: lead, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter – substances that contribute to asthma, heart disease and premature deaths. An example was the removal of lead, which can harm the brain and other organs, from gasoline. That single change resulted in far lower levels of lead in people’s blood, including a 70% drop in U.S. children’s blood-lead levels.

Air Quality regulations lowered the amount of lead being used in gasoline, which also resulted in rapidly declining lead concentrations in the average American between 1976-1980. This shows us how effective regulations can be at reducing public health risks to people.
USEPA/Environmental Criteria and Assessment Office (1986)

The results have been extraordinary. Since 1980, emissions of six major air pollutants have dropped by 78%, even as the U.S. economy has more than doubled in size. Cities that were once notorious for their thick, choking smog – such as Los Angeles, Houston and Pittsburgh – now see far cleaner air, while lakes and forests devastated by acid rain in the Northeast have rebounded.

Comparison of growth areas and declining emissions, 1970-2023.
EPA

And most importantly, lives have been saved. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to periodically estimate the costs and benefits of air quality regulations. In the most recent estimate, released in 2011, the EPA projected that air quality improvements would prevent over 230,000 premature deaths in 2020. That means fewer heart attacks, fewer emergency room visits for asthma, and more years of healthy life for millions of Americans.

The economic payoff

Critics of air quality regulations have long argued that the regulations are too expensive for businesses and consumers. But the data tells a very different story.

EPA studies have confirmed that clean air regulations improve air quality over time. Other studies have shown that the health benefits greatly outweigh the costs. That pays off for the economy. Fewer illnesses mean lower health care costs, and healthier workers mean higher productivity and fewer missed workdays.

The EPA estimated that for every $1 spent on meeting air quality regulations, the United States received $9 in benefits. A separate study by the non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research in 2024 estimated that each $1 spent on air pollution regulation brought the U.S. economy at least $10 in benefits. And when considering the long-term impact on human health and climate stability, the return is even greater.

Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles in 1984: Smog was a common problem in the 1970s and 1980s.
Ian Dryden/Los Angeles Times/UCLA Archive/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

The next chapter in clean air

The air Americans breathe today is cleaner, much healthier and safer than it was just a few decades ago.

Yet, despite this remarkable progress, air pollution remains a challenge in some parts of the country. Some urban neighborhoods remain stubbornly polluted because of vehicle emissions and industrial pollution. While urban pollution has declined, wildfire smoke has become a larger influence on poor air quality across the nation.

That means the EPA still has work to do.

If the agency works with environmental scientists, public health experts and industry, and fosters honest scientific consensus, it can continue to protect public health while supporting economic growth. At the same time, it can ensure that future generations enjoy the same clean air and prosperity that regulations have made possible.

By instead considering retracting clean air rules, the EPA is calling into question the expertise of countless scientists who have provided their objective advice over decades to set standards designed to protect human lives. In many cases, industries won’t want to go back to past polluting ways, but lifting clean air rules means future investment might not be as protective. And it increases future regulatory uncertainty for industries.

The past offers a clear lesson: Investing in clean air is not just good for public health – it’s good for the economy. With a track record of saving lives and delivering trillion-dollar benefits, air quality regulations remain one of the greatest policy success stories in American history. Läs mer…

The Trump administration announced on March 12, 2025, that it is “reconsidering” more than 30 air pollution regulations in a series of moves that could impact air quality across the United States.

“Reconsideration” is a term used to review or modify a government regulation. While Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin provided few details, the breadth of the regulations being reconsidered affects all Americans. They include rules that set limits for pollutants that can harm human health, such as ozone, particulate matter and volatile organic carbon.

Zeldin wrote that his deregulation moves would “roll back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden ‘taxes’ on U.S. families.” But that’s only part of the story.

What Zeldin didn’t say is that the economic and health benefits from decades of federal clean air regulations have far outweighed their costs. Some estimates suggest every $1 spent meeting clean air rules has returned $10 in health and economic benefits.

How far America has come, because of regulations

In the early 1970s, thick smog blanketed American cities and acid rain stripped forests bare from the Northeast to the Midwest.

Air pollution wasn’t just a nuisance – it was a public health emergency. But in the decades since, the United States has engineered one of the most successful environmental turnarounds in history.

Thanks to stronger air quality regulations, pollution levels have plummeted, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. And despite early predictions that these regulations would cripple the economy, the opposite has proven true: The U.S. economy more than doubled in size while pollution fell, showing that clean air and economic growth can – and do – go hand in hand.

The numbers are eye-popping.

An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the first 20 years of the Clean Air Act, from 1970 to 1990, found the economic benefits of the regulations were about 42 times greater than the costs.

The EPA later estimated that the cost of air quality regulations in the U.S. would be about US$65 billion in 2020, and the benefits, primarily in improved health and increased worker productivity, would be around $2 trillion. Other studies have found similar benefits.

That’s a return of more than 30 to 1, making clean air one of the best investments the country has ever made.

Science-based regulations even the playing field

The turning point came with the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970, which put in place strict rules on pollutants from industry, vehicles and power plants.

These rules targeted key culprits: lead, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter – substances that contribute to asthma, heart disease and premature deaths. An example was the removal of lead, which can harm the brain and other organs, from gasoline. That single change resulted in far lower levels of lead in people’s blood, including a 70% drop in U.S. children’s blood-lead levels.

Air Quality regulations lowered the amount of lead being used in gasoline, which also resulted in rapidly declining lead concentrations in the average American between 1976-1980. This shows us how effective regulations can be at reducing public health risks to people.
USEPA/Environmental Criteria and Assessment Office (1986)

The results have been extraordinary. Since 1980, emissions of six major air pollutants have dropped by 78%, even as the U.S. economy has more than doubled in size. Cities that were once notorious for their thick, choking smog – such as Los Angeles, Houston and Pittsburgh – now see far cleaner air, while lakes and forests devastated by acid rain in the Northeast have rebounded.

Comparison of growth areas and declining emissions, 1970-2023.
EPA

And most importantly, lives have been saved. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to periodically estimate the costs and benefits of air quality regulations. In the most recent estimate, released in 2011, the EPA projected that air quality improvements would prevent over 230,000 premature deaths in 2020. That means fewer heart attacks, fewer emergency room visits for asthma, and more years of healthy life for millions of Americans.

The economic payoff

Critics of air quality regulations have long argued that the regulations are too expensive for businesses and consumers. But the data tells a very different story.

EPA studies have confirmed that clean air regulations improve air quality over time. Other studies have shown that the health benefits greatly outweigh the costs. That pays off for the economy. Fewer illnesses mean lower health care costs, and healthier workers mean higher productivity and fewer missed workdays.

The EPA estimated that for every $1 spent on meeting air quality regulations, the United States received $9 in benefits. A separate study by the non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research in 2024 estimated that each $1 spent on air pollution regulation brought the U.S. economy at least $10 in benefits. And when considering the long-term impact on human health and climate stability, the return is even greater.

Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles in 1984: Smog was a common problem in the 1970s and 1980s.
Ian Dryden/Los Angeles Times/UCLA Archive/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

The next chapter in clean air

The air Americans breathe today is cleaner, much healthier and safer than it was just a few decades ago.

Yet, despite this remarkable progress, air pollution remains a challenge in some parts of the country. Some urban neighborhoods remain stubbornly polluted because of vehicle emissions and industrial pollution. While urban pollution has declined, wildfire smoke has become a larger influence on poor air quality across the nation.

That means the EPA still has work to do.

If the agency works with environmental scientists, public health experts and industry, and fosters honest scientific consensus, it can continue to protect public health while supporting economic growth. At the same time, it can ensure that future generations enjoy the same clean air and prosperity that regulations have made possible.

By instead considering retracting clean air rules, the EPA is calling into question the expertise of countless scientists who have provided their objective advice over decades to set standards designed to protect human lives. In many cases, industries won’t want to go back to past polluting ways, but lifting clean air rules means future investment might not be as protective. And it increases future regulatory uncertainty for industries.

The past offers a clear lesson: Investing in clean air is not just good for public health – it’s good for the economy. With a track record of saving lives and delivering trillion-dollar benefits, air quality regulations remain one of the greatest policy success stories in American history. Läs mer…

The Trump administration announced on March 12, 2025, that it is “reconsidering” more than 30 air pollution regulations in a series of moves that could impact air quality across the United States.

“Reconsideration” is a term used to review or modify a government regulation. While Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin provided few details, the breadth of the regulations being reconsidered affects all Americans. They include rules that set limits for pollutants that can harm human health such as ozone, particulate matter and volatile organic carbon.

Zeldin wrote that his deregulation moves would “roll back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden ‘taxes’ on U.S. families.” But that’s only part of the story.

What Zeldin didn’t say is that the economic and health benefits from decades of federal clean air regulations have far outweighed their costs. Some estimates suggest every $1 spent meeting clean air rules has returned $10 in health and economic benefits.

How far America has come, because of regulations

In the early 1970s, thick smog blanketed American cities and acid rain stripped forests bare from the Northeast to the Midwest.

Air pollution wasn’t just a nuisance – it was a public health emergency. But in the decades since, the United States has engineered one of the most successful environmental turnarounds in history.

Thanks to stronger air quality regulations, pollution levels have plummeted, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. And despite early predictions that these regulations would cripple the economy, the opposite has proven true: The U.S. economy more than doubled in size while pollution fell, showing that clean air and economic growth can – and do – go hand in hand.

The numbers are eye-popping.

An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the first 20 years of the Clean Air Act, from 1970 to 1990, found the economic benefits of the regulations were about 42 times greater than the costs.

The EPA later estimated that the cost of air quality regulations in the U.S. would be about US$65 billion in 2020, and the benefits, primarily in improved health and increased worker productivity, would be around $2 trillion. Other studies have found similar benefits.

That’s a return of more than 30 to 1, making clean air one of the best investments the country has ever made.

Science-based regulations even the playing field

The turning point came with the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970, which put in place strict rules on pollutants from industry, vehicles and power plants.

These rules targeted key culprits: lead, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter – substances that contribute to asthma, heart disease and premature deaths. An example was the removal of lead, which can harm the brain and other organs, from gasoline. That single change resulted in far lower levels of lead in people’s blood, including a 70% drop in U.S. children’s blood-lead levels.

Air Quality regulations lowered the amount of lead being used in gasoline, which also resulted in rapidly declining lead concentrations in the average American between 1976-1980. This shows us how effective regulations can be at reducing public health risks to people.
USEPA/Environmental Criteria and Assessment Office (1986)

The results have been extraordinary. Since 1980, emissions of six major air pollutants have dropped by 78%, even as the U.S. economy has more than doubled in size. Cities that were once notorious for their thick, choking smog – such as Los Angeles, Houston and Pittsburgh – now see far cleaner air, while lakes and forests devastated by acid rain in the Northeast have rebounded.

Comparison of growth areas and declining emissions, 1970-2023.
EPA

And most importantly, lives have been saved. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to periodically estimate the costs and benefits of air quality regulations. In the most recent estimate, released in 2011, the EPA projected that air quality improvements would prevent over 230,000 premature deaths in 2020. That means fewer heart attacks, fewer emergency room visits for asthma, and more years of healthy life for millions of Americans.

The economic payoff

Critics of air quality regulations have long argued that the regulations are too expensive for businesses and consumers. But the data tells a very different story.

EPA studies have confirmed that clean air regulations improve air quality over time. Other studies have shown that the health benefits greatly outweigh the costs. That pays off for the economy. Fewer illnesses mean lower health care costs, and healthier workers mean higher productivity and fewer missed workdays.

The EPA estimated that for every $1 spent on meeting air quality regulations, the United States received $9 in benefits. A separate study by the non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research in 2024 estimated that each $1 spent on air pollution regulation brought the U.S. economy at least $10 in benefits. And when considering the long-term impact on human health and climate stability, the return is even greater.

Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles in 1984: Smog was a common problem in the 1970s and 1980s.
Ian Dryden/Los Angeles Times/UCLA Archive/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

The next chapter in clean air

The air Americans breathe today is cleaner, much healthier and safer than it was just a few decades ago.

Yet, despite this remarkable progress, air pollution remains a challenge in some parts of the country. Some urban neighborhoods remain stubbornly polluted because of vehicle emissions and industrial pollution. While urban pollution has declined, wildfire smoke has become a larger influence on poor air quality across the nation.

That means the EPA still has work to do.

If the agency works with environmental scientists, public health experts and industry, and fosters honest scientific consensus, it can continue to protect public health while supporting economic growth. At the same time, it can ensure that future generations enjoy the same clean air and prosperity that regulations have made possible.

By instead considering retracting clean air rules, the EPA is calling into question the expertise of countless scientists who have provided their objective advice over decades to set standards designed to protect human lives. In many cases, industries won’t want to go back to past polluting ways, but lifting clean air protections means future investment might not be as protective. And it increases future regulatory uncertainty for industries.

The past offers a clear lesson: Investing in clean air is not just good for public health – it’s good for the economy. With a track record of saving lives and delivering trillion-dollar benefits, air quality regulations remain one of the greatest policy success stories in American history. Läs mer…

Some Canadian musicians and content creators are reflecting a sudden surge in patriotism as they listen anxiously to the crescendo and decrescendo of United States President Donald Trump’s rhetoric against their country.

The pro-Canada songs currently spreading across social media, including some by Canadian celebrities, reveal a range of reactions to Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, while also contributing to the national mood.

These songs are striking, because Canadians have in recent decades been relatively uninterested in loud assertions of nationalist sentiment, outside of sporting events.

Sidney Crosby’s jersey from the 2010 Winter Olympics is on display at a hockey exhibit at the Museum of History in Gatineau, Québec, in March 2017.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Patrick Doyle

Shared identity

When shared identity has been emphasized, it has often been to promote provincial separatism or the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Uncritical Canadian nationalism has, to some, felt inappropriate since the 2015 findings and recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Read more:
Home game: Rethinking Canada through Indigenous hockey

Patriotic feelings were further complicated during the pandemic, when the flag was co-opted by people opposing public health restrictions.

In these contexts, many commentators have for some time struggled to locate a shared Canadian attitude toward the nation.

Terms such as “multicultural nationalism,” “plural nationalism” or even “a postnational country” are perhaps the best descriptors of nationalist sentiment when it’s expressed in Canada.

In music, Canadian nationalism is only rarely articulated, beyond performances of the anthem. The pop songs that tell particularly Canadian stories tend to be more sentimental than nationalistic — songs like Gordon Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” or Anne Murray’s “Snowbird.”

Yet something has shifted amid Trump’s verbal and economic attacks on Canada began, as the reactions of sports fans to performances of the U.S. anthem have also demonstrated.

Songs on the trade war

As a scholar of music and nationalism, I’m interested in what the several dozen songs about the trade war that I have located might suggest about that shift.

The patriotic songs by apparently Canadian creators that I discuss here are all drawn from Facebook and Instagram feeds and searching YouTube using English-language terms such as “Canada tariffs song,” “51st state song,” and “Canadian patriotic song.” A deeper dive into Québec-specific, francophone and multilingual responses would be additional significant ways of looking at this.

They represent an array of musical styles, including rock, metal, reggae, country, folk and pop.

Most of the songs I found have original music: those setting new lyrics to existing copyrighted tunes are not included here. I also excluded the few songs with potentially slanderous material. A number make use of AI. Indigenous and self-identified immigrant perspectives so far seem under-represented.

Read more:
Music helps us remember who we are and how we belong during difficult and traumatic times

Patriotism, Canadian-style

An explicit patriotism is the most striking — and new — feature of this repertoire. What is clear in this sampling, however, is that Canadians still remain allergic to jingoistic nationalism — blindly professing or adhering to belief in the virtue of one’s nation.

TV host and comedian Tom Green’s “I’m a Canadian”, for example, is a humorous, self-deprecating song that celebrates Canada’s uniqueness without being exclusionary or making claims of exceptionalism.

Tom Green’s ‘I’m a Canadian.’

This gentle Canadianism is also reflected in stereotypically polite refusals of Trump’s offer to join the United States: “Thanks, but we’re already great! We don’t need to borrow your stars or your fate!”

These songs celebrate politically benign features of Canada — its natural world, its cold winters, its food and its love of sports.

Canadian values, meanwhile, are presented as compassionate, noble and good: “We stand for truth and kindness, and we help those in need.”

Where Canadians are the primary audience, resilience is often foregrounded.
The soothing singer-songwriter style of “Canada’s Home,” for example, gently encourages strength and fortitude. Again, strong moral values are emphasized: “Canada’s integrity is what bullies can’t stand.”

Songs for the U.S.

Many songs seem aimed at an American audience, in addition to a Canadian one.

In “We Used to Be the Best of Friends” by Jim Cuddy, a Canadian Music Hall of Famer and Blue Rodeo frontman, the listener is politely reminded of the long friendship between the U.S. and Canada. Cuddy uses a charming folk style to remind Americans of cultural and political experiences shared with Canada, and of challenging times when Canadians had their back.

Jim Cuddy’s ‘We Used to Be the Best of Friends.’

Cuddy’s wistfulness for a threatened friendship contrasts with songs that take a more assertive stance, especially in response to Trump’s 51st state threats. With titles like “Canada is Not For Sale,” such songs emphasize the flag and the rights of Canadians.

A few songs go further still, abandoning traditional courtesies for sarcasm and even rudeness.

Assertions of Canadian strength recur repeatedly. The “elbows up” movement, inspired by the moment Canadian comedian Mike Myers mouthed this hockey phrase associated with Gordie Howe on Saturday Night Live, has produced several songs about Canada’s readiness to resist American actions.

Although songs of this type are more defiant, they nevertheless hold true to traditional Canadian values. “Elbows Up Canada!” celebrates unity and “holding the line” together. Using AI-created video imagery, this song juxtaposes images of early settlers with a brief image of Indigenous people in traditional dress or regalia standing with a Canadian flag, reflecting the lyrics, “side by side”.

‘Elbow’s Up Canada!’ video.

I’ll note that this song’s brief depiction of Indigenous presence is unusual among songs I found. In meditations about national unity, most of these creators make no allusions to Indigenous Peoples, or Canada’s ethnolinguistic or racial diversity.

In so doing, these songs minimize identities that are important to many Canadians in order to bolster national identity. They implicitly encourage all citizens to put aside what separates them to address an external threat.

Read more:
Canada Day: Why renaming roads and how we tell stories matter for reconciliation

In a cross-border context, these songs do not articulate hatred of Americans as a people. The frustration they express is consistently directed at Trump, not the U.S. as a whole.

But with a looming election in Canada and the actions and rhetoric of both countries shifting every day, it’s possible this may change. Will the music and the cultural conversation become more hostile? Will Canadians themselves grow concerned if their country’s patriotic turn becomes belligerent?

As Cornell University political scientist Benedict Anderson argued in 1983, a nation is ultimately an “imagined community,” because we can never know everyone within it. The feeling of national belonging happens solely in our minds and is reinforced by the stories we tell ourselves.

Music has a unique capacity to participate in this reinforcement, building shared identity across vast and varied spaces. It can also allow us to differentiate ourselves from others. Both capacities are being fully exploited in this challenging moment. Läs mer…

After a long, stressful day at work, or when pressed for time, the temptation to have a quick, satisfying snack – like crisps or a chocolate bar – can be strong. Research shows that these ultra-processed, high-calorie foods play a significant role in the development of obesity, but the lasting effects these foods have on the brain was not clear – until now.

Surprisingly, even short-term consumption of highly processed, unhealthy foods can significantly reduce insulin sensitivity in the brains of healthy people. This effect persists even after returning to a normal diet, as shown in a recent study my colleagues and I conducted, highlighting the brain’s important role in the development of obesity.

Unhealthy fat distribution and ongoing weight gain are linked to the brain’s response to insulin. In a healthy person, insulin helps control appetite in the brain. However, in people with obesity, insulin loses its ability to regulate eating habits, leading to insulin resistance.

Insulin plays many roles in the body, including helping sugar, or glucose, reach muscle cells to be used for energy after a meal. In the brain, insulin also signals the body to eat less by reducing food intake.

Not every brain responds the same

But not every brain responds equally to insulin. Many people have a weak or absent insulin response in the brain, known as “brain insulin resistance”. People with brain insulin resistance experience more food cravings and have more belly fat.

Fat can promote obesity and so contribute significantly to insulin resistance. The more fat cells there are, especially in the belly, the less effective insulin is. Fat releases messenger substances that promote insulin resistance.

However, the signs of reduced insulin sensitivity in the brain can already be seen way before we speak of obesity, which is defined as a body mass index (BMI) above 30. This is calculated as weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of height (in metres), but has its limitations. So it is recommended that excess obesity needs to be confirmed by measuring body fat.

After just five days of consuming an extra 1,500 calories consisting of chocolate bars and crisps, the insulin sensitivity in the brains of the study participants drastically dropped. Symptoms that, until now, have mostly been seen in obese people.

Even one week after resuming a normal diet, MRI scans showed a persistently low insulin sensitivity in the brain. Although no significant weight gain was seen, the short period was long enough to let liver fat rise significantly.

MRI brain scans showed persistent reduced insulin sensitivity.
VesnaArt/Shutterstock

It seems that obesity is not only a matter of poor diet and insufficient exercise. It also has a lot to do with the adaption of the brain’s insulin response to short-term changes in diet before any weight gain occurs.

But is insulin resistance in the brain a permanent issue? In the past, exercising regularly for a specific amount of time has been shown to restore brain insulin sensitivity in overweight and obese people. The assumption can be made that this also could apply to people of normal weight.

The number of obese people worldwide has more than doubled in the past two decades. And there is little evidence that this trend will shortly come to an end. Still, the role of the brain has to be taken into account since the mechanisms in the body that lead to obesity are more complex than just a poor diet and lack of exercise. Läs mer…

Mandy Beaumont’s debut novel, The Furies, was unrelentingly intense in its depictions of self-hatred, violence, rape and induced abortion. Her latest novel, The Thrill of It, is a more controlled and conventional excursion into male violence against women. It is just as serious in its exposure of misogyny. But it has a stronger narrative, with episodes of relief from its scenes of debasement.

Review: The Thrill of It – Mandy Beaumont (Hachette)

The Thrill of It reimagines the events surrounding John Wayne Glover, better known as the Granny Killer, who was convicted of murdering six elderly women on Sydney’s North Shore between 1989 and 1990. It occupies a sometimes uncertain territory, somewhere between case study and crime thriller.

The novel’s starting point is the murder in 1977 of a celebrity designer and businesswoman named Marlowe Kerr – a murder that mirrors the brutal, still-unsolved killing of real-life designer Florence Broadhurst, famous for her iconic wallpaper designs.

Chapters alternate between third-person accounts of the horrific crimes and domestic life of the killer – a modestly successful salesman with a model North Shore family – and first-person chapters in the voice of Kerr’s granddaughter Emmerson Kerr, known as “Em”.

Em found her grandmother’s murdered body back in 1977. She is the first person in Sydney to see the connection between a spate of sexualised murders of aged women and Kerr’s death 12 years earlier.

Mandy Beaumont.
Hachette Australia

Read more:
Trauma and loss define Mandy Beaumont’s unapologetically feminist debut novel

So ordinary, he is barely visible

Em is a smart, inquisitive, critical, attractive and observant character, who could well feature in future novels. She plans to join the police force, but becoming involved in this case could cruel her chances. She might be interfering too amateurishly, and her reckless mother managed to persuade someone (possibly a boyfriend) to steal evidence from the crime scene back in 1977.

This thread of the narrative, the most fictionalised aspect of the plot, allows for an outsider’s fresh view into how the police do and don’t “get it” when it comes to the murder of women. The police have come to early conclusions and are looking for a young man, so they are missing clues and ignoring leads that could save lives and hasten the discovery of the killer, though their incompetence does not entirely undo what they bring to the investigation.

The chapters that describe the murderer’s home life and his increasingly manic killings follow real events from 1989 more closely. He has a job as a travelling salesman for Big Boys Pies and Sweets, which gives him access to aged-care homes. There, he can select victims, harass the residents and cause havoc without being noticed. He is one of those men who appear so ordinary they are almost invisible.

The novel makes a point of showing the older women who become his victims are not merely “grannies”. They are full of personality. They have impressive achievements and live rich and vital lives. Their deaths will long be grieved by those who loved them. This point is made again and again.

Yet it is the killer who occupies centre stage for a good part of the novel and his atrocities are shockingly detailed. Beaumont is determined, across both her novels, to avoid euphemisms when she depicts male violence against women. This is becoming one of her trademarks.

Florence Broadhurst’s life and death inspires one thread of Mandy Beaumont’s new novel.

Blaming the mother

The Thrill of It takes us inside the killer’s mind, tracing the psychological motive for the murders back to bizarre sexual teasing by his mother (at least, as he perceived it), in between visits from her lovers and clients.

It is a common trope in crime fiction that the mother carries much of the responsibility (if not the blame) for the son’s twisted sexual appetites – and his resulting need for revenge upon women. At times, The Thrill of It takes on the characteristics of a psychological case study. But its adherence to the thriller genre also seems to determine some of its attributed motivations – especially in the case of the monstrous mother. Here, the novel as serious inquiry and the novel as entertainment become an uneasy match.

From Crime and Punishment to In Cold Blood, writers have often been drawn to the gratuitous act of murder for its drama, its contradictions, and its arresting effect on the many of us who can barely imagine the mind behind such violence.

Many writers would wilt under the challenge of entering the mind of a man who kills for the thrill and power of it – particularly a man who focuses this insane pleasure on the act of killing older women.

Beaumont keeps to her task and makes something real of her portrait, though at times her own sense of horror draws her back from fiction into summary statements, even when they are delivered via the killer’s psyche:

Yes, of course he wishes he could stop what he’s been doing, but he can’t, he hasn’t been able to since he was young – the thrill of it all has become an unstoppable surge.

In the end, however, the novel – dedicated to the victims of the real-life killer – is not about attempting to understand this all too ordinary and banally evil man who likes to eat fish and chips in his car. Rather, The Thrill of It is about the real lives lost, the long work of grief, and the dangers that are always present for women in a society where male violence is too common. Läs mer…