Typhoon Haiyan at peak intensity and approaching the Philippines on November 7, 2013. Wikicommons/NASA file. Some rights reserved.
While working in tropical crop research in east Africa in the late 1960s I got interested in issues of resource conflict over food, energy, and strategic commodities. It was a bit of a change from my own science background in plant pathology, and one result was that I hoped in the future to work more in the field of environmental security.
Back in the UK in 1971, I was lucky to do this by getting a post at one of those newly designated and expanded urban technology colleges, the polytechnics. This was a period of relatively well-funded educational initiatives, included the pioneering Open University, that owed a lot to the Labour government of 1964-70.
