- The Guardian continues to evolve its response to the climate emergency, and this week published a climate change dashboard.
- At their annual conference, Britain’s Liberal Democrat party voted to back a Universal Basic Income. The Lib Dems are not the force they were, but it marks another step towards the mainstream for Basic Income. (The Green Party also supports BI)
- Governments resist them, campaigners often demand them without necessarily thinking it through, so it’s useful to The Economist’s perspective on how ‘outright bans can sometimes be a good way to fight climate change‘.
- As an experiment, I’m dropping the latest posts from this week in at the bottom, for those catching up. Let me know if this is a helpful feature or not, and I might add it every week.
Orienting building for energy savings
I’ve been doing quite a lot of work around summer overheating recently, looking at how we adapt buildings for a warmer climate. For the day job that’s with schools, and I have a personal interest in it in homes as well. Our own house has a tendency to get too hot in the summer, and…
Trump’s accidental boost to the energy transition
One of the greatest spurs to environmental action was the series of oil shocks in the 1970s. As the Rapid Transition Alliance describe in a history of the era, it transformed the environmental movement from a focus on conservation to a focus on energy. Governments responded in all sorts of ways to the wake up…
Book review: Two Wheels Good, by Jody Rosen
There’s no shortage of histories of the bicycle out there, but this is a fun one. Published in 2023, Two Wheels Good brings the story of the bike right up to the modern day, with elements of travelogue and personal memoir, and a curiosity about the eccentric corners of the cycling world. The book covers…
