- 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.
What if we stopped talking about growth?
Andy Burnham has become Britain’s new Prime Minister, promising to “put a laser-like focus on growth”. It’s a full reset from his predecessor Keir Starmer, who told the country that “the defining mission of this government is to grow the economy.” Keir replaced Rishi ‘Seven Bins’ Sunak, whose advice was to “relentlessly focus on growth”.…
What we learned this week
France made planned obsolescence illegal as part of its push for a circular economy, and Epson are the first company to go to court over it. It is claimed their (already criminally overpriced) printer cartridges stop working before they have run out of ink. A map showing legislation for balcony solar in each US state,…
Inequality and the planetary boundaries
It’s no great secret that climate change is predominantly caused by the world’s richest. Carbon footprint tends to expand along with wealth, as people fly and drive, eat more meat and run more appliances. It’s no surprise that other environmental limits see a similar pattern. A study in Nature offers this useful visual summary of…
The Earthbound Report 