miscellaneous

What we learned this week

New Zealand has declared a climate emergency and that the government will try to get its own emissions to net zero by 2025. (It got less coverage, but Japan declared a climate emergency a couple of weeks ago too.) These are symbolic of course, but they are also a powerful statement of intent.

How adding seaweed to cattle feed can reduce emissions. The easiest way to reduce beef emissions is to reduce beef consumption of course, but this is useful too.

I learn from the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast that cargo bikes move 3.5 kph faster than vans in central London, making them a faster way to make local deliveries as well as a cleaner one.

“Rich countries have disproportionate influence when it comes to setting the rules of international trade and finance” writes Jason Hickel, highlighting the colonial influences in the IMF and World Bank.

Have you seen the front cover of The Economist this week? ‘Making coal history’ is the cover story.

I gave a talk last week on climate, race and privilege, for my friends at Christian Climate Action. With apologies for the quality of the Zoom recording, here it is. If people find this useful, I might try and record a better version.

This week’s post in case you missed them:

LATEST POSTS

What we learned this week

The Guardian have run a whole series of articles this week on the theme Beyond Growth (a name I once used for a sister website to this one). Good to see that kind of sustained attention on postgrowth futures in a mainstream newspaper. As the Trump administration revoked the legal standing of climate regulation in…

Three board games for the climate

We were playing a board game the other everning as a family, and my daughter chose Carbon City Zero. It’s an educational game about climate change, but it totally stands up as a form of entertainment. This isn’t always true of educational games, and climate change isn’t the easiest thing to make a game out…

Book review: Code Dependent, by Madhumita Murgia

New technologies always come with trade-offs and unanticipated consequences. The more powerful the technology, the greater the potential for disruption. We’re still in the early stages of accessible AI tools, but we’re already seeing profound rippling effects. In this eye-opening and important book, Madhumita Murgia investigates some of those effects in a global tour of…

Would you like to visit a heat pump?

Considering a heat pump, when the time comes to replace your gas boiler? You are not alone. All over the country people are debating the pros and cons of making the switch. Last week I had a conversation with a colleague who is thinking about having a heat pump installed, talked about them with some…

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

2 comments

  1. Yes indeed on e-bikes point: it reminds me of this: https://www.eav.solutions
    I saw an independent write up(s) of these people; I think major logisics firms are seriously interested because they have major advantages for ‘last mile’ delivery, which is the area logicstics firms are finding hard to crack (both economics and sustainability I think). Our ‘pipe dream’ for Chipping Norton is to have a ‘community last mile delivery depot’ run as a COMMUNITY social enterprise, using bikes like these.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.