An interesting development in the story of nuclear fusion – Microsoft have agreed a power purchase agreement with a fusion energy company. A gamble of course, but if it pays off it will make commercial fusion power a reality by 2028.
If fossil fuel companies had to pay reparations for the damage they have done through climate change, how much would they owe? According to this new study, the bill currently stands at $23.2 trillion.
Positive News reports on the world’s first native bee sanctuary, which has opened in Ireland.
Tearfund released a report this week on how plastic pollution blocks rivers and causes urban flooding, with 218 million people at risk.
If you’re interested in climate action more local to me, the latest edition of my Zero Carbon Luton newsletter is out. It includes some research into electric cars in Luton, a new park and a bunch of other things.
Fewer posts over the next few days as I’m on half term, and first we have a certain Luton Town match to watch on the big screen in the park. #COYH
Highlights from this week
Saving materials with universal batteries
At the weekend I went to assemble a new picnic bench for the garden and found that my drill has bitten the dust. The battery no longer holds a charge, and I borrowed a drill from my neighbour to finish the job. I noticed that his drill is part of the Power for All Alliance,…
How to Stand up to a Dictator, by Maria Ressa
Sometimes I read a book because I want to learn more about a specific subject. Other times I pick it up with a purposeful curiosity, open to whatever the author wants to tell me. This is one of the latter. I knew that Maria Ressa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. I knew that…
The moral outrage of climate change
in his book The Flag, the Cross and the Station Wagon, Bill McKibben describes an experience in Bangaldesh. There was an outbreak of Dengue fever in the capital, Dhaka. Dengue is a mosquito-borne disease that benefits from the warmer and wetter conditions that climate change is creating in places like Bangladesh, and so cases of…
- The moral outrage of climate change
- Saving materials with universal batteries
- How to Stand up to a Dictator, by Maria Ressa
Recommendations
This week I very much enjoyed the book The Descent of Man, by Grayson Perry. It’s about masculinity – how it operates, how it goes wrong, how it might be better. A lot of the world’s problems are basically caused by men – starting wars, running oil companies, committing 90% of violent crime. It would be foolish not to ask why, and what vision of masculinity would make the world a better place?
Perry is of course best known as an artist, one with an irreverent body of work and a penchant for cross-dressing. He writes with a wry sense of humour and his book is short, kind, and a lot more fun than you’d expect given the usual tone of the debate around masculinity.
The Earthbound Report 