Sustainably caught tuna relies on a network of on-board observers. It’s a far more dangerous job than you might expect, with a pattern of observers dying or disappearing on the job under suspicious circumstances.
Finland is the country with the most advanced plans for dealing with nuclear waste. If it can ever be dealt with safely, it will be in facilities like Okiluoto Island. It’s taken 20 years and $1 billion to build it, deep under the mountain, and Erika Benke has been to see it.
Some new and somewhat depressing news, though perhaps not unexpected: the recycling industry is a massive source of microplastics. There’s still no substitute for using less plastic.
On that front, good news – the global plastic treaty may be on its way. Geoffrey Lean writes with quiet confidence about its chances in the Guardian.
Yes, it’s at least partly a PR-stunt, but I like the idea hatched by the charity Possible and the bike company Brompton to offer British mayors a free e-bike, so they can set an example of active transport in the cities they manage.
And the latest issue of the Zero Carbon Luton Newsletter is out, for those with an interest in climate action in and around Luton.
Highlights from this week
Review: Dear Earth at the Hayward Gallery
The climate crisis needs all of us – politicians, citizens, activists, businesses – and the art world too. Over the last couple of years there have been a number of exhibitions in London around environmental themes, and the Hayward Gallery are the latest with Dear Earth – Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis.…
The world’s most sustainable cities might not be what you think
Last month the sustainability research group Corporate Knights published their Sustainable Cities Index. It celebrates the world’s most environmentally progressive cities, and you can probably guess some of the places that feature. Here’s the top ten: Scandinavia does very well, and having visited some cities in the region for the first time last year, I…
Book review: Sea Change – An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean, by Christina Gerhardt
When I needed the atlas in my school library, I knew it would be in the reference section – the place you go to look stuff up, to get the definitive answer. So it’s strange to think of an atlas as something provisional and temporary. I suppose they always were, but more so in an…
- Book review: Sea Change – An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean, by Christina Gerhardt
- The world’s most sustainable cities might not be what you think
- Review: Dear Earth at the Hayward Gallery
Recommendations
Music fans of a certain age may harbour a special affection for Ben Folds, piano-pop maestro of the late 90s and early 00s. He’s been quiet for a while, but returns with a new album, What Matters Most. It’s an album that eloquently captures a certain mood of the moment, the post-pandemic, post-Trump confusion and division.
But wait, there’s more opens the album in disbelief at the possibility of a Trump comeback, but also that there has to be more than these arguments. “Do you still believe in the good of humankind?” Folds asks over a simple synth bleep, replying to himself in layered vocals, “I do, I do, I do.”
Kristine from the seventh grade deals with an experience many of us might share, of seeing an old friend change online. “What would you imagine I might take from this deluge of memes?” he sings of the anger and pseudoscience, this “disease that makes strangers of friends”. He doesn’t reply, but cares enough not to ‘unfriend’ either. “Seriously, Kristine, are you okay? Cause this world can be wonderful too.”
The title track is a question rather than a declaration, and a recurring theme. “In these days of overwhelming change, I just want to know what I want, because I only seem to know what I don’t. With so little time, what mattеrs most?”
The Earthbound Report 