Sponge cities, developed in China, are a really creative form of urban climate adaptation, and so it’s nice to see discussion around London using the approach.
Coldplay are playing in Luton tonight, and I mentioned the BMW i3 this week. This reminds me that the band’s ground-breaking sustainability initiatives include a stage show run off retired i3 electric car batteries.
In another bit of green event management, Luton carnival takes place this weekend with a twist on the usual parade: no trucks this year, and they’re using cargo bikes, e-bikes and upcycled shopping trolleys instead. I’ve been talking to the Carnival Arts Centre about this in recent months and I’m looking forward to seeing the colourful results on Monday.
The Post-Growth Institute draws our attention to the Spaced Out Competition, held in South Korea and now in its tenth year, in which doing nothing is turned into a competitive sport. It’s silly and subversive, a rejection of endless distraction and a celebration of “the restorative powers of idleness.” More on that sort of thing below.
Walden, a game
I’m something of a fan of Henry David Thoreau, pioneer of simple living and civil disobedience. His book Walden is rightly a classic, blending politics, philosophy and nature writing around his experience of life in the woods at Walden Pond. His experiment in living is re-created in an equally experimental game, titled Walden, a game. It’s been around for a few years, came up in a game sale recently and I thought I’d give it a try.
The game is reflective, aiming to deliver a meditative experience rather than an adventure. Playing as Thoreau, you build your cabin and forage for food. You observe the plants and animals around you and make notes in your journal. You weed your bean patch. The seasons change. Nothing much happens, and in that sense it is entirely true to the book.
The game uses Thoreau’s own words, making it a unique way to engage interactively with his writing. It’s worth a peaceful, thoughtful hour or two of gaming, and possibly not much more as the tasks get repetitive.
To be honest, the new season of Fortnite has been the buzz game in my household this week, in all its postmodern sugar-rush glory. It riffs on Mad Max and I’ve enjoyed playing it with the kids. It is of course the antithesis of Walden, and this is entirely appropriate too. Thoreau was a man out of step in his own time, and if a game inspired by his work feels counter-cultural and contrarian, then it’s got it right.
All the details here, including how to use the game in education, and here’s a trailer:
This week’s articles
Book review: How to Spend a Trillion Dollars, by Rowan Hooper
You can’t solve a problem by throwing money at it, and funding things wisely is always complicated. But what if you had a trillion dollars to change the world – what could you do with it? How much change could it buy? That’s the premise of Rowan Hooper’s entertaining thought experiment How to Spend a…
Three visions of a circular economy for cars
The circular economy is a vital part of the transition to a sustainable future. It’s how we make manufactured items sustainable, moving from a system of use and disposal to a model of reuse and repair. That’s easy enough to imagine with small items, but what does it look like for cars? In order to…
The Climate Action Countdown
There’s a lot of energy around climate action in UK schools at the moment. The school strikes for the climate showed that students expected more, and long-running campaigns were able to take that point to the authorities. The government published a new sustainability strategy for schools at COP26, and the infrastructure is now emerging to…
The Earthbound Report 