The Royal Meteorological Society has just announced the winners of its Weather Photographer of the Year competition, with some striking weather and climate imagery that you’ll want to see.
80% of the carbon emissions from a mobile phone are from making it in the first place, so we should keep them in use for as long as we can. Here’s an open source software project that keeps Android phones going when manufacturers stop supporting them.
Solar power beamed from space has been kicking around as an idea for decades, with nobody actually trying it for real. The start-up Space Solar announced this week that they intend to build the first solar plant, which will deliver energy to Iceland by 2030. (My thoughts on this technology here)
It’s an idea I like in theory, but The Guardian ask some searching questions here about the ‘hollowness’ of Bhutan’s philosophy of gross national happiness.
Saudi Arabia have spent a fortune promoting their eccentric futurist projects, such as a city in a single 100-mile line (why?) or in a giant cube (why?) or on an oil rig (okay fair enough). Reports this week suggested that 21,000 South Asian workers have died on these projects since 2017.
The UK’s new Labour government has raised air passenger taxes, something the last government reduced, with especially large raises on private planes. Private aviation is just about the worst imaginable consumer activity from a climate change point of view, and should rightly be taxed to the edge of feasibility.
This week’s articles
Free for All, by Dr Gavin Francis
Like most citizens of the UK, I am both proud of and thankful for the National Health Service, while also being frustrated with the general state of it. The principles of free healthcare for all are so sound and incontrovertible that we are willing to forgive a great deal of slowness, inefficiency and eccentricity. But…
The social future of social media
Do you remember that moment when it looked like social media was a powerful new tool for democracy? It could circumvent traditional media censorship, mobilise citizens in new ways, and topple dictators. Big claims were made for and by Facebook about its role in supporting popular revolutions, the ‘Arab Spring’ and the Occupy movement. That…
The many benefits of a bicycle
We travel the road to human development at the speed of a bicycle, argued Ivan Illich, who saw the humble machine as one of humanity’s finest ideas. You can keep your ChatGPT and your genome sequencing. For opportunity and empowerment, there’s no technology as powerful as a bike and everybody should have one. That’s what…
The Earthbound Report 