Most Americans don’t support the Trump’s energy and climate policies, according to research from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. 73% think it’s important to stay in the Paris Agreement.
As I’m trying to keep a focus on solutions on the blog, I’ve resisted the urge to whine about the government’s economic growth rhetoric and airport expansion. I will however post a link to the New Economics Foundation and their investigation into whether or not expanding airports actually delivers growth. Because if it doesn’t, we’d be doing the manifestly wrong thing for nothing.
Refrigerators don’t get much attention in climate change discussion, but they’re surprisingly important. So I was pleased to read about a scientific breakthrough in thermogalvanic technology, which could in time reinvent the way fridges are cooled.
On a related subject, this week we had the heat pump engineer in to design the system for our home. We’ve chosen Aira, who have brought Sweden’s expertise in heat pumps to the UK in a smart new business model. Pending the final design and price, we’re hoping this will be our last winter on gas.
Links to this week’s articles below, and a book recommendation for something rather unique that I enjoyed recently.
This week’s articles
What can you do about the climate crisis?
This week I’ve been reading Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s book What If we Get it Right?, all about climate solutions and imagining the positive side of change captured in the title. One of the things she mentions early on is the importance of finding our personal place in climate action – not the general sense of…
Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn
From slag heaps in the Lothian to the ‘urban prairie’ of Detroit, Islands of Abandonment is a nature book of a different sort, seeking out resurgent nature in ruined places. There are four main types of landscapes, Cal Flyn suggests. There is pristine land untouched by human activity, land that has been reshaped for production,…
An African in Greenland
While Greenland is in the news, allow me to recommend this book by Tété Michel Kpomassie. He read about the Inuit of Greenland in a book in 1950s Togo. It captured his imagination and he ran away from home, aged 16, to go and see them for himself.
It’s an extraordinary story of curiosity, courage and determination, and beautifully told. It’s full of rich details about the people who welcome him in, their way of life, and the unlikely kinship they find. The book won Kpomassie a major literary award when it was first published in France in 1977, an accomplishment all the more remarkable given Kpomassie was entirely self-taught. Penguin Classics have now reissued it in a new English translation, which you can pick up from Earthbound Books.
While it’s an engaging read in its own right, Michel the Giant is also historically important. Kpomassie is likely the first African to visit Greenland, and this is an explorer tale written about a black man travelling north, in a genre where most of the journeys go the other way.
The Earthbound Report 