“God will ask us if we have cultivated and cared for the world that he created, for the benefit of all and for future generations, and if we have taken care of our brothers and sisters. What will be our answer?” Pope Leo has given his first speech on the climate. He also “noted that some have chosen to deride the increasingly evident signs of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming.”
Meanwhile, the US Energy Department sent an email instructing staff to avoid “terminology that you know to be misaligned with the Administration’s perspectives and priorities”, with a list of banned words that includes climate change, green, carbon and sustainability.
Britain has a target to run on 100% clean energy by 2030, and the grid continues to set new records on the way to that. So far clean energy supply has exceeded demand for 87 hours this year.
Hannah Ritchie points out some positive news that hasn’t made any headlines: record breaking harvests are expected in most parts of the world this year.
Some book news: my online bookshop, Earthbound Books, now has ebooks. I’ve been waiting for this for a while. Fill your eboots.
Latest articles
What we learned this week
The Guardian have run a whole series of articles this week on the theme Beyond Growth (a name I once used for a sister website to this one). Good to see that kind of sustained attention on postgrowth futures in a mainstream newspaper. As the Trump administration revoked the legal standing of climate regulation in…
Three board games for the climate
We were playing a board game the other everning as a family, and my daughter chose Carbon City Zero. It’s an educational game about climate change, but it totally stands up as a form of entertainment. This isn’t always true of educational games, and climate change isn’t the easiest thing to make a game out…
Book review: Code Dependent, by Madhumita Murgia
New technologies always come with trade-offs and unanticipated consequences. The more powerful the technology, the greater the potential for disruption. We’re still in the early stages of accessible AI tools, but we’re already seeing profound rippling effects. In this eye-opening and important book, Madhumita Murgia investigates some of those effects in a global tour of…
The Earthbound Report 
Am looking at data for Virginia’s crops. We had, between 2023 and 2024, 40 and 47% declines for corn and winter wheat yields, respectively. 12% decrease for tobacco. Increases for soybean yields by 22% and cotton, too. Need references for the past 60 months in order to see a pattern.