“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
Should we put solar panels on railway lines?
A few years ago there was a flurry of internet hype about solar roadways – imagine a world where roads generated power for the streetlights! Or where solar-powered LEDs along the road replaced the white painted lines for no good reason! A lot of money was spent on this across various projects, the biggest being…
Book review: Don’t Build, Rebuild, by Aaron Betsky
“We should not construct new buildings from scratch,” says the first line of Aaron Betsky’s Don’t Build, Rebuild. He’s an experienced architecture critic from the Netherlands who has spent his career travelling the world and studying buildings. The ones he is drawn to today represent an architecture that “does not impose itself on the land…
What we learned this week
Chris Hatch at Covering Climate Now writes about something I’d noticed: Mark Carney was very forward thinking on climate change while at the Bank of England, and seems to have forgotten all about it as Prime Minister of Canada. More evidence that if you’re losing farmland to solar farms, you’re doing it wrong. The biggest…
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.