miscellaneous

What we learned this week

Featuring China's climate targets, a marine treaty, a bonus book review, and solar panels from Aldi.

A few years ago I wrote about the giant plastic tap that was unveiled at UNEP talks in Nairobi. The same artist, Benjamin Von Wong, is behind the biodiversity jenga tower that graces the latest biodiversity COP in Colombia. Lots more about it here.

New economy folks might want to plan some events in January and February as part of Reclaim the Economy Week, a focused week of action from the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and partners.

From the end of November, all car parks in Korea with more than 80 spaces will have solar canopies fitted over the top. This doubles up on land use and is a great alternative to putting solar panels in fields – if that’s something that concerns you, write to your MP and tell them about this.

I regularly talk to my children about the difference between danger and risk, and how culture and media shape what we fear. There’s a good study on this from Our World in Data, looking at causes of death in the US and the media coverage that they get.

Luton Town and Forest Green Rovers met this weekend in the FA Cup, a match I would have attended myself if I wasn’t supervising trick or treating. As these are the only two teams wearing sustainable kit from Reflo, the circular economy sportswear company said it would plant a thousand trees for every goal scored. Luton thought of the trees and let FGR come back from 3-0 down before winning it in the last few minutes. Well done everybody.

More posts this week potentially, after a few days off for me.

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…

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