Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 22

What we learned this week

Can you spot fossil fuel propaganda? Amy Westervelt and Kyle Pope explain five recurring messages in industry disinformation.

Just 10% of people in rural Madagascar have electricity, and an alliance of four small charities are addressing the deficit with solar ‘light libraries’. Click on to find out what that means, and there’s match funding on donations at the moment if you want to contribute to making it happen.

The end of coal mining in the UK left some communities in entrenched pover...

Getting started with Let’s Go Zero

Let’s Go Zero is a campaign to help schools to take action on climate change. They’ve got almost three thousand schools to use their collective voice to lobby the government for change, with schools joining a target to reach net zero by 2030.

In the last few months they have been expanding their work to support schools more directly, hiring a network of school climate action advisors across England. Another dozen started this week, and I was among them. I will be a climate advisor in the eas...

Book review: Ancestral Future, by Ailton Krenak

For centuries now, the fastest way to be recognised as a thought leader on a topic is to publish a book about it. That’s not unreasonable, given how much time and thought it takes to write a book. But it does risk cutting important voices out of the debate.

Some people are too busy to write, which means we get more books of theory than books by practioners. Publishers are reluctant to take a chance on first time or one-off authors, so many people never get to see their ideas in print. Ma...

A fisherman turned ocean farmer

I’m an enthusiast for ocean farming, but I’m aware that I’m not the best person to talk about it. I live about as far inland as you can get in this small country, and I don’t have any great connection to the oceans. So take it from a fisherman instead, someone who actually knows whether or not it might work.

Bren Smith began as a fisherman, saw the effects of fish stock collapses firsthand, and switched to ocean farming instead. He calls his approach 3D farming, because it highlights the way...

What we learned this week

Infrared heating works well in old church buildings, but can look out of place in a heritage setting. The Everything Electric show tells the story of how one church looked for a bespoke solution, and heating company Herschel is now selling their idea to churches across Europe.

Bigger wind farms need ever bigger cranes, and the Chinese engineering firm XCMG has just broken its own world record for the 7th time.

3.5% of the world’s forest land is plantations, but in Japan that rises to 44%....

Book review: Possible, by Chris Goodall

Chris Goodall runs the Carbon Commentary newsletter, and is the author of The Switch and What We Need to Do Now. Possible is another example of his clear explanations of what sustainability requires, this time taking a global look at net zero targets.

The general route to net zero is pretty well understood: electrify everything, with lots of energy storage and some hydrogen for specialist applications. That is of course an oversimplification, but this broad approach gets us most of the ...

Highway removal for urban renewal

When I was a student I lived in a residential hall that was divided from the rest of the university by transport infrastructure. All the infrastructure in fact. The university library was about 200 yards away, but there was a canal, two railway tracks and six lanes of traffic in between. It divided my neighbourhood, it was noisy, and it was a long way round for pedestrians – a five minute walk in the wrong direction to get to either one of two gloomy underpasses.

In fact, it was such a long ...

Electoral reform for the climate?

It’s a big year for elections – possibly the biggest in history. Half the world is due to vote in 2024, including major elections in India, the US, and Brazil. Putin was also “re-elected” recently. Here in the UK, we’ll be going to the polls when the Conservatives realise they can’t possibly leave it any longer, and not a moment sooner.

When that election comes, it will be under the First Past the Post (FPTP) system as usual. A simple majority will elect members of parliament, with the leade...

What we learned this week

Possible are organising an event at Parliament on the climate impact of aviation, and innovative alternatives to airport expansion. Invite your MP to attend.

Also on aviation, the Heated newsletter had a good piece on Boeing, and how competition with Airbus led it to cut corners on its environmental plans.

If you’re not taking cultured meat seriously yet, consider this a ringing endorsement of its potential: the US meat industry is lobbying, quite successfully, to make it illegal.

Educ...

Plant your pants for soil science

This week I’ve written about the connection between disease and the environment, and Islamic arguments for degrowth. So it feels considerably less serious to be writing today about the campaign Plant Your Pants. And yes, that’s the British meaning of the word pants – get out there and plant your tighty whiteys in the ground.

Why would you do that? Because it’s a fun way to get children to take an interest in soil science, that’s why. And there are few things in the world more important than ...