Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 37

What we learned this week

People often talk about ‘system change’, but what is ‘the system’? And what does system change imply? CUSP have a new podcast called The Water We Swim In exploring this question.

I’d detected this for myself anecdotally, but a new study has shown that the number of people using Twitter to discuss environmental issues has halved since Elon Musk took over the platform as his personal ego project. This is a significant loss, given how useful Twitter was for following climate science and news.

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Neocolonialism and carbon credits

A few weeks ago I wrote about problem of casually promised offsets in a world with limited land. Corporations and governments rely on carbon offsetting in order to meet climate targets, and if we add up all the pledged offsets so far, it’s very obvious that it is impossible to deliver them all. Where will these forests go, exactly?

The area of land needed to deliver all these offsets is now equivalent to all the world’s agriculture, and potentially risks competing with it. Who gets access to ...

The Climate Majority Project

The issue of climate change seems to be in a strange cycle in British politics, or certainly in the Conservative party. We get moments of progress and commitment. Then there’s silence for a bit. Then everything goes backwards all of a sudden.

David Cameron campaigned on the idea that you could ‘vote blue, go green’ in his early days, then a few years later was railing about ‘cutting the green crap’. A renewed focus on the climate under Theresa May and Boris Johnson is currently being undermi...

Climate Change Isn’t Everything, by Mike Hulme

This Changes Everything was the title of Naomi Klein’s big climate book a few years ago. This book echoes that in both the title and its blue design, striking a cautionary note – other things matter too, and there are consequences to forgetting that. And no, as Hulme says in pretty much every chapter, that isn’t a climate sceptic position. Climate action matters.

The problem that Hulme wants to interrogate is what he calls ‘climatism’. This he defines as “the settled belief that the domi...

What we learned this week

I wrote about my uncertainty over plastic roads last year, so it was interesting to see that the US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has looked into it – with mixed results.

A multinational survey of travel found that British people are the most negative about cycling, with 46% of people having a negative view of cycling. Odd. We need more positive news about cycling.

There have been succesful pilot schemes in the UK and the US recently, but kudos to 4 Day Week Global...

Who’s writing UK climate policy?

This week Number 10 held an energy summit. It was hosted by Grant Shapps, the Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero, and attended by executives from the oil, gas and nuclear industry, including Shell and BP. “Achieving our goals depends on continued close collaboration with the leaders in the industry,” said Shapps afterwards, with the post-event press release celebrating new investments in oil and gas.

Shell and BP were the first two in a bullet point list of energy company investments,...

Blaming it on climate change

Last week I was camping with friends, and we had a slightly disappointing outing to the nearby Hurst Castle. It’s an old sea fort built to defend the Solent and Portsmouth, and it’s been re-invented over the years to meet the threats of the age – a Tudor core, Victorian wings, and further additions from the world wars.

On our visit we were surprised to find it rather down at heel, much of it closed and roped off. Over a series of large information panels, English Heritage explain why: in...

Why does Rishi Sunak hate Norway?

This week UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that he would ‘max out’ oil and gas production in the North Sea. He promised hundreds of new oil and gas licences, with the government claiming that this will “secure our domestic energy supply and reduce reliance on hostile states.”

“We have all witnessed how Putin has manipulated and weaponised energy,” Sunak said. Now, “more than ever,” we need domestically produced fossil fuels. Unfortunately, he insists, “there are those who would rather ...

What is Intergenerational Justice? by Axel Gosseries

I think a good marker of a successful society is whether or not it is able to think beyond itself in space and time. Arrogant, paranoid or failing societies have no room for anyone but themselves, concerned only with immediate needs, whether real or imagined.

Successful societies can look further, even when times are hard, and work for the benefit of those who come after them. American indigenous traditions speak of decision-making with seven generations in mind. The Bible talks about st...

What we learned this week

It’s not hugely productive, but I do like the idea of solar panels that can also harvest electricity from falling rain, as proposed in a new scientific study (and this less technical news article).

An official policy statement from the Labour party acknowledges for the first time that “the flaws in the current voting system are contributing to the distrust and alienation we see in politics” – but doesn’t commit to do anything about it. Possibly a win for PR campaigners, possibly business as u...