Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 40

The world’s most sustainable cities might not be what you think

Last month the sustainability research group Corporate Knights published their Sustainable Cities Index. It celebrates the world’s most environmentally progressive cities, and you can probably guess some of the places that feature. Here’s the top ten:

Stockholm, SwedenOslo, NorwayCopenhagen, DenmarkLahti, FinlandLondon, UKAuckland, New ZealandSydney, AustraliaBerlin, GermanyWinnipeg, CanadaVancouver, Canada

Scandinavia does very well, and having visit...

Review: Dear Earth at the Hayward Gallery

The climate crisis needs all of us – politicians, citizens, activists, businesses – and the art world too. Over the last couple of years there have been a number of exhibitions in London around environmental themes, and the Hayward Gallery are the latest with Dear Earth – Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis.

The subtitle is important here. A lot of climate related art has been around awareness raising, or fairly loosely themed. This one looks to engage constructively, to create positive connect...

The importance of walking routes

Last week I bought a new drill. I was planning to walk to my co-working space that day, so I chose to pick it up from the Sainsburys in town on the way. It’s not somewhere I go very often, and it was only once I was close that I remembered why. There’s really no easy route in and out of the Sainsburys if you’re on foot.

Because nothing quite joins up, it makes a good case study in the importance of walking routes. Starting in the top right, the blue line below shows the route I had to take t...

Planes and taps and climate priorities

If I step outside my front door and look down the street, I can see planes coming into land in one direction, and a water tower across the street in the other. The airport is a major source of climate pollution, and aviation is a growing concern for climate campaigners as it continues to grow unchecked. So far there is far less attention from the climate movement in the other direction – that of the water tower.

If you look at the carbon emissions from each of these – water and aviation – th...

The era of net zero consequences

A few years ago nobody had heard the term ‘net zero’, even in climate change circles. It wasn’t part of the lexicon. Then, for better or worse, it became the framing of choice for national climate targets. Since 2019 there has been a steady run of countries, regions and companies setting themselves net zero targets.

The last time I wrote about it, it was to point out the snowball effect that can take hold with an idea. The more net zero targets there are, the easier it becomes for politician...

The War on Critical Race Theory, by David Theo Goldberg

Having written a book about structural racism, I have a lot of conversations about the topic. One thing that has surprised me is how often people want to talk about Critical Race Theory (CRT). Sometimes they tell me they agree with what I’m saying, but they’re not so sure about this CRT business. Or they rebuke me for being taken in by it.

Which is odd. It’s strange that they’ve heard about CRT at all, as it’s an obscure and technical field of legal studies from the 1980s. What’s also od...

What we learned this week

Over the last few days the Conservatives and their newspaper allies have gone to war on the Labour party’s net zero plans, in defence of the fossil fuels industry. Carbon Brief sum up the hysteria and get the truth of the matter.

“It would be an anachronism to dub Shakespeare an environmentalist. But he was acutely aware of what we would term the environmental issues of his era.” Todd Andrew Borlik sketches out some overlooked themes from Shakespeare’s plays.

Debt Justice are curating an...

Re-thinking the TV weather report

“We couldn’t keep doing the weather as it’s always been done,” says Alexandre Kara of France Télévisions. “It’s unacceptable to rejoice that it’s 25 degrees in Biarritz in February without explaining why.”

With these sorts of concerns in mind, the weather updates on France 2 and 3 are getting a tweak. They’re being renamed as weather and climate updates, and extended by 90 seconds to accomodate more explanations. The plan is to explain the weather as well as present it. Current weather will ...

Buy an EV, or convert what you have?

A lot of car buyers are choosing between electric or fossil fuels at the moment. A growing number of them are choosing electric, with sales quadrupling in the last five years. It isn’t always a straight choice between electric or fossil fuels though. Sometimes there’s a third option: convert what you already have.

This week a company called Lunaz (I’ve mentioned them before) announced a new partnership with Buckinghamshire Council. They are going to electrify their ‘municipal refuse fleet’ –...

Global carbon inequality

There’s a big gap between the causes of climate change and its consequences, and that’s why climate justice is so important.

The problem is will summed up in the Climate Inequality Report 2023, which I’ve been reading this week. Published by the World Inequality Lab, it’s a comprehensive investigation of climate justice and I will share more from it in future. Today I wanted to share this summary graph, showing who suffers the losses from climate change, who is most responsible in terms of e...