Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 43

Five tiny cars – and why they’re a good idea

I was given a Lego set when I was about four. It was a red car and it came with a mechanic who could fix it with a spanner. One of the things that I remember noticing about it was that there was only one seat. Cars in the real world always had four or five seats. All Lego cars had one. Drivers just travelled around by themselves.

Out in the streets I see a whole lot of people driving round in cars by themselves – but their cars don’t have one seat. They have four or five. They’re driving veh...

The world’s most postgrowth president?

It’s a brave politician that talks about economic growth in anything other than worshipful tones. Italy’s Lorenzo Fioramonti is a rare example, though his time in government was brief for unrelated reasons. New Zealand, Wales and a handful of other countries have instituted policies that look beyond economic growth, though the politicians behind them weigh their comments on growth itself carefully. David Cameron pondered growth scepticism for about five minutes before being elected and then neve...

The Flag, the Cross and the Station Wagon, by Bill McKibben

Over the years, Bill McKibben has become one of the most influential activists in the climate movement. His new book is “as much memoir as I’m likely to write”, looking back on changes in America over his lifetime. It’s thoughtful, curious, and as that subtitle suggests – ‘A graying American looks back at his suburban boyhood and wonders what the hell happened’ – there’s a wry sense of humour at work here too.

The book comes with three central chapters, covering the topics promised in th...

What we learned this week

Writer friends: the Society of Authors has released a guide for authors wanting to push their publishers on the sustainability of their book printing, with all the important questions to ask.

“Metropolitan Houston has 30 parking spaces for each of its over six million residents, using a land area nearly 10 times the size of Paris.” Lots of eye opening things in this article on parking from The New Republic.

Greenpeace has a new podcast on economics called System Shift, available on Apple P...

Film review: A Crack in the Mountain

Hang Son Doong is one of the wonders of the natural world, albeit a hidden one. Nobody knew about it until 1990, when a farmer found the entrance to what is now recognised as the world’s largest cave. It took several more years before anyone explored it and discovered just how unique it is. The cave tunnel is four miles long, but the most remarkable thing is the size of the passageways. With vaulted ceilings hundreds of metres high, you could fit skyscrapers inside.

That’s not an exaggera...

Join Britain’s first consumer-owned solar park

Ripple Energy made a few waves a couple of years ago with a consumer-owned wind farm, the first of its kind in Britain. This month they have launched a solar park along similar lines, and you can now buy into the scheme. Its the first shared solar scheme in the UK, though it has been done elsewhere before – I wrote about this one in Lithuania a couple of years ago.

Usually community energy involves profit-sharing. You buy into a cooperative, and you get a share of the revenues as the wind fa...

Third Act and later life activism

The climate movement is often described as youthful. Media coverage certainly talks about it that way, and I regularly hear people talk about how children and teenagers are more environmentally aware. A lot of the high profile figures are young people, and school strikes have been some of the most iconic actions of recent years.

At the same time, every time I go to a climate march or event, it’s full of people older than I am. I noticed it again at Extinction Rebellion’s gathering at the wee...

Book review: Movement, by Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brommelströet

Among the various things that I feel I lost to the pandemic is my subscription to The Correspondent. Well established in the Netherlands, its English-language edition launched at the worst possible time and did not survive. But I appreciated its community journalism ethic and its ability to get behind the news, and that same philosophy is present in Movement, by The Correspondent’s Thalia Verkade and sustainable transport expert Marco te Brömmelstroet (aka the Cycling Professor on Twitter). ...

What we learned this week

The European Space Agency reports that new records have been set for ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica.

An unseasonal heatwave has baked large parts of Asia this week, with temperatures reaching as high as 45 degrees Celsius in India, Thailand and Myanmar. Schools closed in many places and the Thai government warned people to stay indoors, as underlying global warming combines with an El Nino year.

Extinction Rebellion rallied some 50,000 people to London this weekend, including myse...

The forgotten mother of climate science

I’m not the only journalist in my household. My wife Louise Parry has been working on The Climate Question for BBC World Service recently, and she produced last week’s episode of the programme, titled How did we discover climate change? I will let her tell you about it and why you should listen to the podcast:

“The episode is about scientists that are overlooked – starting with the woman who was the very first to connect carbon dioxide to global warming. Eunice Foote made a foundational contr...