Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 59

Home from Greenbelt

I’ve been at the Greenbelt Festival this weekend with the family, where I got to speak in two different modes. I did a children’s author event around Max Counts to a Million, with games and jokes and silliness. And then in the evening I did a session on climate change, race and privilege that had no fun in it at all. Several people came to both, which must have been confusing.

A couple of people asked after the talk if they could use the graphics that I showed, and I said I would post some l...

What we learned this week

Sarah Wilson at the Big Issue put in a Freedom of Information request to see airlines’ submissions to the government’s “jet zero” strategy. Here are the (dismal) results.

It has been interesting to witness the turning of public opinion against private aviation in the last few weeks, with France the first to suggest a ban on private planes.

“In a striking effort to distort reality, the longer the gas-driven energy crisis goes on, the more critics condemn net zero. This is — literally — gas...

The countries most ready for electric cars

Sustainable transport begins with active transport and then public transport, but cars will remain important for the foreseeable future. We have to stop burning oil in those cars if there is to be any hope of protecting a liveable climate, and that is a deeply embedded habit to unpick. It’s well worth keeping an eye on who is leading on this, and what we can learn from them.

The Global Electric Mobility Readiness Index, or GEMRIX, is an attempt to track the transition internationally, and it...

Climate change action! (from everyone else)

There is widespread support for acting on climate change, according to some canvassing by Ipsos Mori. But support for climate policy is rather fragile. People are in favour until it affects them, and then it gets less positive. We’d much rather that other people make changes.

Last year Ipsos asked over 2,800 adults around the UK if they supported or opposed a variety of climate policies. In the abstract, there was majority support for range of different policies:

Apart from meat and d...

How Iceland is encouraging sustainable cooking

Earlier this year I reviewed The Climate Change Cookbook, an attempt to bring climate awareness into people’s kitchens that sadly failed to mention cooking techniques. It’s also absent from many other cook books that otherwise offer more sustainable diets. My favourite vegan collection for example, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Much More Veg, contains dozens of variations on roasted vegetables. All of them need the oven, which is the most energy intensive way to prepare a meal.

So I was inte...

Book review: Nomad Century, by Gaia Vince

When I was working on my book on climate and race, I planned to write a chapter on migration. I didn’t include it in the final draft because my research opened up far more questions than I could satisfactorily answer for myself, let alone for readers. I have been on the lookout for a book that really grapples with those questions ever since, and Gaia Vince’s Nomad Century is the book I have been waiting for.

The climate crisis will drive the biggest movements of people in human history. A...

What we learned this week

CBS News celebrates how roundabouts save lives, cut journey times and reduce emissions. Roundabouts are everywhere in the UK, and so it takes a piece like this from the US to remind us of their climate credentials.

Getting a smart meter added to your home delivers data to the utility companies, which makes billing and grid management easier. You can use the data too, and the Hugo app has a variety of tools to track energy usage and set budgets. Could be quite a useful app in the coming month...

How climate change increases global inequality

The injustices of climate change take many forms, including economic injustices: emissions have mainly come from the richest countries, but those suffering the most harm are those in poorer countries. But it’s worse than that, because climate change is also one of the reasons that countries remain poor.

According to a 2019 study, climate change has already increased inequality between rich and poor countries, pushing the gap between rich and poor 25% wider than it would be in a world without...

Where to start saving money on energy bills

I regularly speak to people and groups about how they can reduce their carbon footprints. And of course, most of the things that reduce your carbon footprint also reduce your energy bills. As I’ve tried to make our 1920s family home zero carbon, we have also seen our bills fall.

According to Ofgem, the average energy bill for a three bedroom house in 2021 was £1,970. We paid less than half that, a total bill of £787. My aim has been to reduce emissions rather than bills, and I would have don...

Copenhill: a revolutionary clean energy plant?

On our recent train journey up to Sweden, we had the opportunity to spend a couple of days in Copenhagen. We didn’t get a chance to visit, but we were rather impressed with the views of Copenhill, the city’s enormous waste to energy plant. I wonder if there’s any other waste to energy plant that would cause children to jump up and down with excitement on spotting it.

I wrote about Copenhill, or Amager Bakke to use its Danish name, back in 2017 when it was new. Now that’s it’s been running fo...