Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 68

Book review: Africa is Not a Country, by Dipo Faloyin

It’s been a while, but every once in a while a big book on Africa lands in the bookshops. They’re written by journalists, former diplomats or Gordon Brown, and have names like ‘the state of Africa’. All the ones I can think of are written by white men, so straight away this one catches the eye. Dipo Faloyin is from Nigeria, and he purposefully overturns some conventions about the ‘big Africa book’ in Africa is Not a Country: Breaking Stereotypes of Modern Africa.

He writes in the introduc...

What we learned this week

Mart Drake-Knight of circular economy clothing company Rapanui has done a TEDx talk and asked nicely for people to share it. It’s called ‘Dear Mr Bin Man’, after a letter he wrote aged five.

Have you heard of the Mothers’ Climate Action Network? I came across them for the first time this week and I know some Mums who would fit right in.

Extinction Rebellion kick off their next London week of action today. I can’t be there myself just yet, but I hope to get down there later this week. The d...

What happened to green habits during the pandemic?

In going about your everyday life since the pandemic, have you noticed how some environmental habits have disappeared? Perhaps a local cafe doesn’t do ceramic mugs any more, even if you’re drinking in. Or the cafeteria might have switched to paper plates. Maybe you are yet to venture back into a charity shop. I’d noticed some of these things anecdotally, but Aviva’s latest How We Live Report has some figures and I’ve stuck them in a graph:

Having asked people the same questions for a few ...

Book review: Nature is a Human Right, ed Ellen Miles

Nature is a Human Right is a collection of essays and a manifesto for a campaign to “enshrine contact with nature – real, leafy, living spaces – as a legally protected right for all.” As a book, it’s a beautiful object: weighty and strikingly designed with wood-cut illustrations from Nick Hayes. The contributors are excellent, the essays diverse and vibrant. The central argument, to my mind, remains a little more elusive. But I’ll come back to that.

First of all, there’s a lot to appreci...

What we learned this week

Considering the CEO of Ryanair used to be one of the most outspoken climate deniers in the business, it’s interesting to see the airline’s change of tune on the environment. This week they announced their plans to be carbon neutral by 2050 – with some actual details on how that will work.

A while back I wrote about ten climate podcasts to try, and there are of course more than ten I could have chosen. This week the team at MIT got in touch to recommend TILClimate, which I’ve been listening to...

Rebellion – the documentary

A new documentary was released in selected cinemas last week, and on Netflix from today. Called Rebellion, it tells the inside story of Extinction Rebellion, how it got started, the thought processes behind it, and its current relevance. Here’s the trailer:

Directed by first-time film-makers Maia Kenworthy and Elena Sánchez Bellot, this is all about access. They’re clearly trusted enough as documentarians for the cameras to be in key meetings, letting them roll even when tensions boil. ...

We need to pay for climate adaptation in Africa

Here in the temperate north, climate change can feel like a distant threat. It sort of hovers there as an abstract concern. We know we ought to do something about it eventually, but many find it hard to treat climate change with any sense of urgency.

This is what I call climate privilege, because in plenty of other places the threat is much more obvious. It is already a matter of survival, and people are struggling to adapt. Often these are places where carbon emissions are low, and that hav...

Energy savings at the base of the pyramid

Energy costs in Britain are rising, and so is the number of households struggling to keep up with their bills. I’ve written before about how energy efficiency could help, and how governments have repeatedly failed to raise the efficiency of homes.

The blind spots of government were well summarised in a briefing from the energy company Utilita recently. They point out that government action on sustainable energy is mainly targeted at transitioning to clean energy sources. It’s focused on busi...

Book review: Saving Us, by Katherine Hayhoe

In the last few years, Katherine Hayhoe has become an influential figure in climate change circles. She is a climate scientist, and a good communicator of climate science. She lives in Texas but is Canadian, and is therefore less hostage to American political divides. And she is an evangelical Christian. This combination of traits means that Hayhoe is well placed to speak to sceptical audiences, and that has made her something of an expert on difficult climate conversations.

Having talke...

What we learned this week

The Jubilee Debt Campaign have a petition to cancel Ukraine’s debts as a way of supporting the country. It’ll take thirty seconds, so you could right click, open in new tab and do it now. I’ll wait here…

Thanks for doing that. Where were we?

When talking about eating less meat, I have on occasion had the response that vegetarians eat soy, and this destroys the rainforest. (Shrug. What can you do, eh? Guess I’ll just have to keep doing the thing I had no intention of changing…) But as WWF ...