Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 7

Book review: Climate Injustice, by Friedericke Otto

Friedericke Otto is a German climatologist who is best known for her work on climate attribution science. This is the science of assessing natural disasters and determining to what extent they have been caused by climate change. That is explained in her previous book Angry Weather, which hinted at how this new science could be a tool for justice. Climate Injustice follows up on that promise in more detail, describing the connections between inequality and natural disasters, and how we can cr...

Let’s Go Zero: delivering climate action in schools

It was Earth Day this week, which usually brings on a repetitive strain injury from hitting the delete button on the deluge of eco themed press releases that hit my inbox this time every year. This April there was one I was rather looking forward to sharing however, and that’s the impact report from Let’s Go Zero.

Let’s Go Zero is a campaign working for zero carbon schools, led by the climate solutions charity Ashden in partnership with a coalition of other organisations. Having doubled its ...

Climate coverage for the 89%

A couple of months ago I wrote about the perception gap on climate change: the vast majority of people support climate action, but think that others don’t. A global study found that 89% of those polled wanted a stronger response to climate change. When asked how many of their fellow citizens wanted the same thing, they consistently guessed a far lower percentage.

This has political consequences. ‘I will if you will’ is a very human instinct, which can leave everyone waiting for each other to...

What we learned this week

With the government banging the drum for airport expansion to deliver economic growth, the Green Alliance explains how investing in buses and trains could achieve the same thing quicker and without the carbon emissions.

Have you heard of parametric insurance? I hadn’t, and I was interested to see how this alternative insurance model is being used to respond quicker to natural disasters.

China has opened a hydrogen trucking corridor, with hydrogen refuelling stations available to trucks t...

Book review: The 15 Minute City, by Carlos Moreno

In the past, all cities were 15 minute cities. They were compact and human scaled. They were entirely walkable, because the proverbial shoe-cart was the only mode of transport available. Proximity was a necessity, and citizens would naturally expect to find their work and their home, the market or a place of worship within a walkable distance.

Motorised transport disrupted the pattern and opened up new forms of urbanism. Trams and trains made it possible to live in one place and work in ...

UK emissions have fallen to Victorian levels

Carbon Brief have released another update to what has become one of my favourite graphs: the graph of the UK’s falling carbon emissions. The downward curve continues, past the hiccup of the post-Covid bounce-back and onwards towards zero. As Carbon Brief highlight, emissions in 2024 were the same as the down-spike of the general strike in the 1920s, when coal production paused.

Emissions are similar today to what they were in Victorian times, 1872 to be precise.

This is one of my fav...

What we learned this week

Saqib Rahim writes about how off-grid solar power is helping Palestinians to rebuild after the destruction of energy infrastructure.

Given the hystrionics about low traffic neighbourhoods and 20mph zones, how fantastic is it to see citizens choosing less traffic through a democratic process? Parisians just had a referendum and voted for 500 car-free streets and a 10% reduction in city parking.

The National Association for Environmental Education has announced ‘a year of environmental lun...

Luton Airport takes responsibility for 0.48% of its climate impact

After years of discussion and consultation, the Planning Inspectorate delivered its 963 page report last year on whether or not Luton Airport should be allowed to expand. All things considered, “the public benefits do not outweigh the environmental harm”, they concluded. “The Secretary of State for Transport should withhold consent.”

The Secretary disagrees, and yesterday authorised the expansion because it would create economic growth and jobs. “We will stop at nothing to deliver economic gr...

Book review: What if we get it right? by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, climate communicator and one of the editors of All We Can Save. That was one of my favourite books of 2020, and so this book immediately had my full attention.

Where a lot of climate books describe how bad things could get, this one asks the question of the title – what if we get it right? What would the world look like? What would politics, banking, food or energy look like?

To get at those answers, Johnson talks to a wide variety of ex...

Living with glaciers

For those of us who live in temperate northern countries, climate change can feel far away and somewhat abstract. We can talk casually about saving rainforests, coral reefs or glaciers as entities in themselves, without any understanding of what it means to depend on them.

For some audiences, this doesn’t resonate at all. Why the big urgency around ‘saving’ a glacier? It’s a block of ice. It has no feelings and no needs. From a distance, its existence or non-existence feels trivial, beyond t...