Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 76

Science education with Climate Fresk

One of the groups I encountered while I was in Glasgow for COP26 is Climate Fresk, a science education project based in France. I liked their approach, and took an afternoon out to take part in one of their workshops.

Climate Fresk have developed a set of cards that explain climate science. Over the course of the workshop, participants work out how they relate, and line them up to show the causes of climate change and how it affects us. It deals with some surprisingly complicated science...

Book review: Decarbonomics, by Charles Dumas

Charles Dumas is chief economist at the macro-economic forecasters TS Lombard, who provide analysis on risk and investing to multinational corporations. In Decarbonomics and the Post-Pandemic World, Dumas summarises the economic and geopolitical outlook as the world looks beyond Covid-19 and addresses the challenge of climate change.

The opening section looks at the economic damage of the pandemic, and how different countries have been affected by it. In clear and readable terms, Dumas ex...

What we learned this week

Portugal had a goal of ending coal power by 2030, but this month it closed its last coal power station, nine years ahead of schedule. It’s the fourth European country to stop using coal, joining Sweden, Austria and Belgium.

Can you raise Christmas turkeys through regenerative farming practices? This company in California is claiming that by using native grasses rather than farmed feeds, their turkey farms are a net gain for nature.

Credit Suisse have been fined £147 million for fraudulent...

What I’ve learned from getting an electric vehicle

As regular readers might remember, I have a long term plan to get my household to net zero carbon by 2025. An intermediate step was to get the house to an A rating for efficiency by 2020, which is now done. This year’s challenge was to switch to an electric car.

Left to my own devices, I wouldn’t have a car at all. We chose to live within easy walking distance of the station and the town centre. We walk and cycle, and I get can get a full load of shopping on my Elephant Bike. However, my wife...

Dear Luton Airport – an open letter

Dear Luton Airport,

Congratulations on the recent rebrand of your operating company from London Luton Airport Limited to Luton Rising. I like the way this name ties the airport’s ownership more closely to the town and its aspirations. I’m proud that Luton Council owns the airport, and that the wealth that it creates is shared, and isn’t reserved for external shareholders.

I wish more airports and amenities were community-owned in this way. We’d have a more equal and inclusive economy if ev...

Talk: Climate change and race

I’ve been doing a lot of speaking recently, and I thought I’d share the general gist of what I’ve been presenting. I tweak my presentation for different audiences and contexts, but this recent talk for Fairer World Lindfield and Green Books is pretty representative and seemed like a good one to re-post. Thank you to them for making the recording available.

I’ve given similar talks to universities, NGOs, schools, churches, conferences and others in the last couple of months. I will talk about ...

The Environmentalist’s Dilemma, by Arno Kopecky

The green movement has been warning for 50 years now that the world is going to hell in a handcart, but health and wealth and wellbeing don’t seem to be suffering all that much. Most people don’t seem troubled by environmental questions. Are things really that bad?

That’s an observation that has been described as ‘the Environmentalist’s Paradox’, though it’s not a paradox at all, and more a sign of what I call climate privilege. If we’re not seeing the damage, it’s because there’s a tempo...

What we learned this week

What if everyone had a personal carbon quota? This idea circles around from time to time, and cropped up most recently in this discussion piece in The Independent.

I know nobody wants to be thinking about COP27 right now, but Afrik21 points out that the next global climate talks will be held in Egypt, a country that is already being seriously affected by the climate crisis. Will that change the dynamic?

Luton Airport’s holding company has rebranded, and great is the eye rolling from local...

Film review: Dear Future Children

We live in an age of activism. Protest is regularly in the news. Despite the handful of activists that have become globally recognised, movements are by nature not about individuals, and personal experiences can get lost in the overall story. Dear Future Children is a new documentary that personalises this age of activism through the lives of three activists – all women, all in their early 20s, and all involved in struggles infinitely bigger than they are.

First up we meet Rayen, a flame...

Why climate change needs all of us

If you’re at all invested in climate negotiations and their outcomes, then you’ll probably have read a handful of COP26 debrief articles already. I’m not planning to repeat their work. Suffice to say that it’s a mix of outcomes – some steps forwards and some glaring omissions.

There has been progress. Let’s not throw out the work of thousands of people over several years, building trust, seeking agreement, demanding to be heard. They deserve better than that. And there are important steps fo...