Jeremy Williams's Blog, page 89

What can we build on the other side?

If you had to boil it down to its essentials, how would you sum up the message of environmentalism?

In their book Rewilding, Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe suggest that there are three main points to the narrative:

“Nature, soils and the environment are in decline”“Human fecundity and poor stewardship are to blame”and “without action, humanity faces catastrophe”

The basics of this story can be dated to two influential books, they argue: William Vogt’s The Road to Survival, and Fairfield O...

The injustice of the UK’s dumped plastic

Where does your recycling actually go? It’s a question I’ve looked a few times on the blog. The answer used to be China. Then waste started turning up in Malaysia or Indonesia as China started to clamp down on imports. This week Greenpeace highlight Turkey as a major destination for the UK’s plastic waste.

In a new report, Trashed, Greenpeace highlight the fact that Britain claims ‘global leadership’ on tackling plastic, but is second only to the US in plastic waste per capita. The gap betwe...

Book review: The Heartbeat of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben

Peter Wohlleben is Germany’s Lorax. He speaks for the trees through his books, documentaries, the forest academy that he runs, and in his work as a forester. He’s best known for The Hidden Life of Trees, an international bestseller that introduced many people to the emerging science around how trees cooperate and communicate.

After writing about animals and weather, he returns to the subject of trees with The Heartbeat of Trees: Embracing our Ancient Bond with Forests and Nature.

The...

What we learned this week

Today’s header image is lifted from John Lang’s splendid COP26 explainer infographic, which I recommend viewing over at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.

This week I wrote about how Wales demonstrates a healthier politics of asylum and immigration. See also Scotland, where this week a crowd filled the street to block an deportation and stayed until the men were released.

Studio B Unscripted is an Al Jazeera show I’ve not come across before, but it’s a head-to-head conversation betw...

Sustainable homes from invasive plants

Typha is an invasive species in much of West Africa. It’s a fast-growing reed, like a cattail, and when it gets established it can choke rivers and waterways. Senegal, Mali, Guinea and Mauritania have all struggled to contain typha, which creates all kinds of problems. It makes riverbanks inaccessible, which is critical for people who draw their drinking water from rivers, or who depend on them for irrigating crops or for fishing. It also creates stagnant areas around the water’s edge which are ...

MAPS – a mnemonic for sustainable transport

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A couple of years ago I wrote a post asking what the ‘three R’s’ for transport might be. Kids grow up knowing the ‘reduce-reuse-recycle’ approach to waste. It appears on council flyers and on posters. While some people argue that there are a lot more Rs that could be included, three is short enough to be memorable and easy. Is there an equivalent for transport that could help people to make good choices?

Here’s mine. It takes the acronym MAPS because it’s something you consult before you ...

Why is the UK government so afraid of refugees?

Yesterday the queen delivered her state opening of Parliament speech and confirmed that the government will be advancing its ‘New Plan for Immigration‘. It is couched in the language of making the asylum and immigration system more “fair”. In reality, the new legislation doubles down on the ‘hostile environment’ approach to migration that the Conservatives have been pursuing for years.

New immigration policies have been designed to satisfy tabloid readers, not to deliver justice or safety fo...

On ecological repentence

Second Chances is a short film by Eilidh Munro, featuring the words of a Peruvian forest ranger called Juvenal Huari Castilla. It’s just under three minutes long, so you’ve got time to watch it before you read on:

Castilla used to be a logger. He was paid to cut trees in the rainforest, and then later got a job as a ranger. As he came to understand the forest and the importance of protecting it, he regretted his previous work. “I walked in this forest, I’ve logged trees” he says. “What ...

The Dignity of Labour, by John Cruddas

I don’t normally read books by politicians. I don’t see the world and its problems on a left/right spectrum, and so books that take that for granted and only speak to one side get on my nerves. But I am interested in good work, and so I made an exception for this one.

Jon Cruddas is the Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham, a post-industrial region just to the east of London that’s played an important role in labour history in Britain. It used to have Europe’s largest car factory, and disp...

What we learned this week

I’ve been writing in defence of electric vehicles recently, but the importance of EVs needs to be kept in perspective – this article argues that cycling is ten times more important in the transition to sustainable transport.

If you know and like ‘story dice’, you may be interested in this crowdfunder to make ‘climate dice‘ as a way of helping children to tell positive stories about the future.

I came across the Borgen Project for the first time this week, a campaign to direct US foreign po...