I used this graph in a presentation recently, but it occurs to me that...
Latest posts
You can either fly or drive
George Monbiot’s book Heat: How to stop the planet burning is one of the more comprehensive popular attempts to square our modern lifestyles with the reality of climate change. He describes how the energy system can be made low carbon, how we can change our diets and renovate our houses. To his surprise, he finds […]
Development and sustainability can’t be separated
The Millennium Development Goals run will have run their course by 2015, and there’s a good deal of debate going on about what should replace them. One key aspect of the debate is that the MDGs never integrated sustainability into development goals, and climate change wasn’t even included. There was no recognition that, if separated, […]
What we learned this week
Not the first time it’s been done, but there’s been another survey of climate scientists and whether or not they agree with that human activity is warming the planet. This time it’s 97%. Meanwhile, how about this for the definition of institutional denial – the Treasury recently blocked a proposed review into the risks that […]
The climate does not change by CO2 alone
Imagine you are riding a bike. You are pedaling at a constant speed, but sometimes you have the wind at your back, and at other times you’re pedaling into a headwind. You go up hills and down hills. Even though there’s no change to your pedaling, you will slow down or speed up at various […]
The world’s greenest football club
Interest in sport and environmental awareness haven’t necessarily gone together very often, but there’s one club that is aiming to change that. In 201o Forest Green Rovers took on Ecotricity as a key sponsor. With Ecotricity’s Dale Vince as chairman of the club, the relationship has developed into an intriguing experiment in sustainability in sport. […]
The case for a Land Value Tax
The Land Value Tax is an idea I’m quite interested in, and that I think needs consideration. (My introduction to the idea is here) It’s one of those ideas that has been discussed many times in the past and almost implemented on occasion, but never quite got underway in this country. It’s being revisited at […]
Why we can’t depend on a shale gas boom in Britain
One of the more depressing developments in government in recent days has been the series of resignations from the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Several senior climate advisors have quit the government, with rumours that progress on renewable energy or climate change is being quashed by the treasury. There appears to be something of […]
What we learned this week
Should toddlers use tablet computers? It’s a question we’ll have to tackle in our household soon, and here’s a useful take on it from Atlantic. A majority of Americans now believe that climate change is affecting the weather in the US. And CO2 emissions have just passed the 400 ppm mark, so that’s just as […]
Diversity in banking
I received this graphic in my email today. It’s one of the topics of the Transforming Finance conference which is going on today, looking at why Britain might be better off with more local and regional banks. We’re quite unusual in this. High street banking in Britain is dominated by a handful of big names […]
What if you can’t bake a bigger pie?
Every once in a while I read something that sums up the basic premise of this blog, and I found such a quote in Andrew Simms’ Cancel the Apocalypse, which I reviewed a while back. There are actually several passages I could have quoted, but here’s one: In a physically limited system where growth is […]
