WANTED Bombus Hynorum, aka Tree Bumblebee Here’s another chance to do some doorstep conservation: The Tree Bumblebee began colonising Britain in 2001, and may now be feeding or nesting in your back garden. Conservation agency Arocha has teamed up with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust to study the bee and how quickly it establishes itself. They [...]
Archive | June, 2009
Will there be an oil crisis before the end of 2009?
As you may remember from last summer, there has been a major bubble in the oil price recently. From a high of $147 in July 08, the price of crude collapsed to $40 a barrel by the end of the year. The price was grossly inflated by speculators, and it had to come down. The [...]
Sharing content on Treenex
Just a quick note to suggest popping in to visit Treenex, a new and experimental social network planning to plant a million trees through partner companies. The Treenex blog is drawing on the Make Wealth History archives, with our permission – everything on this site is free to share as long as you link back. [...]
What we learned this week
Every 1% fall in global GDP translates into 20 million extra people living on less than $1.25 a day. It helps to have a sense of humour about one’s expectations for the Copenhagen summit. If local councils supported climate change measures, they could create 70,000 jobs across the UK. Las Vegas is going bust. The [...]
Bulldozing your way to sustainability
What do you do if your US suburban sprawl of a town is beyond redemption? That’s a question facing the run-down city of Flint, Michigan. Their response is both innovative and controversial – ‘shrink to survive’. Flint was the original home of the beleaguered General Motors, and is now in serious decline. As jobs at [...]
UK announces its ‘Road to Copenhagen’
“This is make or break time for our climate and our future” said Ed Milliband today. “With less than six months to go before crunch negotiations in Copenhagen, it’s clear that there is no plan B for the planet.” The minister for energy and climate change joined Gordon Brown to roll out the UK’s ‘Road [...]
Gordon Brown calls for new thinking on climate change
Gordon Brown on the Copenhagen talks earlier today: Success will require two major shifts in how we think – as policy makers, as campaigners, as consumers, as producers, as a society. The first is to think not in political or economic cycles; not just in terms of years or even decade-long programmes and initiatives. But [...]
Trouble in Paradise
I love the look of scorn that this rhino is giving the car that’s been dumped in his drinking pond. Quite right too. The offending car is one of a series of installations in Schonbrunn Zoo in Vienna, aiming to highlight human intervention in nature. There’s an oil pumpjack in the penguin enclosure, barrels of [...]
A Short History of Progress, by Ronald Wright
Pitched somewhere between Jared Diamond’s ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’, and Bill Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’, Ronald Wright takes a broad view of history, telling the human story from its earliest origins to our uncertain future. His particular focus is progress, the notion that life must get better every year. It is, he [...]
Britain embraces the electric car
The government is due to announce a major initiative today to encourage people to switch to electric cars. 340 electric cars will be made available to the public to try, in that hope that they will find them practical and efficient, and buy one themselves. The scheme will cost £25 million, and will pilot in [...]
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