If you’ve ever crossed a hot car park in summer, you know about albedo. Dark colours absorb heat, while lighter colours reflect it. That’s one of the principles behind the idea that a melting arctic may be a self-reinforcing feedback loop: relective ice melts and is replaced by dark water, which holds heat better and [...]
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The sizzle: selling climate change
The science is more robust than ever, but public awareness hasn’t risen. Political will is stagnating, and the climate is playing second fiddle to the economy on the international agenda. It’s not lack of information, argue Futerra, the sustainability communications agency. It’s a matter of presentation. “Climate change is no longer a scientist’s problem – [...]
Bitcoins: the peer to peer currency
A couple of years ago I read a book called The End of Money, by Thomas Greco. In it, the author predicted that at some point, some internet application would do for money what Skype has done for the telecommunications industry. It’s only a matter of time before someone blows the whole thing open, re-writes [...]
Permaculture in the projects
We didn’t see this in The Wire. Here’s a great little video on inner city permaculture, all about the inspiring Hunter’s Point Family in San Francisco.
Smart Growth: from Sprawl to Sustainability, by Jon Reeds
For 100 years, we have been re-shaping our environment around the false promise of suburbia, “spurred on by a fuzzy nostalgia for our ancestors’ rural past, by a desire to live in the countryside the sprawl destroys, by a widely held belief that low-density garden suburb living is good for us, and by a retreat from community into individualism.”
A dispatch from the New Home Front
A few months ago I was inspired by a great exhibition called The Ministry of Food, at the Imperial War Museum. The exhibition, which has now finished, documented the huge social movement that mobilised the British population during the war. The country was far too dependent on imported food, and people had to learn to [...]
Local sustainable homes, by Chris Bird
This book couldn’t come at a better time for me really, as I’m in the middle of planning a home efficiency project of my own for Transition Luton. ‘Get Cosy’ will be hitting my street in a month’s time, in partnership with the local council and the Energy Saving Trust, encouraging local residents to install [...]
Luton is third worst city in Britain for car dependency
Oh dear, bad news for Luton today, as the Campaign for Better Transport publishes its Car Dependency Scorecard for 2010. We come third from the bottom. Only Milton Keynes and Peterborough are more dependent on their cars. Why did we come out so badly? The report explains: Car travel has caused traffic problems, especially around the M1. The [...]
The Ministry of Food exhibition
I recently moved to a new office with the day job, just a minute’s walk from the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth. It’s a big domed building with an enormous gun out the front, and fortunately it’s not dedicated to our wars of imperial conquest, as the name might suggest. At the moment it’s hosting [...]
Local Money:how to make it happen in your community, by Peter North
I’ve really enjoyed the last three books to come out of the Transition Books stable, so I was pleased to see the latest instalment was out: Local Money – how to make it happen in your community. It’s another big square book, following Local Food, and it’s got the same practical, inspiring, can-do approach. This [...]
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