I think it’s fairly safe to say that technological advances on their own will not reduce per capita use of the Earth’s resources. That requires different ways of doing things, some new regulation and above all, changes in attitudes amongst consumers themselves to what they actually need. The Brookings Institution predicts that the “global middle…
Gatwick has become the first UK airport to announce that it will be Carbon Neutral: http://www.mediacentre.gatwickairport.com/press-releases/2017/gatwick-becomes-first-uk-airport-to-join-global-renewable-electricity-alliance.aspx. I have never been a fan of the concept of Carbon Neutrality. The level of certification required to substantiate such a claim makes the Brexit negotiations look like a tea party. All we really want is to reduce emissions,…
The simple act of compelling larger retailers to charge 5p on plastic bags in England at the end of 2015 has had a dramatic effect on people’s behaviour – you now see shoppers emerging from supermarkets with trolleys filled with an assortment of reusable household bags rather than the one-off sort. The insistence of the…
My eye was recently caught by an interview given by David Palmer-Jones, chief executive of Suez UK, to Andrew Cave of The Sunday Telegraph in which he fondly remembers some of the Grimsby Town FC squad emptying old-fashioned metal dustbins in order to get themselves fit and earn some extra cash during the 1970’s. How…
London is currently in breach of EU limits for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in the air, which is linked to a range of respiratory illnesses. In July, King’s College London published a report which estimated the mortality burden of NO2 and PM2.5 pollution in London in 2010, with as much as 140,743 life-years lost. We clearly…
Suffice it to say, initially, that I believe the world’s present-day managed and semi-natural forest areas can sustainably produce a much greater biomass yield than they do, at present, and thus provide reliable energy, with some degree of carbon savings, while incurring no land use change at all. This is what the consultants’ reports tell…
Often, giving people a reason to think or act in a certain way is one of the most powerful tools one can employ. The hope of those concerned about climate change is that these reasons can be mutually communicated and agreed at the Conference of the Parties (to the UNFCCC) in Paris later this year.…