A short post to note the latest UN refugee data (pdf), which shows a worldwide increase in 2007 of 3m – almost 10% -in the number of refugees forced from their home by conflict. It is a second successive increase after a period of decline. The UN describes the data as ‘unprecedented’, and says it [...]
I’ve meant to write before about the Transition Initiative, which is in my view one of the most radical things happening in the UK at the moment - radical because it is local and community-oriented, radical because it is a thought-through response to both impending energy shortage and climate change. (If only the government was [...]
Just as we’ve got used to the idea that the moment of ‘peak oil‘ might be upon us (at the moment 2005 is the year of highest oil production) new figures suggest that the figures for world coal reserves might have been inflated. The widely held view that we are sitting on hundreds of years’ [...]
The most interesting new word I’ve heard so far this year is ‘solastalgia‘, buried in some notes that Matt Jones made at a recent lecture by Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG. It was coined five years ago by an Australian, Glenn Albrecht, and seeks to capture notions of place-related distress. Albrecht was quoted in an Australian [...]
I’ve just noticed an interesting article on the recently re-launched ‘History & Policy‘ site which suggests - by looking at the historical evidence - that our chances of reducing energy consumption without sanctions or limits being imposed is, frankly, wishful thinking. Even though we have in the past achieved the energy efficiency gains needed now [...]
Obviously the winter outdoor ice skating rinks which increasingly crowd the UK’s public spaces are right on trend. Just tick them off: the shift from services to experiences, the rise of shared social meaning, and the commercialisation of parts of the public realm that would otherwise be commons. But - having just come back from [...]
A team of researchers at Oxford University has recalculated Britain’s carbon emissions since 1990 - and found that they have increased by 19%. (News report here.) The official figures - calculated according to the UN’s method - say that emissions have fallen by 15% over the period. However, the researchers, led by Dieter Helm, included [...]
It must be the season for newspapers and magazines to look at how well businesses are doing in greening themselves. The New York Times and the Guardian have run supplements, while Fast Company and Business Voice have prominent articles. The NYT looks most interesting in terms of trends; it suggests that we have reached the [...]
The question is not whether we are going to trash the planet. The question is whether we are going to trash ourselves as a species. That’s the only conclusion that can be drawn from last week’s publication by the United Nations Environment Program of GEO-4 (available online here, news article summary here). What’s interesting [...]
Scientists - even climate researchers - don’t usually use hyperbole. But Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University in Denver, said the latest Arctic sea ice figures - which show accelerating decline - had “simply fallen off a cliff and we’re still losing ice.”
