I’ve been away for a week, with limited online access, and while away happened into Bristol’s Architecture Centre, which was hosting a small but rich exhibition on ‘Suburban Futures’, and almost completely unadvertised, at least from the street. 86% of the population of England live in suburbs, so making them sustainable is a valuable project. [...]
There’s another kerfuffle about getting rid of plastic bags, since one of the government’s waste advisers has suggested that government plans to ban plastic bags, or charge for them, are a diversion from more pressing environmental issues. While it is true that plastic bags represent only a small amount of waste, or of oil use, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
I spent some of the weekend in Newcastle (or more precisely Gateshead) at the DOTT ‘07 exhibition which marked the close of this ambitious two year project. Three essential lessons for me, which won’t be surprising to those who know the work of John Thackara, who directed the project:
Sustainability is about flows, not stuff
Those flows [...]
What happens if the pervasive chemicals in the everyday products we buy and use are the reason that we generally feel below par so much of the time? It could cause a backlash by consumers who increasingly regard their well-being as important to them. The thought comes both because of the wave of stories about [...]
