It was easy to describe the weather on our recent break in Turkey. The sun shone powerfully throughout the day, every day, without a break, for two weeks. Friends and family who just endured a particularly grim August in the UK gave me a pained look and quickly change the subject. A first-time visitor to… Continue reading
The forest fix – we chopped 'em down, now plant 'em back
Fixing the atmosphere, where (so most scientists believe) a buildup of CO2 is causing the planet to overheat, is an immensely daunting challenge, and with today’s technology probably an impossible one. All we can do is stop the problem getting worse. But could there be a much more manageable, even potentially climate-stabilizing, target we could… Continue reading →
Will the world beat a path to the better windmill builder?
To adapt the popular misquotation of Ralph Waldo Emerson – he didn’t actually say the world would beat a path to the door of the inventor of the better mousetrap, but it’s such an optimistic message to entrepreneurs so why waste it? – will the green energy industry soon be looking up the route to… Continue reading →
To know or not to know–that's the holiday question.
You are on holiday in a remote Nepalese village when you spot an English-language newspaper with a headline something along the lines of: “London in flames. Rioters trash capital.” What do you do? Perpetuate that rare state of bliss, where you are so far from home, so cut free from the working world, and walk… Continue reading →
Body builds its solar energy future – just in time
I’m writing this on a grey last Friday in July morning, but I have some defiantly sunny news to impart. The Body Shop has just completed, in 9 weeks, Britain’s largest self-funded (paid for by the company itself) rooftop solar energy system at its head office at Littlehampton in Sussex. 3,840 solar panels covering an… Continue reading →
Hand picked solution to a sustainable scallop future
I’ve just been looking at a very tempting recipe for hand-dived scallops with pea purée, beetroot jelly and pancetta foam on the BBC food web site. No, keen reader, I’m not going to branch into a new career in cuisine just yet. But I’m concerned about sustainable fishing, and those two words “hand-dived” seem to… Continue reading →