Ed Dowding

Category: Sustainability

Link Round up

Rethinking the food system – aka Food Security, with Tim Lang About 95% of people do not want ID cards Bolivia’s Chacaltaya glacier is completely melted What can we learn from the 1918 flu pandemic? Prince Charles’ Rainforest Charity – RainforestSOS.org Delivering medicines and information via Coke crates in Africa

We are six years away from an energy crisis

The good news for Britain’s energy supply is that the sheer scale of the recession has cut our electricity demand and carbon emissions. An impending energy security crunch has been postponed.The bad news is that the recession will almost certainly delay investment in Britain’s energy infrastructure and encourage complacency. […] For the past two decades ...

Better models: cars

There are a lot of curious inefficiencies in modern life. We end up owning an awful lot of things which we don’t use very much, but we have them because when we want when we really want them. Lawnmowers, tools for small jobs around the house, washing machines, and cars are just a few things ...

Links for the week

Where you consume water in your daily life http://www.good.is/post/transparency-how-much-water-do-you-use/ Training the young to fix our problems http://www.yesworld.org/ and http://www.csl.org.au/ The gift economy in Mali http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ELNsQdSMOc Twitter users skew towards the older crowd http://www.inquisitr.com/21484/twitter-userbase-skews-toward-older-crowd-data-suggests/ (I’m beginning to think I might have to add yet another Twitter post qualifying previous posts.) Facebook unlikely to release currency http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2009/04/07/facebook-unlikely-to-launch-universal-virtual-currency-anytime-soon/ ...

Journalism, not newspapers

I’ve written about the quality of journalism before (and I thought I’d had a specific post about free newspapers, too, but I can’t seem to find it*), but much of it is summed up in this article by Clay Shirky (via Richard Livsey): Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. Too right. He ...

An enormous civilisation discovered in the Amazon

I watched a great documentary last night about hunting for El Dorado. (Actually more like ‘El Dorado II’, because the main El Dorado story comes from a place called Muiscas in modern day Colombia, courtesy of conquistador ‘Jimmy the Cheese’, aka Jiménez de Quesada, in 1537). But this story is about another chap, Francisco Orellana, ...

There's AT BEST an 80% chance that humanity will see the next century

Did you know of the major studies in the last few years, none of them give us a greater than 80% chance of surviving the next century? Watch the whole thing, or jump to 3m50s in Nick Bostrom’s TED talk

Hydrate the world

“A solution to world dehydration? http://tinyurl.com/apr7” (via Hermione Way) I’d have made it inflatable with a drain hole myself. Brilliant idea though.

Tied up in knots

1. Heathrow runway ‘approval is due’ The government is expected to confirm approval for a third runway at Heathrow Airport later, the BBC understands. (http://is.gd/fVkJ) Your government doesn’t care about your long term future, so please take responsibility for it yourself. Only fly when you HAVE to. If you want to get away that much, ...

Monbiot has the answer.

Seriously everyone, what’s stopping this? Are we worried that the implications of destroying the entire world aren’t really large enough to make it worth it? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/02/climate-change-lord-turner

No free papers

A small victory for audiobooks and podcasts, and against free papers: http://www.pledgebank.com/no2freepapers