The Sustainable Futures Report

It looks like we should be preparing for more extreme weather like the extremes we've seen across the world in the last few days. Does the future lie in trees or in peat bogs, or in the US, where President Donald Trump claims his country leads the world on environmental issues? Greta Thunberg has had her biggest compliment yet while legal action over the climate crisis takes place in some 28 count...

Just one topic this week. Rare earth metals and elements are crucial to our electronic devices, which these days are in everything from phones and computers to cookers and cars. I recently attended a lecture on this and then tracked down the speaker, Dr Alice Courvoisier, in a coffee shop. She explained how the process of extraction and use of these materials has wide-ranging  consequences for us...

In the week when Network Rail told its staff that if they needed to travel on business they should not take the train if it was cheaper to fly, I bring you yet more on plastic pollution– It just won't go away. Can we cut carbon dioxide by using direct air capture? Patron Tom de Simone provides some clues. We look at global heating, heatwaves and melting ice caps. Are the fashion industry and the r...

We're on our way to zero in 2050. This is the week when Extinction Rebellion promised to blockade Heathrow airport but didn't, the week when Heathrow airport opened consultation on its plans for a new third runway, and the week when outgoing prime minister Theresa May pledged to reduce the U.K.'s carbon emissions by not 80%, but by a full 100% by 2050. Net zero emissions! Is there more to life tha...

This week we're cutting the carbs. No, not carbohydrates, not carburettors, no we're cutting carbon footprints. Yes, we will talk about food, in the context of food waste as I promised last time, and about food distribution and packaging. The supermarkets are stirring. (Although not much.) Also free speech and free thinking, what going green will cost the government (although the government's deni...

This week's episode is about even more rubbish. Patron Shane suggested we look at electronic rubbish and there's certainly a story to tell there. We'll also look at plastic waste, and I warn you none of it is good news. Talking of rubbish, I started writing this on one of Northern Rail's Pacer trains stranded for over an hour in deepest Yorkshire by cows on the line. Not seen in the south of Engla...

The Metropolitan Police takes a hard line on Extinction Rebellion while CO2 reaches record levels in the atmosphere. Opinions on climate change diverge in the US, the new Australian government takes climate-related decisions, the Greens advance in Europe and we hear a perspective from Rotterdam. Sea levels are rising, but oil companies deny any liability while some suggest we could ease the climat...

In positive news Extinction Rebellion founder Roger Hallam was cleared by a jury over his King's College protest, the Committee on Climate Change believes that the UK 'can cut emissions to nearly zero' by 2050, Greta Thunberg addressed MPs and the UK Parliament subsequently declared a climate change emergency.   On a more challenging note, Cressida Dick, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, called fo...

Have a Swedish schoolgirl, a naturalist in his 90s and a civil disobedience campaign in the streets of London finally led people to realise that the climate is in crisis and that it affects us all?

Who knows what will happen next week? By the time you hear this you'll know far more than me. For the moment I'm just going to talk about re-wilding the countryside, global warming in Canada, what engineer I K Brunel thought about pollution, the downside of banning throwaway coffee cups, the future for gas home heating, the Lancet's Countdown, naming and shaming some plastic polluters, coal-fired...

It's like buses. You wait for climate change activists and then several thousand suddenly turn up at once. Apart from that, I'm going to tell you about the future of insects, views on climate change denial, more about glyphosate, some thoughts on population, and a new entry to Europe's top10 polluters.

There's too much water - or maybe not enough.  In this episode I'm also talking about energy: coal, Hinkley C and hydrogen; about transport, specifically the future of HS2; about cleaning up Canada and about pollution: plastic pollution and air pollution. And how we can avoid the jaws of death.  

Youth of the World on the march. I've been reading There is no Planet B by Mike Berners-Lee and I'll tell you how it compares with The Uninhabitable Earth which I reviewed earlier. I've been in touch with Jem Bendell. He's totally overwhelmed by responses to his paper but I hope to be able to interview one of his colleagues later in May. This week I've discovered a lot of information about denial....

This week, today in fact, there's another march. Also in this episode Jeremy Leggett puts China's climate mitigation lead in the context of geopolitics. Jem Bendell has published a paper which he thinks puts him at odds with the academic establishment. I look at what he has to say and I hope there will be opportunity to ask him some questions for a future episode. I told you about the Carrington E...

 This week:  a review of The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, the attention that climate change is getting in Parliament and reactions to the American Green Deal. There's more on extreme weather, on air pollution and a follow-up from The Lancet on the Planetary Diet.

This week it's mainly about carbon. Carbon emissions, carbon capture, US government carbon policy, cutting carbon by getting rid of gas, a carbon-cutting stealth tax with the very best of intentions and a new carbon-reducing diet which is not designed to make you slim. There's also news about fracking, palm oil, insects and cheese.

We need to do something about climate change. David Attenborough says so. Extinction Rebellion says so. Kids are coming out of school on Friday to say so. We need to do more. Business needs to do more. The government needs to do much more. I'm trying not to shout, but it's important.

Sailing through the Antarctic - Learning to live with an electric car - UK carbon emissions fall -Fast food companies under pressure to reduce emissions - Fashion retailers ignoring environmental impact - BP and global climate goals - The warmest century - Factfulness, a book you should read - and is your doggy vegan?

How much energy does it take to make a Google search? Is there enough electricity to go round? How close are we to 100% renewables? Can we extract electricity from the air? (Well, not the air exactly...) Should I upgrade my smartphone? And who went and rubbed shoulders with some of the richest people in the world in Davos and stayed in a tent?

Time to stop a war, to stop air pollution and stop the ice from melting. Time to go electric, or maybe go hydrogen and to go underground to hide that nasty carbon.  Stories this week from Yemen, DEFRA and the Department of Transport, from Alaska and Greenland and from the American courts. Nothing at all about Brexit. Guaranteed.

What do we think of human influence on the Earth? "Relaxed, but not complacent," says Chris Thomas. He's an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of York and a Fellow of the Royal Society. In a wide-ranging discussion he tells me why he's optimistic, although we need to take urgent action to cut carbon emissions, and why he'd like to introduce elephants and hippopotamuses to the u...

Have we reached Peak Stuff? Are we wasting our time recycling? Who is Trash Girl? All this and a conversation with Mike Graham of Talk Radio about dealing with our rubbish.

In this last episode for 2018 I report how COP24 finally concluded an agreement, but loose ends remain to be tied at COP25 next year. I investigate the story of a scientific phenomenon from 1859, and discover what it could do to us if it happened again.

This week I look back at the 22 episodes published this year and pick out some themes, stories and updates. Sustainability is an immensely broad issue and climate change must come at the very top. Waste, energy and low carbon solutions for transport are all linked as well. And what are VW shooting at in Mexico?

COP24 opens in Katowice, Poland with a keynote from Sir David Attenborough. What will these two weeks bring? And a look at water. Warm water, cold water and salty water. Could another Little Ice Age be on its way?