The Sustainable Futures Report (Anthony Day)

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?

Harriet Ennis from Bootham School in York introduces the BEAST - Bootham Environmental and Sustainability Team. She explains how the school joined the Eco-schools project and is now a Green Flag holder with Ambassador status.

More information from eco-schools.org.uk or ennish@boothamschool.com 

Solutions for the Planet helps school students find solutions to ecological, environmental or sustainable problems. Teams create a business plan and present their ideas to a panel of judges. Business mentors help them develop their ideas.

Visit solutionsfortheplanet.co.uk

Are you in business? Can you help? Get in touch!

This week I've been able to talk to Martin Baxter, Chief Policy Advisor at IEMA.

We have come a long way from “Brexit means Brexit, a red white and blue Brexit”.

This week Mrs May set out 12 points which would be the foundation of her negotiating strategy. It's clear that her intention is for the United Kingdom to leave the customs union and no longer to be a member of the European single market although she expects us to continue to enjoy full access to it.

Whatever happens, there will be implications for all aspects of daily life and commercial activity in the UK. Red tape is one thing, but protecting consumers and businesses is something else. So how will regulations change? In particular, how will environmental regulations and standards survive the U.K.'s departure from the EU?

If things go wrong and we fail to overcome the climate crisis there will be profound consequences for society and humanity. My guest is Fernando Garcia Ferreiro from The Deep Adaptation Forum, which exists to help people prepare for this worst case scenario.

Let’s have a sensible discussion!

The climate crisis is just too important to argue about. We need a mature approach to this crucial issue. Today’s guest, Marc Cortez, calls it Climaturity.

Hello this is Anthony Day. Have you booked for the Sustainable Best Practice Exchange yet? Still some places left and bookings must close on Friday 8th April. Go to sbpe.co.uk for more information and contact me for a deal you can’t refuse. 

In this latest episode of the Sustainable Futures Report; notes on fuel duty and VAT after the Chancellor’s budget. Good news from Queen Street Mill. I ask “Is sustainability killing our steel industry?” And most of our electricity still comes from coal. Do you care where the coal comes from?  I can’t avoid the fact that Hinkley C is in the news again. No, it hasn’t been cancelled.

If we are to preserve a habitable environment and successfully meet the challenge of the climate crisis our organisations need competent, sustainable leadership. I spoke to Clarke Murphy, who knows about these things.

In this week's Wednesday Interview Mattias Axelson of the Stockholm School of Economics describes a variant on the Circular Economy.

Making the headlines, some politicians, activists and commentators are calling for a green recovery. A changed world as we come out of COVID lockdown. There are endless arguments over what that actually means, how we do it, when we do it and whether we can do it. Meanwhile, some fossil fuel companies are accused of failing to meet targets, some are agitating for targets to be dropped and some politicians are quietly dropping them anyway. The word in the markets is that green investment is a success story and elsewhere the sun is shining on renewables, even if some of them are all at sea. (Oh, all right, it’s a lake.) And then there’s net zero. What does it actually mean, and could BECCS help? And we have a new patron. 

(Nothing to do with cats although I do mention CAT)

Geothermal energy, or ground source heat pumps. Kathy Hannun of Dandelion Energy explains how they do it in New York. Welcome to two new Silver Supporters! 

Brexit releases the UK from the obligation to follow EU Directives on climate - or anything else for that matter. There's a new Office for Environmental Protection, but how far can it hold the British government to account?

Anthony Day with your Sustainable Futures Report for Friday 10th June, and I’m delighted to say that it could almost be summer. Gone is last week’s cold spell, plants are bursting out all over, especially weeds in our allotment garden, and my bees gave me 20kg of honey last week. Amazing when you think that I got less than that for the whole of last season and didn’t get any at all until September.

In the news this week - words about wind power, news from Norway and a White Elephant galloping north.

Business energy tax reform - I bet you didn’t see that in the budget! The National Grid have published their winter outlook report - already. There’s a Task Force on Shale Gas - hear what they have to say. Is DECC running out of money? Is climate change making long-haul flights longer? There’s a company that will power your car on coffee and would you like to live in a carbon positive house? And meet the economist who can’t add up! Oh, and don’t forget the Sustainable Best Practice Exchange on 5th November.

ESOS, the Energy Saving Opportunity Scheme, comes into effect in 2015. Most organisations, from the largest SMEs upwards, will have to report. Not as onerous as CRC and more likely to save you money. For the detailed regulations and to check if it applies to you go to www.gov.uk and search for ESOS.

This episode explains the purpose and obligations of ESOS and what you have to do.

This time I’ll be talking about the growth in renewable power including signs that France may prioritise renewables over nuclear, climate rules for corporations, forces behind climate denial, plumbing the depths of abandoned coal mines and some news and comment on climate science. But first, news from California. 

In a wide-ranging conversation with me, Anthony Day, Tim Balcon makes the point that CSR is not Sustainability. While more and more people "get it", as a result of unconscious incompetence there are still many organisations that are no nearer to adopting a sustainable approach than they were 10 years ago - even though they may claim to be sustainable.

Businesses must recognise their role in society and their dependence on the security and sustainability of their supply chains.

Since his last interview some two years ago Tim remains optimistic but, he says, "The challenge has got harder."

A three-day conference on the circular economy, with special emphasis on education.

You can read this text at anthonyday.blogspot.co.uk

Here are the links:

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation ellenmacarthurfoundation.org 

3-D Printing

http://www.fabfoundation.org/about-us/

http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/engineering/research/calm/

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/3dprg/index.aspx

http://www.stratasys.com

http://www.ethicalfilament.org

http://www.3dhubs.com

So you think you know about the circular economy?

Re-inventing Fire - Amory Lovins

The Second Machine Age -Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee

Designing Products for a Circular Economy

Cradle to Cradle - Braungart and McDonough

http://www.c2ccertified.org

http://www.asknature.org

http://www.projectara.com/#project-ara

https://phonebloks.com/en/goals

Ellen MacArthur - Disruptive Innovation Festiva;

http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/education/featured/disruptive-innovation-festival-2014-20th-october-14-november

Short Talks - these were professionally video-ed and will presumable be available on the EMF website in due course.

Role of the Consumer

Nudge - Richard Thaler

Stark - Ben Elton

Systems Thinking

http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/circular-economy/interactive-system-diagram 

The Gardens of Democracy - Hanauer and Liu

Cultural Genocide - Lawrence Davidson

http://www.fairphone.com

Circular Economy - why it makes business sense.

http://www.citycarclub.co.uk

Teaching circular economy in a global context

Jef Staes: Do diplomas kill passion and talent? http://youtu.be/G6JGYRodNeA 

https://www.khanacademy.org

https://www.liftshare.com/uk/

http://www.trigema.de/shop/index.jsf

http://www.desso.com

Wuhan Energy Flower : http://www.greenlinked.com/architecture/concepts/82-wuhan-energy-flower-worlds-most-sustainable-officebuilding-wuhan.html

Pop-up Farm

NASA - temperature change http://youtu.be/JRayIgKublg (there are many other videos from NASA on the theme)

Hope in a changing climate http://youtu.be/z_xET5iZSy0

Green gold - http://youtu.be/YBLZmwlPa8A

happycoffeebean.com

hhg2e.com

http://www.pop-up-foundation.org

Circular Economy Bootcamp

Steady State Economics - Herman E Daly (and several other books by him)

http://www.riversimple.com/Default.aspx ultra low emission cars

Today I’m talking to Jake and Amee, creators of the S’wheat reusable plant-based water bottle. (Very special thanks to them for going through it all twice, because first time I forgot to turn the recorder on.) We’re talking about protecting the environment, in particular protecting it from plastic waste.

Incidentally, there’s a detailed analysis of the impact of plastic pollution, including the number of decades or centuries it takes for common plastic products to degrade, on the Happiness Without website.

This week Extinction Rebellion has been digging up a lawn and calling up a storm. In other news Microsoft is committing to going carbon negative, carbon labelling seems to be back and Drax claims that the UK is getting cleaner because they are burning wood, while the government is making plans to shut down your stove -you know, the one that burns wood. 

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon is throwing money - $10 billion - at the climate crisis, but is it enough? Political economist Ann Pettifor says that a shortage of money will never be a problem with dealing with climate change; the main obstacle is mobilising the skills and resources to do what’s needed. And the financial institutions don’t help either.

There’s a special report from the the you-couldn’t-make-it-up dept, but first what has Extinction Rebellion been up to in Cambridge? 

Yes, it's Friday 13th - lucky for some and the end of a busy week finding out more and more about sustainability. This time: The Insider Media Bioreneewables Breakfast - McCain Foods; it's all good, and sustainable - a geologist's explanantion of fracking - sustainability in schools and business schools - sutainable cities - Global Divestment Day. Oh, and we need more engineers.

Counting down to the 29th July reporting deadline - a Special Offer on their CRC Market Research Report from Cambium LLP - why the Performance League Table is still important - DECC's proposals for CRC simplification - and meanwhile, in Australia...

For a 10% discount on the Cambium CRC Market Research Report use this code: 37DA06. Full details here.

To talk about any aspect of CRC and sustainability call Anthony Day on 07803 616877.

It was only a few weeks ago, on 10th June, that I published an episode entitled “God Save the Queen”. It was clearly premature to entitle last week’s episode “The Way Ahead”. 

God Save the King!

And as far as the PM is concerned, the jury’s still out.

This is edition No. 400. Thank you for listening and supporting the Sustainable Futures Report since I started podcasting back in 2007.

AR6

The big news this week, overshadowed by Ukraine like everything else, is the publication of the latest part of AR6, the climate report from the IPCC. I also mention shortages of water and shortages of sand - and fewer downloads than I'd hoped for.

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 Event just before Christmas. It seems that something very like it happened some 2,600 years ago. Could it happened again? Norway is revising its investment plans and with a month’s experience of being an electric car owner we can tell you that buying an electric vehicle could be the best decision you ever make, or possibly the very worst.

Since my last episode quite a lot has happened. We have a new prime minister in the UK, there’s a new green bill in the United States, Russia turns off its gas supplies to Europe and Pakistan turns from drought to catastrophic floods. The new prime minister has promised to sort out the energy crisis within a week and as he leaves office, Boris Johnson appears to have committed the incoming administration to building a new nuclear power station at Sizewell. That won't be in time to solve the current crisis and in any case the Greens believe that the solution is simply to nationalise the energy companies. Meanwhile incoming Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng raises doubts about the truth of the green credentials of Drax power station, which has received multi billions of pounds for burning wood. There’s feedback from patrons and listeners, Tommy Wiedmann and Carol Dance, and finally will the United States’ Artemis mission ever get off the ground, and if it does, is it a good thing?

Today we have a follow-up on last week’s methane story, a reminder of World Refill Day and I reveal why we’re burning more coal this week. In other news I ask who’s in the driving seat, or is the seat driving? There's a podcast about the end of the world, but first, let's talk about the warming oceans, the biggest heat sink on the planet.

Cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs. Two founders of Crypto Coral Tribe explain their plans to use these cutting edge technologies to support wildlife conservation.

Welcome to the first episode of 2015! Time to make plans - for this year, next year, maybe 10 years hence. Will your business stil be around then? Probably depends on what you do today and tomorrow. My Green Supply Chain Workshop can help. In this episode I explain the main points of my Action Planning Module.

Today I'm talking to Paul Hughes about new applications for batteries. How they can store energy, save energy, save money and cut carbon emissions.

Remembering last week’s warning from the IEA that we have but 6 months to head off the worst of the climate crisis, there’s worrying news of unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic and there’s serious river pollution in the UK. Whatever the need for urgent action we need continuous research and innovation, steadily building an infrastructure for a low-carbon future.  I bring you news of solar farms and energy storage, stories of the future of fossil fuels, news of ways of processing waste. And the advice and ideas for establishing a green recovery still keep pouring in, though not to universal approval. 

Yes, the threat, challenge and tragedy that is COVID19 remains everyone’s first concern. Coronavirus affects us all, but in this episode my aim is to talk briefly of other things.

This week I bring you a miscellany of stories that you may have missed. 

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.

I was sent a review copy of this film and here's my verdict. You can see the trailer here: http://ykr.be/hn62dkp6v

A good film, but not a great film. Yes, there's an awful lot wrong with our planet and plenty to protest about, but what should we be doing about it?

 This week, a detailed look at the future of transport and sustainable transport in particular. News from OPEC and will they really drive the price of oil up? And while they are all pumping out the black stuff - less of it than before - the Chinese are digging out more of their black stuff - coal. The winter outlook for electricity supplies, is it as rosy as we thought? Some commentators predict that the UK and France could be in for a shock if it gets really cold in January.

You can find the text of this episode at anthonyday.blogspot.com, with links to my sources.

This is Anthony Day with the Sustainable Futures Report for the 15th April and another opportunity to hear my interview with David Emslie of Novalux LED Ltd. This week the Sustainable Best Practice Exchange takes place - in fact it will all be over by the time you hear this. I’ll tell you about it next week, about the launch of the Sustainable Best Practice Mastermind Group and how you can get on the waiting list, and about a whole load more sustainability issues.

In this wide-ranging discussion with Anthony Day, Karl Coplan talks about measuring your carbon footprint and sharing it with friends, whether hurricanes are caused by climate change, whether the US administration will change its position on the climate and how he lives the good life with a carbon footprint of only four tons.

Yes, COP21, the Paris climate change conference, is finally here. No results expected before the end of next week so I'm going to take the opportunity to review what this conference means for us, for our businesses, for families and for our future. Also in this episode, the minister takes control of fracking, business views of the climate conference and plans for a ministry of the future. Should we take action on climate change? Have a look at this video: https://youtu.be/zORv8wwiadQ 

Anthony Day presents Sustainability to 400 Year 12s at St Aidan's, Harrogate.

In the final part of our series on the management of waste I bring you an interview with Peter Wang Hjemdahl of rePurpose Global. As I mentioned last week, his organisation aims to help you get your plastic footprint under control. The headline on the website is “Together, rePurpose Global’s coalition is recovering 14,228,074 pounds of plastic each year - will you join us?”

In this episode I'm looking at pension funds, plastics and population. There's good news and bad news on fracking, there is controversy in Canada about clean water, and ISDS, which I mentioned last time, has had a day in court. It seems that no one can stop Juliana, not even Donald Trump. Since the last episode we've had World Water Day, Earth Hour and Easter, that festival of packaging. WWF warns that climate change may be about to change our diets. And on the energy front there’s progress on the lithium air battery and progress, in a negative sort of way, on the U.K.'s latest coal mine. Thinking of a new house? Why not print one?

This week:

The big sustainability story is the floods in the North, but that’s still going on so I’ll leave it until next week. This time I look backwards at the 50 or so episodes which I’ve published this year and I remind you of the topics covered and the experts that I interviewed. I’ll share their views of the future as well. This time last year I invited your prediction of the oil price. My guess was $65/barrel. On 30th December it’s trading around $37. Nobody else got close. Any offers for the oil price on 1/1/17? I’m not committing myself.

Thank you all for listening to the Sustainable Futures Report. I got the second highest level of hits this year on Christmas Day. More exciting than Christmas TV? More important, certainly!

This episode includes contributions from Jaclyn Kitson, Andy Whyle, Harold Vandenburg, Gareth Kane, Maggie Smallwood,

Tim Balcon, Fiona Pelham, Harriet Ennis, Kat Luckcock, Daniel White, James McKemey, President Obama, James Spencer and Callum Roberts.

One year on I'm talking again to James Dyke of Exeter University. This time our discussions ranged from Chelsea tractors to carbon sinks in the Arctic and the Amazon, the mystery of the missing methane (missing from the stats, that is, there’s too much of it in the atmosphere), why injecting sulphuric acid into the stratosphere might be a good idea and why it might not be. We reflected that peat takes centuries to form and only days to destroy, and asked why fossil fuel companies like selling fossil fuels. (Spoiler alert: it makes them rich.) I asked, "When the science is disregarded, denied, disputed, even distorted, why don’t scientists speak up?" And are the politicians right in saying that we’re on track to meet the Paris Agreement and meet Net Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050? "Yes!", they say, (but they are probably crossing their fingers behind their backs.)

What do we do now? This is what James Dyke told me.

The Royal Academy of Engineering reports that time is rapidly running out for the UK to develop its energy policy and expresses serious doubts about fracking. One of the junior ministers at the Department Of Energy and Climate Change says she understands it all now. We have the draft agreement text for COP21 - the international climate change conference coming up in Paris in December. The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative will be there to secure the best outcome. Problems for VW and vacuum cleaners: and why it’s time to stop Indonesia smoking. Breaking news on carbon. CO2 makes you dumb!

 Cricket, (no the game, not the insect), could be at threat from climate change according to the MCC and the Climate Coalition. The government's White Paper on Brexit is published and Martin Baxter comments on the implications for the environment. News from Scotland about a lamp post which generates its own electricity and statistics from the SMMT about diesel cars. I also ask why marine anthropogenic litter is an issue for us all, whether Greenpeace has overstepped itself this time, I introduce another candidate for the Department of Missed Opportunities, and Sir David King warns that time is no longer on our side.

This week: more on the Greenpeace/HSBC palm oil story - and a different perspective. High speed rail and solar trains, a journey to the North Pole and we’re still waiting for a decision on Swansea Bay. Someone’s invented a robot that eats pollution, and what is a single-event upset?

As always, you'll find links to most of these stories on my blog at anthonyday.blogspot.com 

Let me start by telling you that the Wednesday Interview next week is a discussion on the future role of electric vehicles. Don’t miss it and do let me know what you think.

That’s about all for this week - yes, really - because in January I am going to concentrate on developing the website, raising the social media profile and developing the deal for patrons... 

This week I bring you information about smart cities and cybercrime, (How safe is your data?) about Britain in a spat with the EU - no, nothing to do with Brexit - grass mills from Ecotricity, the sale of the National Grid to foreign stakeholders (well, part of it, anyway), new terrorists on the block, how the contribution of wind to reducing carbon emissions has been underestimated in England and how the growth of methane emissions is worrying climate scientists.

Text version with links is at anthonyday.blogspot.com 

The history and purpose of the Sustainable Futures Report as it nears its 200th edition.

COVID-19, the coronavirus, has got to be at the top of any agenda, but there’s also news about COP26, JP Morgan, Barclays Bank, wind power, climate denial and the coming of the Anti-Greta, a bar of soap and how’s your business coping with risk?

This is an unexpected bonus edition of the Sustainable Futures Report for Thursday 17th August. Last Saturday, I was asked if I would appear on TalkTV to talk about the Greenpeace action when they sat on the roof of the prime minister's country house in North Yorkshire. You can hear what I said, what the other panellist said and what the public said as well. 

COP21 is over, so where do we go from here? Is this the beginning of the end of fossil fuels? And this week let’s reduce, re-use and recycle. In fact let’s go a lot further than that. I’ll introduce you to Mark Shayler  (thisisape.co.uk) who blows the whistle on child soldiers and Tracey Rawling Church (greenlight.kyocera.co.uk) who explains why you might not need a new printer.  Matt Dredger asks the question why buy it when you can borrow it? (borroclub.co.uk)

This week we follow up on a number of stories and introduce some new ones. You’ll hear Donald Trump on Climate Change and his environmental awards. This time next week we’ll know exactly what he’s going to be doing with those awards. But first, Client Earth had another day in court, and Spain is set to get hotter - much hotter. On the energy front, Big Energy Saving Week had little impact, Ceres Power offers another route to a hydrogen future, we look at how Canadians are holding on to heat and what’s that out there in Swansea Bay? Finally, how well is the world doing on renewables in 2016? And sorry, Prime Minister Theresa May, the UK isn’t doing nearly as well as you’d like us to think.

Find the text of this episode complete with links at anthonyday.blogspot.com

This flagship government scheme is off to a shaky start. So far it seems to be destroying jobs and leaving consumers in the cold!

With the publication of National Grid's annual Winter Outlook Report it's clear that safety margins between electricity supply and demand are much tighter than they were. However, standby generators and agreements with major power users are likely to be able to keep the lights on. The UK still needs a firm commitment to a long-term energy policy. With the latest report from the IPCC urging the phasing out of fossil fuels, is the government, with its scepticism about green issues and firm commitment to fracking, on the right track?

This week I'm talking about floods. About flood prevention, specifically the Foss Barrier in York.

There’s something in the air in London and other large British cities. There's something in the air in France and there's certainly something in the air in Colombia. 

President Trump has reversed President Obama's ban on the Keystone XL and Dakota pipelines but have we come to the end of the pipeline for carbon capture and storage?

President Trump is tweeting regularly as ever, but he’s told some parts of the US government to button it. Who, and why?

Listen now to the week's top sustainability stories.

Is CSR dead? Maybe not, but the VW emissions scandal has seriously damaged it. We read a postcard from George Osborne in China. And we round off with a conversation about the practicalities of renewables with James Spencer, MD of Portland Analytics. www.portland-analytics.co.uk

Also see enertrag.com - a wind farm generating hydrogen.

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.

A brief view of the main parties' manifestos. What do the Conservatives, Labour, LibDems, UKIP, the Greens and the SNP have to say? A summary of their ideas on energy, climate change, sustainability and the F-word. (No, not that F-word.)

This week I'm talking to Harald Overholm, CEO of Alight Energy of Stockholm, about coupling renewable energy with power purchase agreements. The UK government has published its NDC, the CCC has set out a detailed plan, there's more news of extreme weather from the Met Office and sad and worrying news about dangerous air pollution.

Food is probably the most important issue of our time. It's the effect on food which will be the most crucial consequence of the climate emergency.

Meet a man with a vision.

Meet Eddy Badrina of Eden Green Technology

"Sunak is worse than a war criminal," says Just Stop Oil. "He knows new oil and gas will impose unimaginable suffering and destroy the lives and livelihoods of billions of people. He knows that it will push the world past irreversible tipping points, meaning that the consequences and suffering will echo for centuries. He is risking nothing less than the collapse of human civilisation."

Carbon offsetting has been in the news this week and I've been working on an analysis of the pros and cons for a client. What's the answer? Well, it's certainly not simple as I shall attempt to explain. And then, in other news, I look at the Shell Prélude, the Aramco share offer, a new oilfield in Iran, tree planting in Turkey, and what looks like a U-turn on fracking in the UK less than a week after a moratorium was announced. And in Australia the extent and intensity of the wildfires almost defies description. Is climate change to blame?

I need to take stock and make the Sustainable Futures Report as relevant and interesting to you the listener as I can. I'm going to develop ideas for the theme and the content. To do that I'm taking a break and aiming to be back in January.

Much of our environment is at risk from more than Climate Change. It is at risk from human activity damaging biodiversity, and in some cases driving parts of it to extinction. Who cares and who is responsible? Well increasingly governments care and shareholders care and those who lead major corporations may be at risk if they don't recognise their actions or the actions of their organisations are damaging biodiversity. That brings us to this week’s interview.

In the climate crisis news this week: the Amazon fires, why they’re not the only fires, why they may not be as bad as you think and why they may be much more serious in ways you don’t expect. The future for the consumer society. Prof Sir Ian Boyd, retiring chief scientific advisor at Defra, has set out his thoughts, which look very much like system change to me. And the flying prince. Are carbon offsets making his travel carbon neutral?

This week I want to remember the people of Paris. Those who died, those who were injured, their friends, their families, their loved ones. 

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, Solidarité.

We are all in this together.

Also in this episode, some thoughts on the Paris Climate Conference and a new direction for UK energy policy. The minister speaks.

In this episode I talk about more plastic rubbish, about energy, about politicians and about Brexit. I also mention industrial-scale fly-tipping, what to do with your empty Pringles can and a new Circular Economy initiative.

Special thanks to Eleanor Rogers for extensive information on plastic.

Project Drawdown aims to bring us to the point beyond Net Zero where greenhouse gases in the atmosphere start to decline. Prince William's Earthshot Prize aims to find solutions to environmental issues and the climate crisis. Boris Johnson aims to build back greener. I aim to bring you reports and insights about a sustainable future. This week's Sustainable Futures Report has the latest!

Business ethics. Last month I was asked to address a group of business students at a local University. I thought it would be a useful recap of the main sustainability issues if I shared my presentation with you today. The slides are up on slide share, http://www.slideshare.net/AnthonyDay10/business-ethics-and-sustainability - and other links are on the blog at anthonyday.blogspot.com. The slides have very few words so you'll need to listen to what I'm saying to get the sense. You are welcome to use this material yourself if you have an appropriate audience. Of course, for a fee I’d always be delighted to come and talk to them for you!

Please visit my Patreon page at http://www.patreon.com/sfr   

A report revealed that the birth-rate in England and Wales reached an all-time low last year. Talk Radio asked me to talk to them about it.

Rebecca Henderson, Harvard Professor, Author and Authority on Reimagining Capitalism talks to the Sustainable Futures Report.

I wrote a lot about Ukraine and energy and sanctions to start this week’s episode, but I’ve deleted it all. This is not the place. 

This week I look at a battle for coal in Australia, the need for long duration electricity storage, a UK government reminder about political impartiality in schools, green bonds and ghost flights. And what will the IPCC’s latest report say when it’s launched next week?

This week the British government published its Clean Growth strategy. Australia updated its energy policy as well. Both will be controversial. One of the major oil companies has seen the light and finds it’s electric. Talking of seeing the light, a famous journalist seems to have had a Damascene conversion. Will the Daily Mail allow him to write for them ever again? Would you like a nuclear power station at the bottom of your street or would you prefer to rely on the tides? But there are more question marks over tidal power from Swansea Bay. Are the developers getting themselves in a hole? Electric cars seem to be coming to a bump in the road in Norway and in Canada there may be problems in the pipeline. How big is your carbon footprint? If you show me yours I’ll show you mine.

This time the topics I'm covering include good news and positive climate messages from the mining industry, from the EU, from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority - maybe even from Boris Johnson! There’s good news, too, about geothermal energy, cutting pollution and a possible end to the throwaway culture. But the list of bad news is ever longer: Commuters committed to their cars, why trees are not the answer, threats to sue the government over continued use of fossil fuels, accelerating polar ice-melt and why wearing clothes can be bad for the environment. I'll start with the bad news, so you’ve got something to look forward to.

Time to mine the asteroids for scarce resources or should we be developing a circular economy closer to home? Or is space travel for holidays? Virgin Galactica passengers have paid their $250,000 fares but have been waiting in the departure lounge now for some years. Meanwhile, back on earth the future’s electric (should I buy a new car?) inner-city vertical farms are starting to deliver locally-grown food, at least in New York, and a succession of tropical storms and hurricanes is surely making climate denial ever harder. Pack up your troubles - but not in a plastic bag. At least not in the country that could fine you £30,000. All this and more in the latest Sustainable Futures Report.

Challenges and opportunities for the copper industry and its role at the centre of the low carbon economy. Balancing environmental constraints with the growing demand for the world's best conductor of electricity and heat. Text at sustainablefutures.report

The idea of the circular economy is to use, reuse and recycle materials to minimise the amount that we have to take from virgin resources. In an ideal world there is no such thing as a waste. When something is finished with it becomes an input to a new process. We are very far from achieving that, but there are people working hard to make it a reality. People like those at the Material Library of India. And it’s about a lot more than just collecting things up after they have been thrown away.

Recently I spoke to Shubhi Sachan, founder of the Material Library of India.

Plastic pollution is a perennial problem. The Plasticology Project aims to be part of the solution.

Today is World Bee Day

This week, should the Guardian’s Carbon Bombs be defused? There’s a new report from the World Meteorological Organisation on the State of the Global Climate 2021, I learn about a country where supermarkets accept Bitcoin while IEMA warns about the energy cost of Bitcoin mining, and there’s a prospect of new pandemics.

This is Anthony Day with your Sustainable Futures Report for 17th June brought to you without sponsorship, subsidy or advertising. And because there’s no proprietor to upset I can say exactly what I like. I’m going to talk about more undersea cables like the ones from Norway that we heard about last week, there’s news about those children suing the US government and yes, we have just had the hottest May since records began. It’s hot in Dubai, too, where they’ve announced a major CSP project - concentrated solar power. And It’s my last chance before the vote to give you my views on Brexit and the coming chaos - whatever the result. 

But first, I’m going to tell you in more detail about the Sustainable Best Practice Mastermind group. 

Amber Rudd, Secretary of State for Energy, has been writing in the Sunday Times. Jeremy Corbyn, front-runner in the Labour leadership race, has been thinking about re-opening British coal mines and nearly 1,000 members of the medical profession have written an open letter to the Wellcome Trust about fossil fuel investments. We’ve heard the latest on the powerhouse in the North, Shell in the Arctic and a Climate Declaration in Istanbul. 

Visit a CAT, an Electric Mountain and a hotspot in Ukraine.

Last week Business Green staged an important conference - Net Zero Nature. I share some of the insights I gained. In other news, some thoughts about G7 - the upcoming intergovernmental conference, a missed opportunity for green recovery, more reaction to the news about Shell, blowing hot and cold on energy storage, is public transport the way forward? And a bit of mining in the West Midlands.

To give you some pointers on how to control your carbon footprint I'm talking this time to John Cossham. And not just about being green and cutting carbon, but our wide-ranging discussions included population, changing the system, being vegan or vegetarian, the steady-state economy, doughnut economics, gross domestic happiness, tipping points and positive feedback, climate anxiety, near-term human extinction and why we should be doing good now – it's the right thing to do.

And never, ever give up hope.

In this last episode of the Sustainable Futures Report before Christmas I'm going to concentrate on actions.

Actions promised by governments and others to meet the climate challenge. Recommended actions. Actions criticised either because they are not seen as sufficiently far-reaching or simply because they're not being implemented. And actions that some are still taking to deny that there really is a climate crisis. And as always, there’s other news.

We've all heard of the Big Apple but Brighton has a Big Lemon. You can ride in it. You’ll soon be able to ride in driverless cars. They’re expected to arrive in 2019.

After last week’s edition on rubbish I can tell you about Reverse Vending and about grubs that eat plastic. Meanwhile the government is in court yet again over its failure to improve air quality. It’s also using the election to delay the UK’s emissions reduction strategy, as predicted by The Environmentalist. In South Wales there are fears that the General Election could push the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon start date back a year to 2019. We’re still waiting for the government’s 25-year environmental strategy and we’ve been waiting for that since last summer.

We live in challenging times. There is much to be said about the UK political landscape, but for the Sustainable Futures Report I limit myself to sustainability and futures.

That doesn't rule out of politics altogether of course, because I am going to talk in more detail about the appointment of Michael Gove as Secretary of State for the environment and about the Juliana case against the US government. There will probably be something about Brexit in there too. Well it’s hard to ignore the most significant political event since the Second World War ended 72 years ago. 

Combustible ice is a hot topic this week. And self-drive cars? How about self-drive ships? And when is a hybrid not a hybrid?

I'll start with a couple of organisations taking steps to reduce their impact on our planet.

You can read the full text at www.sustainablefutures.report. 

We all heaved a sigh of relief when we completed the Annual and Footprint reports on 29th July. It's not over yet - it's a continuing chore for the foreseeable future. The Environment Agency is about to start auditing, the performance league tableis due out next month and you'd better start now to work out how much actual cash you're going to have to spend on buying carbon allowances next year.

Anthony Day looks at the issues and sets out The Next Steps. You can read this issue as a pdf by downloading it here, or give Anthony a call on 07803 616877

This week's episode is all about plastic.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation continues to promote understanding of the circular economy - Can we win the Carbon War? - Words you shouldn't us in Florida - Around the world in 5 months.

This week’s headline is Regenesis, the title of a book by George Monbiot. I'll tell you what I think and indeed what others think about his latest ideas.

I'm also bringing you a few stories that you might have missed; some about food, some about geo-engineering, the threat of a new pandemic and another book I’m just reading. 

I call this episode “It’s later than you think”, but really it’s later than you want to think. We’ve had warnings for years about the climate crisis but as a global population we’ve been postponing serious action. Now, at the 11th hour plus 59 minutes there’s the World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency. This one is serious. (As if the others weren’t.)

In other news I’ll be talking about the moratorium on fracking, a citizens’ assembly, a new coal mine, smog in Delhi, why Trump may pull federal aid funds from California fire zones, why it could be the end of the runway for some private planes and why you may need more than wellies in Dublin. Finally Dr Matt Winning tells us about his work as a climate researcher and his other life as a stand-up comedian.

I meet Jaclyn Kitson and Andy Whyle from BESST and learn how the organisation was set up and how it helps local businesses. It's a network where organisations share best sustainable business practice. They also work with NISP (nispnetwork.com) to find out if one organisation's waste could be another's raw material. Memorable quotes: "Don't try and do sustainability on your own." "Sustainability is not competitive." "It's about making sure everyone understands the language."

Have you got an organisation like this in your area? Maybe you should set one up.

Ori Ben Ner, CEO of SupPlant, explains how software can help farmers get the best out of every last drop of water.