This post first appeared on the Rapid Transition site... t is about time the UK government got to grips with retrofitting existing housing to scale up home energy efficiency across the country. One way to do this would be to establish a one-stop shop on every high...
Our blogs
Demand for climate-damaging SUVs is higher when people are exposed to advertising – ‘green’ transport messages make no difference
A ground breaking new study reveals that demand for climate-damaging SUVs is higher when people are exposed to advertising and that even the small number of messages encouraging ‘greener’ transport appear to get drowned out by the car adverts. The new primary research...
How to increase the chances of success at COP26
So that was the budget then – and, bizarrely, on the eve of a hugely important climate conference, UK chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced billions in road spending, cuts to taxes on polluting domestic flights and has cancelled long-delayed fuel duty...
It is time we stopped the ‘brain pollution’ of high-carbon advertising
The advertising industry has enjoyed a lack of scrutiny for its role in the climate crisis, but its time end the promotion of polluting fossil fuel companies and high-carbon lifestyles by adverts, and see such advertising now as a form of ‘Brain Pollution’. A newly...
Death in the valley – is this finally the alarm that can’t be ignored?
With bad news from the global heating front arriving in lorry loads, it is becoming ever more difficult to stay positive about our chances of successfully tackling the climate emergency. The astonishing temperatures across the western United States and Pacific...
Car Free Megacities
Great cities set the tone for modern living and a new campaign for Car Free Megacities is aiming to improve the music of our urban streets as well as clear their air. The campaign is writing to the mayors of Paris, New York and London to ask if they will...
How advertisers got people shopping in two-tonne trucks
New study shows three quarters of ‘off road’ SUVs sold in towns and cities and calls on ad agencies to drop polluters We are far less in control of the things that we buy, such as cars, than we think. In a new study, Mindgames on wheels we show how marketing created...
Re-Green the Village
It's time to put the secateurs, herbicide and peat compost away and let the over-manicured English village return to nature. Thirty years ago we bought a rather rat infested - alright, very rat infested – cottage, and have enjoyed it ever since. It’s where we’ve spent...
A practical solution to the other permanent pandemic
By Edgar Cahn and Christine Gray Like Covid, social isolation spreads its harms to families and neighbourhoods within nations round the globe, striking people across the age spectrum from birth to old age, undermining their health and well-being, even leading to early...
‘Super’ tax break for the company sucking life from high streets
The Chancellor’s recent ‘New Towns’ deal - £1bn for 45 towns (of which 40 just happen to be in Tory constituencies) is welcome. So is the £150m to help communities take over pubs, theatres and other local institutions in their areas which have a unifying social effect...