When you’ve had enough of the Christmas TV specials and have given up trying to work out infuriating puzzles, we’ve got the very thing for you: a selection, in no particular order, of some of the reads, moments, infographics and campaigns we’ve enjoyed this year:
This great essay from Jonathan Rowson of the Social Brain Centre at the RSA is timely, opening up all sorts of questions, including whether greater emphasis on the spiritual would be a counterpoint to our well developed sense of materialism.
We enjoyed David Roberts’ observations on politics this year at Vox. See his pieces on what clean energy’s impact on jobs tells us about politics and why tech nerds can’t get their heads round politics.
Politico featured a piece in May, with lots of insight into campaign strategy, on how American energy is being changed by Mike Bloomberg, red state businesses and midwestern lawyers.
Circulate news taught us some unexpected things about all things resource related, for instance see Alysia Garmulewicz’s post about biomimicry, 3D printing and the circular economy.
We took inspiration from Al Gore’s mission to transform capitalism and President Obama’s speech announcing that the Keystone XL pipeline would not be built, which struck a note of resolve before the Paris COP21.
We liked Michael Liebreich on why more women are needed in the energy sector and Mark Cocker on why so much new nature writing is tame.
We loved Carbon Brief‘s map showing how the UK generates its electricity.
Avoid2‘s simple infographic demonstrates how the Paris pledges can help avoid the severest impacts of climate change.
A report published by the Cambridge University Centre for Science and Policy, and commissioned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, offers a refreshingly different take on climate from government. It concludes: “The risks of climate change may be greater than is commonly realised, but so is our capacity to confront them. An honest assessment of risk is no reason for fatalism.”
And here are a couple of campaigns we particularly liked this year: Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall‘s War on Waste got the message on resources out loud and clear and The Wildlife Trusts‘ My Wild Life campaign expresses beautifully and simply what wildness means to us all.
Finally, for a bit of fun, in case you missed it, you could watch David Attenborough doing what he does best, narrating the beginning of Adele’s ‘Hello’ video.
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The top five most popular reads on our blog this year:
