We're more sophisticated at it now with our gas boilers and internal combustion engines, but humans have depended on a simple energy principle since we lived in caves: if you need energy, set something on fire. If we're going to prevent climate disaster, then we need to move away from burning stuff. And while solar and wind power are cleaner and cheaper, there is a trade-off.

Featuring China's climate targets, a marine treaty, a bonus book review, and solar panels from Aldi.

There was a ground-breaking event in London this week, a first of its kind update on climate change called the National Emergency Briefing. Members of Parliament were invited to attend and many did, as a series of experts set out the state of the climate and the way that Britain will be affected. The briefing was held right opposite the Houses of Parliament and chaired by Mike Berners-Lee, who warned that attendees would hear "difficult news and we're going to face it together".

The earlier the world had started to reduce carbon emissions, the easier it would have been. We'd have had time, and activists would never have needed to demand radical action. The same is true of climate adaptation. We are going to have to adapt to a warmer world, and the sooner we do it the better. Leaving it late means doing it urgently, with a much greater risk that it will be done badly.

Featuring China's climate targets, a marine treaty, a bonus book review, and solar panels from Aldi.

It's Green Libraries Week this week, an event that is organised by the library association CILIP. There are a handful of events across the UK, looking at the role that libraries play in climate change. They are also encouraging libraries to sign up to their manifesto. Many have done so already, including our own local libraries here in Luton. …

If you follow the news in the energy world, you will have noted the huge energy needs of data centres. Global energy demand for computer processing has been growing at 12% a year, with AI now added to cloud storage, streaming services, apps and smart devices, and all the many things we do over the internet. Carbon pollution from data centres is now larger than many (small) countries, at around…

In my work with schools, I advise them on all aspects of sustainability, along with my fellow climate action advisors at Let's Go Zero. That includes food, and the most important aspect of that is meat and dairy. Local and seasonal food only gets you so far. The carbon intensity of meat and dairy is so outsized that you won't really make a significant difference to your school food until you start reducing meat consumption.

This week it's the now annual Global Doughnut Days, hosted by Kate Raworth and her Doughnut Economics Action Lab. There are events happening around the world and online, exploring and investigating the ongoing work around doughnut economics. As my own contribution, I thought I'd check in on how the doughnut is being applied around the world. As a refresher, Doughnut Economics is a way of conceptualising global challenges.

Years ago when I was more involved in the Transition Towns movement, I took part in one of their community training sessions. One of the highlights was an imaginative exercise where we interviewed someone from the future about how they had solved climate change and the energy crisis, and the steps that had got them there. It was a kind of purposeful improvisation that was equal parts silly and moving, unlocking something hopeful in participants who had gathered to think about the world's biggest problems.

Featuring China's climate targets, a marine treaty, a bonus book review, and solar panels from Aldi.

A few years ago there was an unusual campaign to make London the world's first national park city. London, especially south of the river, has enough green spaces to just about make that plausible. In 2019 they achieved it, though I don't really know what difference it is making. Here's something more impressive however: the first country to declare all of its territory a biosphere reserve.

I'm doing a bit of a reading series on the future at the moment. I reviewed Designing Hope last week, with more to come. The Green Ages is part of that too, despite being a book on history. Written by German historian Annette Kehnel and translated by Geshe Ipsen, it's written with an eye on the past so that we can apply lessons for the future: "The aim of this book is to help increase our scope for action.

Just outside my office window is a heat pump, which provides our house with low carbon heating and hot water. It's an air source heat pump, which means it draws heat from the air and channels it into the house. There are other forms of heat pumps, notably ground source, and less well known is the water source heat pump. I've written before about a scheme to use…

Featuring China's climate targets, a marine treaty, a bonus book review, and solar panels from Aldi.

When you put solar panels on your roof, the sun pays for them. It might not feel like it when you get the installation quotes in, but those panels will generate more than they cost and the universe pays you back. So why aren’t we putting them everywhere? Why are so many people living in energy poverty when there is such energy abundance right over our heads?

Did you know that during the Cold War, 10% of East Germany's GDP came from taking waste from West Germany? People couldn't move across that border, but rubbish could - and it moved from the richer territory to the poorer one. That's a pattern that repeats itself again and again in Alexander Clapp's eye-opening expose of the global waste industry. Trash from the EU is shipped across the world to be burned in East Asia.

This week we've seen the Prime Minister at pains to call out the Reform party's racist policies, while insisting that people who vote for Reform are not themselves racists. It's a tightrope walk, with journalists repeatedly inviting politicians to call their opponents racist. For those ready to milk offense for political gain, the distinction between policy and person is quickly blurred again.

Featuring China's climate targets, a marine treaty, a bonus book review, and solar panels from Aldi.

The landscape architect Kongjian Yu died this week, but as a pioneer of climate resilient cities, his visionary work will only get more relevant as the world warms.

In 2021 a survey asked 10,000 young people in ten countries how they felt about climate change. 75% said the future was frightening and 55% thought humanity was doomed. "People are not excited about the future any more," notes design futurist Sarah Housley, and that has consequences. Without a vision for the future, it's hard to summon the will to change what's broken and create anything better.

There are two very different climate events this weekend - Draw the Line, and SunDay. What can we learn from comparing them?

China is still regularly used as an excuse for inaction on climate change: if China isn't doing its bit, then anything we do is pointless. This line became popular about 20 years ago and it had some validity at the time. It hasn't been a serious argument for a while, as China has been doing far more than most people realise.

I don't generally read political memoirs. In the 18 years I've been posting reviews here, I can only think of a handful of politicians whose books I've featured. But I've got time for Jacinda Ardern, former prime minister of New Zealand and a politician who was different in many ways. Chief among those is that she didn't harbour any great ambition for power, and didn't consider herself politician material - too sensitive, too thin-skinned.