Pandemic Lessons for the Climate Emergency
By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance
Pandemics change business-as-usual overnight. Governments mobilise huge resources to tackle the problem and compensate for its impacts. At the same time, people depend on the civil and public domains for advice, protection, health services and the whole infrastructure of response.
Share The Great Switch – Lessons from when 14 Million Homes and Businesses Changed Fuel in Less than a Decade
By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance
Between 1970 and 2018, the UK population rose from 56m to 66m, but both total energy use and carbon emissions fell in this same period. This was because coal – the most carbon-intensive of the fossil fuels – was nearly eliminated, cleaner natural gas consumption rose slightly and then fell, and oil consumption stayed the same, as the growing area of transport remained oil-dependent.
Educating Girls is More Effective in the Climate Emergency than Many Green Technologies
By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance
When looking for solutions to climate change, this case reminds us that we sometimes already know what we should do, but are reluctant to choose options that involve cultural or behaviour change or challenge deep-seated social norms and practices.
Migrants Welcome – How International Hospitality in a Warming World Benefits Everyone
By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance
People also flee from war, civil unrest and personal trauma, and they will increasingly run from natural and unnatural disasters, increasingly caused by climate change: unbearable heat, drought, flooding and crop failures. People also move for education and to join family members who have gone before them. The likelihood that they will be well received depends on how well they can fit in to the places where they land, and whether they are perceived to be adding to or taking from the existing community.
Dethroning King Coal – How a Once Dominant Fuel Source is Falling Rapidly from Favour
By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance
Electricity fuelled by coal is experiencing a record decline. 2019 is expected to show the biggest fall yet, after decades of increases. An accelerated move away from coal is imperative to achieve the goals of the Paris agreement. Coal currently accounts for 38.5% of the global power mix and generates 46% of global CO2 emissions.
Can State-of-the-Art Batteries Fuel a Clean, Renewable Energy and Transport Future?
By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance
But something else happened in Australia in 2019 which might point the way ahead for accelerating the rapid, global transition to renewable energy. Can the nation now point the way from its fire disasters to a clean energy future?
Banking for Good: Trust, Transition and the Return of Public Banks
By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance
The Bank of North Dakota has fostered a tradition of public sector banking since it was founded in 1919 – the same year incidentally that Neville Chamberlain launched the Birmingham Municipal Savings Bank, which – before it was subsumed into the TSB – and subsequent loss of mutual status, had more than sixty branches around the city.
Zero Carbon Britain: Rising to the Climate Emergency
By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance
A new report out today from Rapid Transition Alliance founding member the Centre for Alternative technology (CAT) looks at how the UK can cut energy demand by 60% and reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions using current technologies, without relying on unproven carbon capture.