The Pale Blue Dot. Fossil fuel fans – why the Far Right Wants us to Burn, and why we ?? their Message. Plus Build-a-Burg, #space veg! And ... more!

Grüezi! I’m Adrian Monck – welcome to this World Economic Forum newsletter!

Also this week – how climate change is making a new caffeine nation, and a quick guide to the jargon of #NFTs.

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1???The Pale Blue Dot

It was science legend Carl Sagan’s birthday this week.

This is a picture Sagan had taken in 1990 from a little spacecraft called Voyager 1, just before its cameras powered down. It was 6 billion kilometres from earth. Today it’s 23 billion kilometres away. If you had a spaceship that could travel at light speed, it would still take nearly a day to catch it up.

Here’s what Sagan said about that picture:

• “So there it is... a pale blue dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
• “[E]very hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer ... every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there –– on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

“Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds...”

• “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
• “To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

And here is astronomy’s Neil Diamond delivering those words in a lecture:

??To save the dot, business has to do its part.

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2???Why the Far Right Loves Climate Denial

And why we have a secret soft spot for their planet-pwning BS.

Andreas Malm is one of today’s most controversial thinkers about climate change. (One of his books is called How to Blow Up a Pipeline.) Now he has another book out looking at how the Far Right has picked up climate denialism and run away with it.

Equally controversial James Butler reviews Malm’s newest, picking up first on the climate deniers’ lines of attack:

• “Far-right responses to climate change mutate according to audience: it’s overpopulation and resource crisis ... it’s really a communist ploy and it’s a fake, or it’s all China anyway, but actually carbon dioxide is a life-giving gas...”

Butler goes on to put us all on the penguin rotisserie:

• “It is rational to take cut-price flights for holidays, travel by car for even the shortest journey, avail oneself of cheap imported meat, use disposable plastics or buy each new iteration of a consumer commodity.
• “These ways of life are produced, supported and virtually required by fossil capitalism itself; it is only from a planetary perspective that they are irrational, even suicidal.
• “Awareness of this terrible disjuncture produces denialism of many kinds, and through that gap the far right may find an entry point.
• “The old formula, ‘we say what you’re really thinking,’ authorises an escape from hypocrisy: ‘we think what your behaviour really implies.’”

There’s a glimpse into that psychological trap in this study: “voicing displeasure at one injustice grants moral capital to participate in others.”

And if you wondered what else feeds the denialism machine? God bless social media!

??No denial here: this coalition is driving demand for low-carbon tech.

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3?? Italy Gave us Espresso, Cappuccino, Macchiato. Now?

It’s giving us coffee beans. Thanks #climatechange!

Finally a satisfyingly smooth side effect to our poisoning of the atmosphere.

? An inclusive path to net zero, according to 5 Young Global Leaders.

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4???The Next Farms Could be in Orbit #space

Scientists have grown chilis in space. What next? Astro-nuts?*

*I’m starting this year’s gig in the Xmas-cracker joke factory early.

??Innovation here on Earth: winners of the 2021 New Champions Awards.

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5?? This Country is Banning Plastic-Wrap for Veggies

In France, there’ll be more plastic in you than on your five-a-day.

? More ways to fight plastic use here.

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6?? Snow Joke – It’s ‘Build a Burg’

Artificial glaciers are now a thing. They might last till your grandkids arrive.

??Another way to prepare for a scary future: catastrophe bonds.

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7?? #NFTs explained

Sort of.

??Fungible fun with Robin Pomeroy and pals on Radio Davos.

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If you enjoy this newsletter – please recommend it!

Best,

Adrian

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Thanks to everyone for behaving themselves.

Also, the family’s elderly cat returned from the vet this week, this is for her...