Interesting links roundup - Jan 17 2025

Here are some articles from around the web which pertain to sustainability in one way or another.

1) https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/january/at-the-thistle (5 min read)

Article about designing policies to handle drug addiction in an afflicted area. I love the bit about including a smoking area in an NHS facility - here it was a deliberate design decision. A healthy illustration of “perfect is the enemy of progress” (which is one of founding principles of Turquoise Sustainability).

2) https://www.ft.com/content/d0292413-5fcf-4ab9-b738-8da289fd4987 (paywalled, 5 min read) An article with an interesting idea on how to very quickly and easily reduce warming effects from aviation. I like the framing of the re-routing as an intervention with a $ per tonne of carbon cost; my other observation is relating the last article’s “perfect is the enemy of progress” which has the code “but you still need to make progress”. And the best way to make progress, as Agile developers know, is to deliver on whatever you can in small chunks.

3) https://indiandefencereview.com/in-2009-sweden-chose-to-replace-books-with-computers-15-years-later-it-allocates-104-million-euros-to-reverse-course/ (5 min read)

While on the subject of progress, I think it’s often worth taking the time to think “is this actually progress?”. This article reviews how digitalizing education, a decision made in 2009, resulted in worse educational outcomes. I should stress: there’s nothing wrong with making mistakes (the 2009 decision-makers didn’t have a crystal ball, and they had the best of intentions); and it’s great that they had the courage to reverse what eventually turned out to be an ineffective decision.

4) https://www.ft.com/content/341f0aaa-7173-454c-89fd-103287625d38 (paywalled, 5 min read)

A report on the potential of Peak Oil consumption in China, with some desperate sounding rationalizations from an Aramco salesperson –which are picked apart in the top comment (as an aside, the FT comments section is by far my favourite social network).

5) https://www.weather.gov.hk/en/wxinfo/pastwx/2024/ywx2024.htm (5 min read)

As I write this in Jan 2025, we have 5 years to reduce carbon emissions by about 45% to meet our Paris Agreement targets. Temperature records are already being broken; hopefully that will light a fire under us (if you'll excuse the expression) to speed up the transition.