Good afternoon summer-time social activists! 🔥
A warm wind mercifully blows from the Mediterranean onto my terrace this morning, offering just a little respite whilst I go about baking a carrot cake and preparing this 5 Bullet Friday. So, as these vegan ingredients bake themselves up into something nice, here’s 5 social ingredients that might make up part of a recipe for a better world. Please enjoy!
1. What I’m watching: The Shiny Shrimps – This is a perfect Summer, Olympics-month treat. A pro-level swimmer comes out with homophobic remarks on television. His penance? To coach Paris’ big-hearted but rather ridiculous and amateur gay water polo squad in time for the Gay Games in Croatia. Think Dodgeball meets Eddie the Eagle with a whole lot of gay thrown in! Watch this to cry, laugh and love just a little bit more!
2. What I’m calculating: My 2024 travel so far – As EasyJet reports a bumper summer (whilst Ryanair and others experience some economic turbulence), I thought I’d review my 2024 international travel to date to see what the impact is of opting for coaches as much as possible. I used myclimate.org to calculate flights and blocicarbon.com for coach.
🌎 22nd – 25th January | Barcelona – Geneva return | Coach 🚎 | 18 hours | 1,400km | 42kg C02e
🌎 2nd February | Barcelona to UK | Flight ✈️ | 2 hours | 1,200km | 250kg C02e
🌎 15th March | UK to Hungary | Coach 🚎 | 32 hours | 1,950km | 52kg C02e
🌎 23rd March | Hungary to Barcelona | Coach 🚎 | 35 hours | 2,033km | 55kg C02e
🌎 22nd – 26th April | Barcelona – UK return | Coach 🚎 | 48 hours | 3,000km | 50kg C02e
🌎 24th May | Barcelona to Switzerland | Coach 🚎 | 9 hours | 700km | 19kg C02e
🌎 27th Mary | Switzerland to UK | Coach 🚎 | 20 hours | 1,000km | 26kg C02e
🌎 4th June | UK to Barcelona | Flight ✈️ | 2 hours | 1,400km | 420kg C02e
🌎 28th June – 2nd July | Barcelona – UK return | Coach 🚎 | 48 hours | 3,000km | 55kg C02e
👉 12 one-way trips
🏁 15,683 kilometres
✈️ 2,800km, 4 hours and 840kg C02e by plane
🚎 12,883km, 206 hours, 299kg C02e by coach (versus 2,63kg C02e had these been flights)
🌱 2,384 tonnes of C02e saved by taking coaches, a reduction of 89%
3. Tool I’m exploring: UK Grant-making– This updated tool offers some fascinating insights into the UK scene: “It collates data and insight on over £20 billion of funding from across all funding sectors, using data from regulators, funder accounts and data published using the 360Giving Data Standard to provide an interactive platform for understanding grant-making in the UK.”
4. Policy I’m reading: A Channel Plan – From the architect of the EU-Turkey Deal itself, this policy/letter to the new UK government lays out a frank and matter-of-fact way of approaching boat crossings in the channel. Advocating for much stronger EU-UK cooperation, it outlines how a returns approach could be implemented successfully, with the UK accepting to take accepted asylum seekers from the continent. Well worth a read.
5. Graph I’m amazed by: Temperature averages and the hottest ever day – The Copernicus Climate Change Service recorded the hottest every day globally on record this week on 22nd July, when the average surface temperature hit 17.16°C. Perhaps even more shocking their accompanying, illustrative graphic:
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That’s it for this fortnight! As ever, please let me know your thoughts and feedback – and send anything you’d like me to include in upcoming editions this way.
