tarmacking is a horrible job especially at night, personally I'd rather reduce the cost of infrastructure maintenance using automation and then pay people a living wage to do nicer jobs.

This is really positive news especially as most the efficiency savings come from things that are only at the start of their roll-out, a lot of the infrastructure development for solar and wind is already in place with construction already in progress for huge amounts of generation. It likely also that the lower demand for electricity comes in part due to more efficient devices gaining market share; better water heaters, heat-pumps, LED lighting, etc combined with better insulation and more focus on efficiency - plus of course home solar or similar, an increasing amount of people are at least partly off-grid and use home generated power which reduces demand on the power grid.

We also have some really useful new tech starting to reach market like tidal generation, tandem solar cells, Perovskite (which we've been hearing about for ages but they're actually starting to build factories), e-fuels (again long heralded but actually starting to move into commercial production), and various new electric planes, boats, charging technologies, energy storage mediums, and etc all of which will help increase the rate of adoption and help decrease carbon emissions.

Yeah that makes a lot of sense, personally I think a big part of the solution will have to be some form of community focused solution to end the culture of conspicuous consumerism and economic based social value - i don't think it's wrong to want good things or beautiful things but valuing something more because it's got a certain logo is absurd, even more so when you're valuing people simply based on which logo's they can afford. I fear when worker run cooperatives compete it'll still create that imperative to advertise and gain market edge which has caused so much of our twenty-first century woes.

My solution would have to involve a strong attack on not just copyright, patents and monopolies but on the very structure of our industrial economy. We need school and universities to be actively participating in community science and design projects to create verified and tested open source designs which can be fabricated locally anywhere in the world - it's a pretty radical idea really because it involves changing pretty how we do and think about pretty much everything but it's got a lot of positives.

Firstly it's basically how the PhD system was intended, you put all that effort into doing a bit of science and when you've done it they check it's ok and say 'yep, you're a real scientist now' and that science gets added to the public storehouse of knowledge for the benefit of all - we could extend that so the education system teaches and guides participation in community benefiting projects like citizen science and collaborative design -- for kids things like data gathering, group experiments, etc while university students are doing design work, materials testing, creating documentation, user guides, or other related media depending on specialisation. Projects will be worked on by community members in various ways, either as part of official efforts, community projects or individual work - basically the same model as social media, sometimes a random person goes viral for making something cool and sometimes a big company uses their budget to make good content.

The thing i always think about is washing machines because they're so painfully simple and yet when you look at the choices available in stores there's a crazy amount of totally meaningless choice - we ended up having to pick between one with 'sport' mode and one with 'sanitary' mode - presumably actually essentially the same thing but my why do they have these weird settings? because then they can have one with limited choices as the cheap one, then the next level up one that can do most the things you'll probably want and expensive ones that can do it all and have an app.. it's all just software settings, it doesn't cost them anything to have a mode that spins the drum for X seconds and runs the heater for X seconds - we could have a really simple design for a washing machine that's easy to fabricate and repair, an easy to flash microprocessor connected to controls so you can easily choose the modes you're likely to want and change your mind if the situation changes (for example you take up sports and require a longer soak and wash cycle or a new cleaning agent is developed which works better when used differently)

school kids could do supervised and documented tests to determine ideal washing conditions, it'd be a fun way to learn about science and how it relates to real-life plus they'd have more of a connection to the world they're part of, the washing machine wouldn't be a weird alien device from on high it'd be something they actually helped create - a wonderful feeling.

design students could participate in various design related challenges and projects such as creating custom displays and dial configurations, art students on making various options for making them look cool and beautiful - all passing work (i.e. work that meets the required criteria) is added to the general database of designs and options which people anywhere around the world can access when ordering an open source washing machine fabricated from their local small industrial firm, community run fablab, or to create with their own tools.

Again not saying this is the final or ideal solution but everyone should be used to having access to the very best, most efficient, and well designed things - if someone wants to show off then they should show off their good taste not their ability to outspend people without generational wealth. A community working together to design and create is always going to be better than a community battling itself.

I think about this a lot it's an interesting one, the current system of money is kinda crazy but the principle of having a token that can be used in trades is great.

Like @keepthepace said I can see it's significance diminish but not entirely vanish, if I want you to come and do the colour scheme for my living room then it's taking time from your life which i'd like to repay you but you might not need anything i know how to do -however personC might want something i can do and be able to do something you need - rather than having to work out every trade and find the people to agree we just use a token, that token is money.

The problem comes when you need that token to live and they're all in the hands of a greedy group of crazy people obsessed with having the most tokens - maybe we actually need more types of money not less, like maybe we should get land tokens that allow us to trade land but everyone gets a set amount and you can't just buy a thousand acres because your great-grandfather sold opium... Maybe even two types of money to buy food, a basic ration that affords for a complete and healthy diet of your choice plus a surplus coin which is earned by supplying the economy with foods or materials required (e.g. if you grow apples and supply them to the community pool you get 1 surplus token per kg but strawberries you get 1.3 st per kg due to local demand) these tokens can then only be spent on luxuries, rare items, and non-essential services.

I'm certainly not saying that's the system i propose or support simply that there's a lot more options and possibilities than we normally consider - maybe one land token gets you a small beach-front property or a huge bit of old farmland to restore, that gives everyone personal choice and helps manage demand with all sorts of interesting challenges - if you move onto a ruined plot of land and make it beautiful then you deserve more tokens than it cost you to get there but that opens of the possibility of someone purposely getting a rough bit of land, paying others to work on it using their excess surplus tokens then claiming the extra land tokens for themselves... and is that a bad thing or a good thing?

Thinking about things in obscure ways can really help to crystallise the interesting and important parts of something we're so used to thinking of in everyday terms, like what really is money and what is money supposed to be.

yeh this is a really promising technology and it's not as far as most people seem to think from being widely adoptable, there are some great projects underway

The CCH2 [Carbon Capture and Hydrogen production from Biomass, Kew Technology] Project will develop designs for additional modules which will upgrade this gas to produce separate high-purity Hydrogen and CO2 streams. The hydrogen can be sold for industrial / transport applications and the CO2 sent for sequestration (20,000 tonnes per year per module). The strong revenues from the hydrogen enable overall very low costs per tonne of CO2 removed and the financing of sustainable biomass supply chains in a circular economy providing multiple environmental and societal benefits including new rural and industrial jobs.

basically you grow a load of plants (generally the excess biomass from crops and maintained spaces) and burn them (in this case through a gasification process that releases hydrogen also) the carbon which is released is then captured for storage or use, this can be especially useful when burning plants that have grown on toxic ground or polluted rivers as a way of absorbing all the bad stuff which is then trapped forever and returned to an old coalmine along with all the carbon that originally came from there.

another interesting project that just got funding is DRIVE;

Mission Zero has developed a new DAC technology that, at scale, is projected to have 75% lower costs and energy footprints than today’s commercial solutions and is suitable for both carbon utilisation and sequestration (CCUS) use cases. With engineering support from Optimus, the project will design Mission Zero’s 365 tons a year pilot plant in Phase 1. This will integrate with O.C.O Technology’s CCUS process which stores CO2 permanently while producing building aggregates from waste.

using the captured carbon to make useful materials like building aggregates makes it far more likely systems will get adopted, especially if they get to a price point where they're creating profitable items This is something a lot of people are working on

[Cambridge Carbon Capture Ltd] aims to deliver a fully costed plan for a demonstrator capable of capturing CO2 from air and converting it directly into a mineral by-product with uses as construction materials using CCC’s CO2LOC carbon capture and mineralisation technology.

Another really cool use of captured carbon has recently passed a loads of tests from the US Air Force who've worked with a company called Twelve on a project to create a viable jet fuel from CO2,

E-Jet fuel is SAF produced using Twelve’s revolutionary carbon transformation technology, which uses only renewable energy and water to transform CO2 into critical chemicals, materials and fuels conventionally made from fossil fuels, and in partnership with Emerging Fuels Technology. As a power-to-liquid SAF with up to 90% lower lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to conventional, petroleum-based jet fuel, E-Jet fuel meets the applicable ASTM International specifications and is a drop-in ready synthetic fuel that works seamlessly with existing aircraft and airport infrastructure. It faces no real constraints on feedstock, thus offering the best viable long-term solution for addressing GHG and other emissions from the aviation sector.

the test facility they're currently building isn't going to produce much but it's a huge first step on the way to industrialisation of the technology,

The facility is expected to begin E-Jet fuel production in mid-2024 at a capacity of approximately five barrels per day (40,000 gallons per year), with plans to quickly increase production capacity.

that's only about 0.00007% of the Jet Fuel used per year, but if they refine the system and make one which can be built at any airport using power from onsite renewables then it's likely we'd see a very rapid adoption.

yeah, i really hope we see better systems emerge for using energy at peek times or sharing power locally so that we can start moving away from the grid.

would be a great place to cook, and to relax while other people cook. love the kitchen garden in the kitchen.

what would happen if everyone turned around and said 'you know what, fuck companies that sell drinks in bottles i'm never going to be without my refillable bottle' how long would coca-cola keep producing 100 billion plastic bottles a year? what would they do with them?

But if James Quincey said 'fuck it, I'm not producing plastic bottles anymore they're bad for the planet' but 8 billion people said 'oh ok, well we're still going to regularly buy drinks in plastic bottles' the numbers of plastic bottles being made would dip slightly but only while Ramon Laguarta rushed to spend the flood of money now coming in to scale up production at pepsi co.

also we need communities already experimenting with living like that or it'll be a mess, for example I've never eaten meat in my life and as a kid people couldn't even begin to grasp that it was possible - i'd constantly get asked 'what do you eat then?!' but I haven't heard that question in years, closest to it is likely to be 'what do you have at Christmas' then when i say nut roast they no long say 'whats that?' they say 'oh i had a great nut roast once...'

As a kid family holidays used to involve stopping at the only cafe that had something without meat on the menu, now even McDonalds has a wide vegan selection (in the uk). If someone had come out in the 80s and ended the meet subsidies then it would fail instantly, if it happened now there would certainly be a large backlash but the majority of people would be able to shift their consumption patterns without many problems - the policy might have a fighting chance. Even the meat-and-two guys that i know regularly have meet free dinners, it's really common to only eat meat once or twice a week.

Of course if i was made dictator for life i'd bring in sweeping changes that ban all the evil practices which make the meat industry possible, but that's not going to happen - what is going to happen is it's going to continue to get easier and cheaper to eat plant based diets, we're going to see endless headlines like 'largest dairy producer announces closure amid increasing popularity of oat milk', it'll shift from the beef industry having a hugely powerful lobby backed by billions of dollars to the beef lobby being Joe Rogan and Liverking yelling at clouds about how they need to consume flesh to feel manly. When someone suggests banning an awful and disgusting practice within the meat industry the general consensus will be 'yeah i can go without that if it's damaging to the environment and cruel to the animals' so policy change will actually be possible.

Just shrugging and saying 'it's not going to happen overnight so i'll just keep eating meat until it does' is absolutely mindless, the bath is never going to fill if the tap isn't turned on - eating without meat helps fund and sustain the systems which makes it possible, it helps make it easier for other people to also eat without meat -- even if it's only dropping meat where it's convenient it's helping take power from the meat industry, by making a conscious choice to avoid meat you're joining an increasing number of people who do the same which represents a sizeable portion of the market - the more that gets catered to the large it grows.

Yes it's true that no one person is going to change things but when we start to move in the right direction it makes it easier for others to move that way also. This is the same with reusable bottles, using public transport, refilling containers at the store instead of single use plastics...

Depends where your skills and interests lay but maybe consider making the coolest window box you can grow small leaf and herbs in to add to your cooking.

Maybe even consider starting plants to the stage they're ready to plant out and find someone with shared interests local who has a garden.

Freshness is such a key thing, the difference is taste is so significant especially with herbs and greens so enabling people to have an easy to manage and small footprint little tower of good food in their garden, balcony, or similar would be really good especially for renters if it could be packed up for transport then resembled in the new location.

Yeah so much amazing potential, I've working on some ideas for a semi automated wall system, the idea is you have rows that are basically rails and you slide a pod in with seeds one side and take out the top one to harvest and reseed - the unit has a glass front so it's like a thin greenhouse, provides a little extra insulation and protection for the house as well as using the escaping heat in winter to keep the plants a little warmer, probably not ideal for a hot climate but somewhere like the UK it would be perfect.

It would be for things like leaf greens, maybe radish, short carrots, or other quick growing veg that would be good to have on a continuous cycle. I want it to have a single place to put water in and possibly a tap connection or tank so people can pretty much fill and forget - the glass should keep it safe from burgling little birdies that like to sneak into greenhouses and eat all the shoots, as well as other pests.

For the test ones I'm going to build I got some big bits of perspex used as COVID screens that shops were going to bin, well worth looking out for as such a waste otherwise. I made some clay from a hole I dug in my garden so would love to make a lot of it from earthenware, if I can get some good designs I'd love to make 3d printable molds. It's energy intensive firing ceramics but I saw some amazing solar concentrater kilns which would be great for a small collective or something making something similar.