I'm in the UK and it's been horribly hot this week. It's really made me think about how well adapted our homes and infrastructure are for climate change. It's unbelievably frustrating that climate policy has stalled.
I work in the wildlife conservation sector and the triple crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and a reduction in people's connection with nature is accelerating. At the same time, the nature conservation sector is shrinking due to a funding shortfall; redundancies are regularly being announced.
Your point about the dial swinging the other way is very reassuring, as is the reality that so many people want to see action, and are doing what they can to effect it.
Here in Houston, Texas, everyone has air conditioning except all the prisoners. We need you all in England to keep the faith because the fossil fuel people here are desperate and beat on us. Lots of layoffs here. We LOVED hearing that England shut down it's last coal plant.
Good news: It looks like the Republican hold on Texas may begin to break in the November election. I think James Talarico, a Democrat, lovely young man, may be our next Senator from Texas. Today, I will give him a bit more money. This state is so huge that buying TV ads for the whole state will cost a fortune. The polls look good, the race is a dead heat.
Good news: UAE has quit OPEC and Iraq may too. My guess is they will pump lots of oil and run the price down in a price war. If the price of oil goes in the toilet, then Texas fracked oil producers will go broke. $50 will put them underwater, $30 more so. Yes, it will reduce pressure for electric cars, but nothing gets the Texas independent oil producers attention like going broke.
Good news: London Stock Exchange Group says green stocks are the #3 industry and earning 12% more than anything else. In counting they included companies with at least a fifth of income was environmentally focused: solar, clean water, energy efficiency, etc.
Action: We still need folks willing to lend $25 or more for 38 months to finance 2 electric cars for African taxi drivers. https://www.kiva.org/lend/3192962
It's easy to forget that there's lots of good news out there too - thank you for sharing. In reality, things have shifted a lot, if you get away from politics. Collective political action would really make a difference, but all these steps add up!!
There were a rash of stories last week about that. Cnn, Yahoo Finance, others said "oil supply is down and mostly folks are OK. Instead of flying they are taking the train. Just using less."
How many older Brits have you heard this week saying; "We had a heat wave in 1976, so this can't be climate change"? I heard it regularly. Almost exclusively from over-60s who believe everything they read in their social media bubble and everything ChatGPT tells them. Including a non-scientist shouting at me; "You don't know anything about physics, here, look at what ChatGPT says...." I looked. ChatGPT was wrong.
"My anecdata says this is not happening!" -- Everybody in the Daily Mail comment section
My response is always the same: show me the evidence. They never can. When you look at the vetted weather data, their prototypical "heat wave of 1976" turns out to be a couple of days of 30 degrees in the dog days of summer. Memory is very malleable.
In Germany this week there were peak temperatures of 41 in the Rhine depression. In June. That is otherworldly. And it is only the beginning.
It's so frustrating, isn't it? A friend of mine posted a close up of the temperature stripes / Show Your Stripes infographic which points to 1976 as a one off spike, followed by many cooler years, then a steady rise to the clusters of dark red stripes that we see today. Those attitudes are a symptom of the post-truth era we find ourselves in, which contributes massively to the climate crisis and lack of political action.
Lucky you.:) If you're living in Britain, you are currently in a nation where a significant proportion of its population are in climate denial even if you are not aware of it. Try listening to what Reform and other right-wing parties are saying, turning a blind eye to it is just another form of denial. That you are not aware of a social media bubble that is dong great damage does not mean it does not exist, just that you are not going to encounter these people on forums like this.
I think you might be over-reacting. Where did 'Boomers' come from? And in your previous post you set up a straw doll to knock over when you say "I don't even know any "older Brits" who aren't aware of climate change." The article is not about either of those things. However, I am glad you have encountered a social media bubble other than "Saltdean Climate Action Network". Bravo.
The indigenous peoples of the planet have always known the truth, the important and intimate relationship between the Mother Earth and human beings, which was eloquently captured in this quote:
“The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood that unites one family.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
The earth is sacred and men and animals are but one part of it.
Treat the earth with respect so that it lasts for centuries to come
and is a place of wonder and beauty for our children.”
― Excerpt from Chief Seattle speech in 1854
The earth will survive regardless of the harm we do. At this point we are collectively, as a species, parasitic. So, yes, whatever we do to this magnificent planet - to that which literally SUSTAINS us - we ultimately do to ourselves.
May years ago, a wise mentor of mine once described this phenomenon as the “exhalation of the vital force of nature.”
Bill, the line that stays with me is "physics is running this show, and it won't be long denied."
Harry — the wilderness man in my novel Empty Earth — said something close to that his whole life. Not as a warning. As a fact he had already made his peace with. The politics would catch up eventually. The physics wouldn't wait.
What you're describing — the cycle firing again, this time with the economics finally aligned — is what Harry spent his life arguing was possible. He didn't live to see it. We might.
As a UK resident, I found it very pertinent as I sit here on the hottest day yet, not able to do much else due to the sticky heat.
Something else which happened in the UK Parliament this week was the Seventh Carbon Budget was set covering UK territorial emissions from 2038-2042. It was debated and voted on one of our climate heat record breaking days, Wednesday. Whilst our Climate Change Act, enacted under Ed Miliband is 2008, is world leading, it also has many limitations - including only accounting territorial emissions, and externalising ex-UK emissions from UK activity and consumption The budgets, set 12 years ahead, are constrained by the political and economic status quo compared to what the science now demands too.
So Brian Hopkins is right “net zero is not an arbitrary slogan, rather it is dictated by the laws of physics”.
However, are the carbon budgets under the UK net zero climate (ie the Climate Change Act) actually aligned with the physics?
I am part of a new legal project Carbon Reckoning which believes the answer to that to be "No". We aim to challenge the carbon budget set - as not being aligned with the science or the UK's international obligations. Read more here:
At its core, our work tackles a power imbalance: how concentrated corporate and political interests shape climate policy in ways that harm the communities, and their future, here and worldwide - with the climate change that has "returned" again as you say.
Having signed the Paris Agreement, rich countries including the UK fail to walk the talk. Our carbon budget process actually systematically flatters the UK's position — relying on scientific benchmarks already overtaken by real-world emissions, excluding the most demanding equity-based ("fair share") measures under the Paris Agreement, and treating large volumes of UK-caused emissions as externalities.
Read more in our two letters to Ed Miliband, before he took the Carbon Budget to Parliament in this hottest of all weeks, which explains these issues.
We are now proceeding to a potential landmark judicial review based on the International Court of Justice's 2025 advisory opinion (ICJ AO) on climate change. Our case will be among the first to apply this landmark opinion to national climate policy. As an advisory opinion, not a judgment, it must be argued in each jurisdiction. We intend to argue it in the UK courts, and if we win here, we hope we help open that door everywhere - for a true alignment with science and international obligations.
Anyone who supports challenging the UK "world leading" climate targets with that aim to for true alignment of climate targets and policy - everywhere - can help support our legal fund raising here 👉https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/carbon-reckoning/.
Bill, I hope you might consider covering this project in a future post.
Mother Nature is "tapping humanity on the shoulder" ... hard enough, I pray, for our leaders to notice. The problem I see is that people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, et al do NOT care if the rest of humanity survives. They have adopted a "We are the only people who matter" (kind of eugenics-based) mindset... a truly horrifying development.
How to counter this? MOBILIZE. As the saying goes, "There are more of us than there are of them". I think a PERMANENT protest movement ... modeled after the Occupy Wall Street movement ... is desperately needed here in America if not around the world.
Otherwise, I send you best regards. Fond memories of seeing you at the Tallberg Foundation's conference in (I think) 2008.
Steve, your second sentence is key. I myself didn't really understand the until a year ago. But I suggest everyone refer to the line in Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows". My son, now 44, got his Bolt in 2015 and has not paid for gas since. We put solar on our roof in 2016 and got a storage battery last year. My husband (who had leased an Equinox for the last two years) died last month, so our energy expenses have gone down even more. If we, living in Berkeley, on $50K a year, could afford solar, I suggest everyone could, or at least could have in 2016, when all kinds of government subsidies and tax breaks were available. But I have no hope for humanity. I'm pretty sure we're all toast, which is why I told my son I didn't want grandchildren in 2017. Dylan is correct.
You're telling it like it is Ellen.........and I said similar above. IMPLEMENT, IMPLE MENT IMPLEMENT...........get those panels, that heat pump those EVs'.....and get them now.
There is no better way to thumb your nose at the Fossil Fools.......and somewhere we should talk about all the money we've saved by solarizing and going EV.
TURNS OUT THE NEW TECHNOLOGY ISN'T ALWAYS IN THE GARAGE OR UNDER REPAIR. Our first solar panels went up in 2009.....they are still producing, haven't cost us a dime in maintenance. Our Kona, bought in 2019 has needed nothing but the small battery replaced..........and when our large battery experienced a problem in one of the cells.........Kona replaced the entire battery free of charge.
Turns out.........Kona warranties its batteries for 10 years.........at no extra charge....something we didn't even know when we bought the car. So a 2020 Kona has a new 2023 battery.......which will likely outlive both of us.
GO SOLAR, GO ELECTRIC, NOW. It's a money saver in the medium to long term.
Action at a variety of levels is needed. Everyone who has the money needs to solarize, put in a heat pump, buy an EV...NOW. Everywhere seniors with good pensions should consider starting a trust that helps low income young people to put panels on the roof, or on their balcony..........implementation is a strong message to politicians and neighbours.
Whenever our progressive left party asks for money I tell them the truth. Until you're out there advocating for rebates and tax incentive help for people to implement, my money goes where our tax dollars has yet to venture.
The next solar array will go on our grandson's home......when he buys one in the next year or two. Our next heat pump to our daughter....etc. etc.
I refuse to support virtue signalling or big promises. Hope is an illusion; Action the solution.
EVs and solar pay back better outside the US. Tariffs and such. If you can lend $25 or more for 38 months, would you join the crowd financing 2 electric cars for African taxi drivers? Bless them, the US etc has bled them dry with fossil fuel bills. There is big money coming in to the region for cleantech, but it's going for bigger things. https://www.kiva.org/lend/3192962
It is interesting how people focus on the heat and overlook that the national electricity grid is often incapable of even supporting the few air conditioners there are in France and the UK. If everybody installed AC in their homes and apartments, the national power grid would just go offline - as it often does in Texas, and sometimes in my home state of Florida. I was in Lyon until last Sunday - 104f is friggin hot even by US standards. Safely home for the Summer in Bulgaria, we only run the AC for about 5 hours during the day, then it drops down into the 60s sometimes.
I must say that Central Europe had better overcome its climate change smugness and start getting as serious about building electricity and HVAC as they are about achieving independence from Trump's NATO. Oh yeah, getting EV'd too will also overwhelm the EU grid.
Implementation of clean energy wherever and however we can has to be a priority for the average citizen. Since 2009 we've solarized our own home twice, put up panels for our son and daughter, bought an EV for ourselves and our son, and last summer, thankfully, put in a heat pump.
I often imagine that if everyone of us in the privileged west who have good incomes/pensions, would forego foreign travel, and put that vacate on money on their roofs and in their driveways.........we'd be a long way toward a sustainable future.
We need progressive governments. But they won't exist everywhere, or last long, if in the final analysis, most of us middle class folks put escapism above citizenship. When every suitable roof in our city has solar panels, I'll know we're moving off fossil fuels/fools. Until then???
Climate despair is with me more often than I like.
It is the sad fate of intelligent observers to watch politicians and the public slowly grope their way toward conclusions which were obvious long ago. If there is any consolation, it is that they usually get there eventually. Here too, despite unnecessary delay and its tragic consequences, the truth will find a way.
The people can't IMAGINE oil demand falling. For ever so long it grew. It's our job to explain it to them. Oil and gas replaced coal. Now cleantech is replacing oil and gas. The paradigm shifts. Then I warn folks to bewary of being stuck with stranded assets.
Thanks for the optimism Bill. We share it, but alas, also with a certain grim exhaustion. Where we live, in oil soaked Alberta, a Maple Maga fringe has the Federal government imagining we need another bitumen pipeline to tidewater.........and we just know Danielle Smith and her 'Friends of Science" denialists will be eying our Great Bear Rain Forest and Fertile North Pacific coastline.
A tanker ban put in place by Justin Trudeau, just has to go to let tankers haul our unrefined tar to American refineries........if for no other reason than that Big Oil is never wrong, and never accepts a loss, even if that loss means the land and ocean is the winner.
It's good to be reminded that its the Great Mother who is in charge.......and that as long as we crater to Big Fossil fuels and fools, our situation is going to get worse. It's also necessary to be reminded that its the green alternatives that have the momentum now, that are fast becoming cheaper, more resilient and the real source of good jobs going forward.
Unfortunately, you wonderful news letter is far too long to be read by any of the "I HEART ALBERTA OIL", politics by bumper sticker crowd. Nevertheless, keep sending us news of hope and opportunity....a better future is possible.
Thanks for opposing this pipeline. I take the good news and cut it to little pieces and repost on the local facebook and for letters to the editor. Also, if you have $25 or more to lend to help finance these 2 electric cars for African taxi drivers. We are halfway funded.
The Right in the UK are tying themselves in knots over this. Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the opposition in parliament, is simultaneously promising to abandon Net Zero commitments and move towards mandating air conditioning in all new-builds. Ed Miliband, on the other hand, is an absolute hero. It’s a great pity that climate policy here in the UK has become politicised over the last few years. It wasn’t always so; we had fairly good bipartisan buy-in to implement the groundbreaking 2008 Climate Change Act for many years.
Kemi Badenoch shoots her mouth off without thinking about what she's saying. Or else she's angling for popularity with groups that resent electricity bills that are high allegedly due to the "green levy" rather than wholesale prices tied to gas generation, use the excuse that the UK generates only 1% of global carbon pollution ignoring a much bigger historical legacy from initiating the Industrial Revolution, and don't care about climate change beyond heatwaves.
But I think--in terms of electability--that Reform UK are more of a menace, despite 30% of its supporters favouring more climate action, not less: hardly consistent with its anti-Net Zero and "drill baby drill" party policy.
But neither are its supporters aware that immigration has dramatically gone down: required to believe it's still going up, to sustain group identity and nationalist anger. So it's hard to counter the disinformation fed to them.
Climate scientists seem most alarmed about reaching tipping points such as the tipping point for the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the demise of warm-water coral reefs, the complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and the collapse of the Thwaites Glacier (aka, Doomsday Glacier) and West Antarctica ice sheet behind it. But it is hard to get the public to care about tipping points. It would be welcome to find a way to close his gap being the public and climate scientists.
Exactly. And given the large gap between that cumbersome scientific jargon phrase, and what it means for the oceans and the land........one could argue we need more teachers of science, people capable of simplifying the complex details down to the essential threat AMOC poses for all of us.
Yes, and for many, they would say, decline and stopping of the AMOC, means we"re most all F**KED. Not my preferred word, but many know that context when so used. I suppose one could say that AMOC is like a big air conditioning system that helps cool,(take excess heat) from the Gulf of Mexica ( Now Gulf of America?) and transport that heat to the more northern regions, for a temperate climate there. Many can't survive without s strong AMOC. Few seem to worry about the melting Arctic and Antarctic ice, being so remote, but AMOC is on our doorsteps impacts above just above our heads, and at our feet.
In actuality, we control nothing........and what we work hard to get under man's control, usually comes back to bite us.
I remember something either Nathanial Hawthorne or Hermann Melville said about the transcendentalists of the 19th C.
"These men are marred with a deep scar down the middle of their foreheads. They believe that had they been present at the creation, they could have offered God some helpful suggestions".
I'm quoting from a memory of 50 odd years so may have mangled it a bit...but the gist is clear. The western mad desire to be as gods, has mostly ended by creating monsters.
I see it everyday, as pundits discuss this 'excursion' war Trump embarked on. Ukraine is not much different.
FOR THE MORONS IGNORING THE CLIMATE'S MESSAGES AND PUSHING EVERYWHERE FOR WAR OR REGIME CHANGE, LOSING IS UNTHINKABLE....AND WHEN THEY LOSE, THEY JUST KEEP IMAGINING THAT THE LOSING SIDE SHOULD BE DICTATING THE TERMS OF THE PEACE....
We are in the hands of mad men, and all they have is a big hammer....which they apply with gusto to every problem.
NOAA has the Gulf Stream going up the East Coast of the US and then flowing toward Europe. I think that is how the public understands it. The definition you gave might be used mostly in scientific circles.
Yes Robert, most have heard of the Gulf Stream, but not a clue about the AMOC, its significance, and where it goes, and it all essential importance on climate in Eastern North America, and Europe and the UK etc, and even the fisheries of those regions.
The term Gulf Stream goes way beyond the Gulf , and is interconnected with the Labrador Current fed from the cold waters of the Arctic and Greenland and is so important in fisheries. The intersection of the hot and cold currents gives rise to the Great Grand Banks off Nfld, Canada and the famous fog generated there.
The Gulf Stream, used I guess for early navigation by sailing vessels for optimum speeds, to Europe from across the Atlantic. Now the interaction with changing weather: as the Gulf Stream (that being a part of AMOC) slows the EU starts to roast! Record high temperatures and longer lasting heat waves (perhaps now called heat domes). Forcing hospitals to close and shutting down some nuclear electricity generation plants due to cooling water being too warm. S many things are interconnected. Do a doc on this?
Instead of using abuse, mate, read up on it. There's plenty of information out there. Then you will be informed about this genuine tipping point. And then you too can encourage other people to learn about it. It has huge implications globally but particularly for every nation that has a coastline on the North Atlantic.
Hello Martin. You took my comment the wrong way. Maggie got my drift, saying a very very tiny percentage ever heard of it.
I spent 10 years monitoring the ocean temperature in Conception Bay, Nlfd, where there is a big influence from the very cold Labrador current, and had very negative effects on the cod and capelin species in 1991 and the stocks devastated and little recovery after 30 years.
AMOC, I'm well aware of the 15 % drop in that current flow, and has major implication for the Atlantic and Europe and perhaps the world, as full collapse may happen this century.
I was using a little reference to sounds like, ......What A MOC?, and What the F**k? AMOC is on the path to a real F**K up, of the climate beyond repair, and not too far remote. Martin why not do a documentary on that to educate the masses? Not abuse, but used a word, to grab attention, as it did with you, that some take as vulgar, some not. I never use it in speaking, maybe a few rare times, mate. Hope I didn't offend you or anyone. I also follow space weather, since the 1970s, CMEs from the sun, the discharge impacts earths magnetic field 48 hrs later and causes havoc on power grids and satelites, communication etc , commonly seen as Northern Lights, rather interesting as to the physics.
THanks for this.......I had no idea what AMOC stood for. Acronyms drive me crazy.......but I'll not forget it now, having read this interchange. Science sometimes defeats itself with its big phrases, that no one take the time to step down into common language....but how to turn Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.........into a natural phenomena the over worked majority could understand........and learn to fear more than they do the designated 'evil enemy du jour'???
Thanks, Bill, for giving us all these stats and examples from so many places, so that each of us can turn them into pithy sound-bites that can really influence people. I'm not being cynical here, just realizing most people's attention spans, including mine sometimes. Let's hammer on affordability: "wind, solar, and battery are way cheaper than gas, and getting cheaper all the time." "If your government is still into gas, they're just getting grift from the oil companies. Demand energy people can afford!" "You don't think you can afford solar? Try Terra!" Lots of possibilities. Thanks as always.
Yes, I turn them into sound bites. People have distractions, like paying the mortgage. I clipped this quote 20 years ago. It says to me that folks that seem slow learners can be turned around if I push slow and steady long enough. That is, some ideas get stuck in the core of who we are. That applies to "US" as well as "THEM".
We have so much learning to do that we must all stay open to new ideas "so we prevent our idea-structures from hardening and then having to break them open with great pain."
"Each of us has to face up to the need to shake up our current belief structures and to abandon many of the ideas which have been central to our past sense of purpose, and even our understanding of who we are."
Robert Theobald in Turning the Century
He calls this learning mindquakes. They, like earthquakes, are least destructive when small and frequent.
The line about physics running this show and not being long denied is the one I keep returning to. Every political cycle that buries climate does so on borrowed time. The heat doesn't wait for the news cycle to catch up. That's not pessimism — that's actually the most clarifying thing anyone has written about this moment.
Bill McKibben helped found a national group, Third Act. One rule it has is "Be Kind". I am in Third Act. It's my main group. I love the rule "Be kind". Saying it is not the same as doing it. My Third Act comrades are not always kind. We blame and shame along with the rest of the climate movement. They have a meeting today, Monday, 6/29 https://thirdact.org/events/ Our work is "Ask, inform, involve and thank".
Sharon Graham of Unite is doing what she is supposed to do: looking to protect the jobs of her union's members. I understand that she has a son but obviously doesn't seem to care about the legacy her generation (and mine, incidentally) are leaving to posterity. The fact that the recent heatwave doesn't seem to have altered her standpoint suggests to me that the sooner the Labour party severs its links with the trades unions, the better for all of us.
Climate change, like heat, is a silent killer. It's hard to convince people that urgent action needs to be taken when the threat does not seem as imminent as how one earth one is going to pay one's bills or get on the housing ladder. A character in Hemmingway's 'The Sun Also Rises' is asked 'how did you become bankrupt?'. He replies 'gradually, then suddenly'. It seems to me that the gradual phase of climate change is over now and that we may expect more frequent and intense episodes of extreme weather. It is no longer sensible to see global warming as something that essentially happens in other countries.
I wonder how Sharon Graham's members will feel about retaining their jobs in the fossil fuel energy industry while losing their loved ones or their homes.
Temperatures in the North of Scotland, where North Sea oil and gas jobs stand to be lost in a declining industry, are around 10 degrees C lower than in the South of England suffering current heatwaves.
So Unite members in the cool North of Scotland are probably not connecting with the urgency of climate change that people in the hot South of England are: more with the near term prospects of job loss if the Labour government does not grant new drilling licences in Rosebank and Jackdaw oil fields.
What Sharon Graham should be doing for Unite members facing oil and gas job losses is pressing for urgent implementation of new green energy jobs--Scotland is already home to far higher density of wind farms than England, due to its greater windiness, but it needs new grid connections if it's to export more electricity to England.
May I also suggest that readers find the documentary, "Groundswell." In the US, it's on Netflix. It describes another way to help fight climate change, "regenerative gardening," which is currently making great gains. We not only have to curtail emissions, but we have to improve the soil to trap rain. This film is a wonderful explanation.
Ingamarie, my apologies. I watched it on Amazon Prime, not Netflix! That said, sometimes a movie that’s available in the US may not be available in another country due to licensing agreements, but please give that a try.
Thanks......we're busy making rhubarb strawberry crisps from our large garden that is getting away on us....but with farm backgrounds we both realize how much more precarious our food supply is than many realize.......and how increasingly damaged our soil. (The real black gold, forget that fossil stuff)
I'm in the UK and it's been horribly hot this week. It's really made me think about how well adapted our homes and infrastructure are for climate change. It's unbelievably frustrating that climate policy has stalled.
I work in the wildlife conservation sector and the triple crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and a reduction in people's connection with nature is accelerating. At the same time, the nature conservation sector is shrinking due to a funding shortfall; redundancies are regularly being announced.
Your point about the dial swinging the other way is very reassuring, as is the reality that so many people want to see action, and are doing what they can to effect it.
Here in Houston, Texas, everyone has air conditioning except all the prisoners. We need you all in England to keep the faith because the fossil fuel people here are desperate and beat on us. Lots of layoffs here. We LOVED hearing that England shut down it's last coal plant.
Good news: It looks like the Republican hold on Texas may begin to break in the November election. I think James Talarico, a Democrat, lovely young man, may be our next Senator from Texas. Today, I will give him a bit more money. This state is so huge that buying TV ads for the whole state will cost a fortune. The polls look good, the race is a dead heat.
Good news: UAE has quit OPEC and Iraq may too. My guess is they will pump lots of oil and run the price down in a price war. If the price of oil goes in the toilet, then Texas fracked oil producers will go broke. $50 will put them underwater, $30 more so. Yes, it will reduce pressure for electric cars, but nothing gets the Texas independent oil producers attention like going broke.
Good News: oil begins its rapid decline of demand. (Not gas yet.) https://cleantechnica.com/2026/04/29/the-petroleum-system-is-entering-its-volatile-decline-phase/
Good news: London Stock Exchange Group says green stocks are the #3 industry and earning 12% more than anything else. In counting they included companies with at least a fifth of income was environmentally focused: solar, clean water, energy efficiency, etc.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19062026/green-economy-hits-10-trillion-in-market-value/
Action: We still need folks willing to lend $25 or more for 38 months to finance 2 electric cars for African taxi drivers. https://www.kiva.org/lend/3192962
It's easy to forget that there's lots of good news out there too - thank you for sharing. In reality, things have shifted a lot, if you get away from politics. Collective political action would really make a difference, but all these steps add up!!
Katie, you might like my reply to Martin on this topic.
Well said. The green transition is where money is being spent.
And thanks for that Mbay Mobility link. It's a great idea.
Various experts say more and more, the capital is flowing to green companies. LSEG said last week capital it's because it's paying a nice return. That it has the high moral ground must also be part of its attraction. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19062026/green-economy-hits-10-trillion-in-market-value/
LSEG said green business is now the third largest industry. That is very good news indeed as the monster industry used to be fossil fuels.
RMI says Oil and coal are past peak demand. That means folks don't want to buy it. More and more. Past peak means that it's dying. Becoming obsolete, like horse and buggies. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2022/08/peak_demand_importance.pdf
There were a rash of stories last week about that. Cnn, Yahoo Finance, others said "oil supply is down and mostly folks are OK. Instead of flying they are taking the train. Just using less."
How many older Brits have you heard this week saying; "We had a heat wave in 1976, so this can't be climate change"? I heard it regularly. Almost exclusively from over-60s who believe everything they read in their social media bubble and everything ChatGPT tells them. Including a non-scientist shouting at me; "You don't know anything about physics, here, look at what ChatGPT says...." I looked. ChatGPT was wrong.
"My anecdata says this is not happening!" -- Everybody in the Daily Mail comment section
My response is always the same: show me the evidence. They never can. When you look at the vetted weather data, their prototypical "heat wave of 1976" turns out to be a couple of days of 30 degrees in the dog days of summer. Memory is very malleable.
In Germany this week there were peak temperatures of 41 in the Rhine depression. In June. That is otherworldly. And it is only the beginning.
It's so frustrating, isn't it? A friend of mine posted a close up of the temperature stripes / Show Your Stripes infographic which points to 1976 as a one off spike, followed by many cooler years, then a steady rise to the clusters of dark red stripes that we see today. Those attitudes are a symptom of the post-truth era we find ourselves in, which contributes massively to the climate crisis and lack of political action.
The 1976 "spike" barely merits mention as such. It is a pastel salmon colour.
Well yes, quite
Lucky you.:) If you're living in Britain, you are currently in a nation where a significant proportion of its population are in climate denial even if you are not aware of it. Try listening to what Reform and other right-wing parties are saying, turning a blind eye to it is just another form of denial. That you are not aware of a social media bubble that is dong great damage does not mean it does not exist, just that you are not going to encounter these people on forums like this.
I think you might be over-reacting. Where did 'Boomers' come from? And in your previous post you set up a straw doll to knock over when you say "I don't even know any "older Brits" who aren't aware of climate change." The article is not about either of those things. However, I am glad you have encountered a social media bubble other than "Saltdean Climate Action Network". Bravo.
The indigenous peoples of the planet have always known the truth, the important and intimate relationship between the Mother Earth and human beings, which was eloquently captured in this quote:
“The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood that unites one family.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
The earth is sacred and men and animals are but one part of it.
Treat the earth with respect so that it lasts for centuries to come
and is a place of wonder and beauty for our children.”
― Excerpt from Chief Seattle speech in 1854
The earth will survive regardless of the harm we do. At this point we are collectively, as a species, parasitic. So, yes, whatever we do to this magnificent planet - to that which literally SUSTAINS us - we ultimately do to ourselves.
May years ago, a wise mentor of mine once described this phenomenon as the “exhalation of the vital force of nature.”
May we wise up and heed the call, at long last.
https://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/seattle.htm
Bill, the line that stays with me is "physics is running this show, and it won't be long denied."
Harry — the wilderness man in my novel Empty Earth — said something close to that his whole life. Not as a warning. As a fact he had already made his peace with. The politics would catch up eventually. The physics wouldn't wait.
What you're describing — the cycle firing again, this time with the economics finally aligned — is what Harry spent his life arguing was possible. He didn't live to see it. We might.
We ARE seeing the paradigm shift. Here in Houston Texas we are the renewable energy capital of the US. Yes, lots here expect oil to continue to grow, but many, even Exxon stockholders know better. https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/article/the-world-is-quietly-adapting-to-9-less-oil-100000514.html
Economics is not enough, we need to add climate protection to our shared moral consensus. But economics is like God, nice to have on your side.
🐒🪼🥵🥵🥵😭😭
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Thank you, Bill, as ever for these regular posts.
As a UK resident, I found it very pertinent as I sit here on the hottest day yet, not able to do much else due to the sticky heat.
Something else which happened in the UK Parliament this week was the Seventh Carbon Budget was set covering UK territorial emissions from 2038-2042. It was debated and voted on one of our climate heat record breaking days, Wednesday. Whilst our Climate Change Act, enacted under Ed Miliband is 2008, is world leading, it also has many limitations - including only accounting territorial emissions, and externalising ex-UK emissions from UK activity and consumption The budgets, set 12 years ahead, are constrained by the political and economic status quo compared to what the science now demands too.
So Brian Hopkins is right “net zero is not an arbitrary slogan, rather it is dictated by the laws of physics”.
However, are the carbon budgets under the UK net zero climate (ie the Climate Change Act) actually aligned with the physics?
I am part of a new legal project Carbon Reckoning which believes the answer to that to be "No". We aim to challenge the carbon budget set - as not being aligned with the science or the UK's international obligations. Read more here:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew-boswell-5b241320_carbonreckoning-share-7474760500795355136-cDTI/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android&rcm=ACoAAARVGJYB3MKPv9ctffXnO-edcmeGqWji6sM
At its core, our work tackles a power imbalance: how concentrated corporate and political interests shape climate policy in ways that harm the communities, and their future, here and worldwide - with the climate change that has "returned" again as you say.
Having signed the Paris Agreement, rich countries including the UK fail to walk the talk. Our carbon budget process actually systematically flatters the UK's position — relying on scientific benchmarks already overtaken by real-world emissions, excluding the most demanding equity-based ("fair share") measures under the Paris Agreement, and treating large volumes of UK-caused emissions as externalities.
Read more in our two letters to Ed Miliband, before he took the Carbon Budget to Parliament in this hottest of all weeks, which explains these issues.
Carbon Reckoning letter to Ed Miliband (1), May 2026 https://tinyurl.com/CR-2-DESNZ
Carbon Reckoning letter to Ed Miliband (2), June 2026 https://tinyurl.com/CR-2-DESNZ-2
We are now proceeding to a potential landmark judicial review based on the International Court of Justice's 2025 advisory opinion (ICJ AO) on climate change. Our case will be among the first to apply this landmark opinion to national climate policy. As an advisory opinion, not a judgment, it must be argued in each jurisdiction. We intend to argue it in the UK courts, and if we win here, we hope we help open that door everywhere - for a true alignment with science and international obligations.
Anyone who supports challenging the UK "world leading" climate targets with that aim to for true alignment of climate targets and policy - everywhere - can help support our legal fund raising here 👉https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/carbon-reckoning/.
Bill, I hope you might consider covering this project in a future post.
With deep respect of your work,
Wonderful work you are all doing. Thank you. Blessings and full speed ahead !
Donated
Thank you 🙏
Great that you will be reclaiming all those convenient "externalities" currently outsourced eg to China
Mother Nature is "tapping humanity on the shoulder" ... hard enough, I pray, for our leaders to notice. The problem I see is that people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, et al do NOT care if the rest of humanity survives. They have adopted a "We are the only people who matter" (kind of eugenics-based) mindset... a truly horrifying development.
How to counter this? MOBILIZE. As the saying goes, "There are more of us than there are of them". I think a PERMANENT protest movement ... modeled after the Occupy Wall Street movement ... is desperately needed here in America if not around the world.
Otherwise, I send you best regards. Fond memories of seeing you at the Tallberg Foundation's conference in (I think) 2008.
Steve, your second sentence is key. I myself didn't really understand the until a year ago. But I suggest everyone refer to the line in Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows". My son, now 44, got his Bolt in 2015 and has not paid for gas since. We put solar on our roof in 2016 and got a storage battery last year. My husband (who had leased an Equinox for the last two years) died last month, so our energy expenses have gone down even more. If we, living in Berkeley, on $50K a year, could afford solar, I suggest everyone could, or at least could have in 2016, when all kinds of government subsidies and tax breaks were available. But I have no hope for humanity. I'm pretty sure we're all toast, which is why I told my son I didn't want grandchildren in 2017. Dylan is correct.
You're telling it like it is Ellen.........and I said similar above. IMPLEMENT, IMPLE MENT IMPLEMENT...........get those panels, that heat pump those EVs'.....and get them now.
There is no better way to thumb your nose at the Fossil Fools.......and somewhere we should talk about all the money we've saved by solarizing and going EV.
TURNS OUT THE NEW TECHNOLOGY ISN'T ALWAYS IN THE GARAGE OR UNDER REPAIR. Our first solar panels went up in 2009.....they are still producing, haven't cost us a dime in maintenance. Our Kona, bought in 2019 has needed nothing but the small battery replaced..........and when our large battery experienced a problem in one of the cells.........Kona replaced the entire battery free of charge.
Turns out.........Kona warranties its batteries for 10 years.........at no extra charge....something we didn't even know when we bought the car. So a 2020 Kona has a new 2023 battery.......which will likely outlive both of us.
GO SOLAR, GO ELECTRIC, NOW. It's a money saver in the medium to long term.
Action at a variety of levels is needed. Everyone who has the money needs to solarize, put in a heat pump, buy an EV...NOW. Everywhere seniors with good pensions should consider starting a trust that helps low income young people to put panels on the roof, or on their balcony..........implementation is a strong message to politicians and neighbours.
Whenever our progressive left party asks for money I tell them the truth. Until you're out there advocating for rebates and tax incentive help for people to implement, my money goes where our tax dollars has yet to venture.
The next solar array will go on our grandson's home......when he buys one in the next year or two. Our next heat pump to our daughter....etc. etc.
I refuse to support virtue signalling or big promises. Hope is an illusion; Action the solution.
EVs and solar pay back better outside the US. Tariffs and such. If you can lend $25 or more for 38 months, would you join the crowd financing 2 electric cars for African taxi drivers? Bless them, the US etc has bled them dry with fossil fuel bills. There is big money coming in to the region for cleantech, but it's going for bigger things. https://www.kiva.org/lend/3192962
It is interesting how people focus on the heat and overlook that the national electricity grid is often incapable of even supporting the few air conditioners there are in France and the UK. If everybody installed AC in their homes and apartments, the national power grid would just go offline - as it often does in Texas, and sometimes in my home state of Florida. I was in Lyon until last Sunday - 104f is friggin hot even by US standards. Safely home for the Summer in Bulgaria, we only run the AC for about 5 hours during the day, then it drops down into the 60s sometimes.
I must say that Central Europe had better overcome its climate change smugness and start getting as serious about building electricity and HVAC as they are about achieving independence from Trump's NATO. Oh yeah, getting EV'd too will also overwhelm the EU grid.
Implementation of clean energy wherever and however we can has to be a priority for the average citizen. Since 2009 we've solarized our own home twice, put up panels for our son and daughter, bought an EV for ourselves and our son, and last summer, thankfully, put in a heat pump.
I often imagine that if everyone of us in the privileged west who have good incomes/pensions, would forego foreign travel, and put that vacate on money on their roofs and in their driveways.........we'd be a long way toward a sustainable future.
We need progressive governments. But they won't exist everywhere, or last long, if in the final analysis, most of us middle class folks put escapism above citizenship. When every suitable roof in our city has solar panels, I'll know we're moving off fossil fuels/fools. Until then???
Climate despair is with me more often than I like.
It is the sad fate of intelligent observers to watch politicians and the public slowly grope their way toward conclusions which were obvious long ago. If there is any consolation, it is that they usually get there eventually. Here too, despite unnecessary delay and its tragic consequences, the truth will find a way.
The people can't IMAGINE oil demand falling. For ever so long it grew. It's our job to explain it to them. Oil and gas replaced coal. Now cleantech is replacing oil and gas. The paradigm shifts. Then I warn folks to bewary of being stuck with stranded assets.
Thanks for the optimism Bill. We share it, but alas, also with a certain grim exhaustion. Where we live, in oil soaked Alberta, a Maple Maga fringe has the Federal government imagining we need another bitumen pipeline to tidewater.........and we just know Danielle Smith and her 'Friends of Science" denialists will be eying our Great Bear Rain Forest and Fertile North Pacific coastline.
A tanker ban put in place by Justin Trudeau, just has to go to let tankers haul our unrefined tar to American refineries........if for no other reason than that Big Oil is never wrong, and never accepts a loss, even if that loss means the land and ocean is the winner.
It's good to be reminded that its the Great Mother who is in charge.......and that as long as we crater to Big Fossil fuels and fools, our situation is going to get worse. It's also necessary to be reminded that its the green alternatives that have the momentum now, that are fast becoming cheaper, more resilient and the real source of good jobs going forward.
Unfortunately, you wonderful news letter is far too long to be read by any of the "I HEART ALBERTA OIL", politics by bumper sticker crowd. Nevertheless, keep sending us news of hope and opportunity....a better future is possible.
Thanks for opposing this pipeline. I take the good news and cut it to little pieces and repost on the local facebook and for letters to the editor. Also, if you have $25 or more to lend to help finance these 2 electric cars for African taxi drivers. We are halfway funded.
https://www.kiva.org/lend/3192962
50 + years of thanking you Sir.
The Right in the UK are tying themselves in knots over this. Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the opposition in parliament, is simultaneously promising to abandon Net Zero commitments and move towards mandating air conditioning in all new-builds. Ed Miliband, on the other hand, is an absolute hero. It’s a great pity that climate policy here in the UK has become politicised over the last few years. It wasn’t always so; we had fairly good bipartisan buy-in to implement the groundbreaking 2008 Climate Change Act for many years.
Kemi Badenoch shoots her mouth off without thinking about what she's saying. Or else she's angling for popularity with groups that resent electricity bills that are high allegedly due to the "green levy" rather than wholesale prices tied to gas generation, use the excuse that the UK generates only 1% of global carbon pollution ignoring a much bigger historical legacy from initiating the Industrial Revolution, and don't care about climate change beyond heatwaves.
But I think--in terms of electability--that Reform UK are more of a menace, despite 30% of its supporters favouring more climate action, not less: hardly consistent with its anti-Net Zero and "drill baby drill" party policy.
But neither are its supporters aware that immigration has dramatically gone down: required to believe it's still going up, to sustain group identity and nationalist anger. So it's hard to counter the disinformation fed to them.
Climate scientists seem most alarmed about reaching tipping points such as the tipping point for the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the demise of warm-water coral reefs, the complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and the collapse of the Thwaites Glacier (aka, Doomsday Glacier) and West Antarctica ice sheet behind it. But it is hard to get the public to care about tipping points. It would be welcome to find a way to close his gap being the public and climate scientists.
AMOC , what the F**K, what percentage of USA or any countries population know what AMOC is?
Very likely a tiny tiny percentage has ever even heard of it! One more tipping point.
Exactly. And given the large gap between that cumbersome scientific jargon phrase, and what it means for the oceans and the land........one could argue we need more teachers of science, people capable of simplifying the complex details down to the essential threat AMOC poses for all of us.
Yes, and for many, they would say, decline and stopping of the AMOC, means we"re most all F**KED. Not my preferred word, but many know that context when so used. I suppose one could say that AMOC is like a big air conditioning system that helps cool,(take excess heat) from the Gulf of Mexica ( Now Gulf of America?) and transport that heat to the more northern regions, for a temperate climate there. Many can't survive without s strong AMOC. Few seem to worry about the melting Arctic and Antarctic ice, being so remote, but AMOC is on our doorsteps impacts above just above our heads, and at our feet.
In actuality, we control nothing........and what we work hard to get under man's control, usually comes back to bite us.
I remember something either Nathanial Hawthorne or Hermann Melville said about the transcendentalists of the 19th C.
"These men are marred with a deep scar down the middle of their foreheads. They believe that had they been present at the creation, they could have offered God some helpful suggestions".
I'm quoting from a memory of 50 odd years so may have mangled it a bit...but the gist is clear. The western mad desire to be as gods, has mostly ended by creating monsters.
I see it everyday, as pundits discuss this 'excursion' war Trump embarked on. Ukraine is not much different.
FOR THE MORONS IGNORING THE CLIMATE'S MESSAGES AND PUSHING EVERYWHERE FOR WAR OR REGIME CHANGE, LOSING IS UNTHINKABLE....AND WHEN THEY LOSE, THEY JUST KEEP IMAGINING THAT THE LOSING SIDE SHOULD BE DICTATING THE TERMS OF THE PEACE....
We are in the hands of mad men, and all they have is a big hammer....which they apply with gusto to every problem.
The Gulf Stream flows up the East coast of the USA. The branch that flows towards Europe is called the North Atlantic Drift.
NOAA has the Gulf Stream going up the East Coast of the US and then flowing toward Europe. I think that is how the public understands it. The definition you gave might be used mostly in scientific circles.
Most Americans have probably heard of the Gulf Stream which is part of the AMOC.
Yes Robert, most have heard of the Gulf Stream, but not a clue about the AMOC, its significance, and where it goes, and it all essential importance on climate in Eastern North America, and Europe and the UK etc, and even the fisheries of those regions.
The term Gulf Stream goes way beyond the Gulf , and is interconnected with the Labrador Current fed from the cold waters of the Arctic and Greenland and is so important in fisheries. The intersection of the hot and cold currents gives rise to the Great Grand Banks off Nfld, Canada and the famous fog generated there.
The Gulf Stream, used I guess for early navigation by sailing vessels for optimum speeds, to Europe from across the Atlantic. Now the interaction with changing weather: as the Gulf Stream (that being a part of AMOC) slows the EU starts to roast! Record high temperatures and longer lasting heat waves (perhaps now called heat domes). Forcing hospitals to close and shutting down some nuclear electricity generation plants due to cooling water being too warm. S many things are interconnected. Do a doc on this?
Instead of using abuse, mate, read up on it. There's plenty of information out there. Then you will be informed about this genuine tipping point. And then you too can encourage other people to learn about it. It has huge implications globally but particularly for every nation that has a coastline on the North Atlantic.
Hello Martin. You took my comment the wrong way. Maggie got my drift, saying a very very tiny percentage ever heard of it.
I spent 10 years monitoring the ocean temperature in Conception Bay, Nlfd, where there is a big influence from the very cold Labrador current, and had very negative effects on the cod and capelin species in 1991 and the stocks devastated and little recovery after 30 years.
AMOC, I'm well aware of the 15 % drop in that current flow, and has major implication for the Atlantic and Europe and perhaps the world, as full collapse may happen this century.
I was using a little reference to sounds like, ......What A MOC?, and What the F**k? AMOC is on the path to a real F**K up, of the climate beyond repair, and not too far remote. Martin why not do a documentary on that to educate the masses? Not abuse, but used a word, to grab attention, as it did with you, that some take as vulgar, some not. I never use it in speaking, maybe a few rare times, mate. Hope I didn't offend you or anyone. I also follow space weather, since the 1970s, CMEs from the sun, the discharge impacts earths magnetic field 48 hrs later and causes havoc on power grids and satelites, communication etc , commonly seen as Northern Lights, rather interesting as to the physics.
THanks for this.......I had no idea what AMOC stood for. Acronyms drive me crazy.......but I'll not forget it now, having read this interchange. Science sometimes defeats itself with its big phrases, that no one take the time to step down into common language....but how to turn Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.........into a natural phenomena the over worked majority could understand........and learn to fear more than they do the designated 'evil enemy du jour'???
Thanks, Bill, for giving us all these stats and examples from so many places, so that each of us can turn them into pithy sound-bites that can really influence people. I'm not being cynical here, just realizing most people's attention spans, including mine sometimes. Let's hammer on affordability: "wind, solar, and battery are way cheaper than gas, and getting cheaper all the time." "If your government is still into gas, they're just getting grift from the oil companies. Demand energy people can afford!" "You don't think you can afford solar? Try Terra!" Lots of possibilities. Thanks as always.
Yes, I turn them into sound bites. People have distractions, like paying the mortgage. I clipped this quote 20 years ago. It says to me that folks that seem slow learners can be turned around if I push slow and steady long enough. That is, some ideas get stuck in the core of who we are. That applies to "US" as well as "THEM".
We have so much learning to do that we must all stay open to new ideas "so we prevent our idea-structures from hardening and then having to break them open with great pain."
"Each of us has to face up to the need to shake up our current belief structures and to abandon many of the ideas which have been central to our past sense of purpose, and even our understanding of who we are."
Robert Theobald in Turning the Century
He calls this learning mindquakes. They, like earthquakes, are least destructive when small and frequent.
The line about physics running this show and not being long denied is the one I keep returning to. Every political cycle that buries climate does so on borrowed time. The heat doesn't wait for the news cycle to catch up. That's not pessimism — that's actually the most clarifying thing anyone has written about this moment.
Bill McKibben helped found a national group, Third Act. One rule it has is "Be Kind". I am in Third Act. It's my main group. I love the rule "Be kind". Saying it is not the same as doing it. My Third Act comrades are not always kind. We blame and shame along with the rest of the climate movement. They have a meeting today, Monday, 6/29 https://thirdact.org/events/ Our work is "Ask, inform, involve and thank".
Sharon Graham of Unite is doing what she is supposed to do: looking to protect the jobs of her union's members. I understand that she has a son but obviously doesn't seem to care about the legacy her generation (and mine, incidentally) are leaving to posterity. The fact that the recent heatwave doesn't seem to have altered her standpoint suggests to me that the sooner the Labour party severs its links with the trades unions, the better for all of us.
Climate change, like heat, is a silent killer. It's hard to convince people that urgent action needs to be taken when the threat does not seem as imminent as how one earth one is going to pay one's bills or get on the housing ladder. A character in Hemmingway's 'The Sun Also Rises' is asked 'how did you become bankrupt?'. He replies 'gradually, then suddenly'. It seems to me that the gradual phase of climate change is over now and that we may expect more frequent and intense episodes of extreme weather. It is no longer sensible to see global warming as something that essentially happens in other countries.
I wonder how Sharon Graham's members will feel about retaining their jobs in the fossil fuel energy industry while losing their loved ones or their homes.
Temperatures in the North of Scotland, where North Sea oil and gas jobs stand to be lost in a declining industry, are around 10 degrees C lower than in the South of England suffering current heatwaves.
So Unite members in the cool North of Scotland are probably not connecting with the urgency of climate change that people in the hot South of England are: more with the near term prospects of job loss if the Labour government does not grant new drilling licences in Rosebank and Jackdaw oil fields.
What Sharon Graham should be doing for Unite members facing oil and gas job losses is pressing for urgent implementation of new green energy jobs--Scotland is already home to far higher density of wind farms than England, due to its greater windiness, but it needs new grid connections if it's to export more electricity to England.
Thank you for these daunting facts. We need them, loud & clear!
May I also suggest that readers find the documentary, "Groundswell." In the US, it's on Netflix. It describes another way to help fight climate change, "regenerative gardening," which is currently making great gains. We not only have to curtail emissions, but we have to improve the soil to trap rain. This film is a wonderful explanation.
CORRECTION — “Groundswell “ is available via Amazon Prime, not Netflix. Sorry for the misinformation
Ingamarie, my apologies. I watched it on Amazon Prime, not Netflix! That said, sometimes a movie that’s available in the US may not be available in another country due to licensing agreements, but please give that a try.
We looked for it last night but couldn't find it.......up here in Canada. Might you have a link??
Ingamarie, I get it via streaming on my TV, but I’ll try looking around via my computer. If I can find something, I’ll pass it along.
Thanks......we're busy making rhubarb strawberry crisps from our large garden that is getting away on us....but with farm backgrounds we both realize how much more precarious our food supply is than many realize.......and how increasingly damaged our soil. (The real black gold, forget that fossil stuff)
Strawberry/rhubarb anything is a favorite of mine. Yum! Great combination