We’re unlikely to find fixes to our global problems if we’re battling against our planet’s natural resources rather than making use of them. This week, some tales of harnessing the power of nature as we tackle man-made crises: climate change and our insatiable need for energy.
Move aside, the sun – could the moon be the solution to our clean energy crisis? The power of our ocean tides, the only renewable source derived from the moon, might be able to provide huge amounts of clean, renewable electricity. Damian Carrington reports from France on the extraordinary inventions that could help to harness it.
In the meantime, the sun’s not doing a bad job: a heatwave in the UK helped break solar power-generation records, with solar briefly eclipsing gas power stations as the top source of electricity.
Rising temperatures and dry spells in the US midwest are wreaking havoc with crop yields, as new pests and diseases emerge due to hot and arid conditions. But now an ancient Syrian grass that survived a civil war might provide salvation for stricken American farmers, as Mark Schapiro explains.
Elsewhere this week, we are celebrating the 70th birthday of the UK’s National Health Service, the world’s largest government-funded healthcare system. Haroon Siddique brings us five fascinating innovations from health services around the world that could help the NHS to break new ground over the next 70 years.
And in Gaza City, Oliver Holmes and Hazem Balousha report on the strip’s first ever coding academy, where 16 students (half male, half female), surrounded by boundaries, are breaking free online.
What we liked
This New Yorker examination of universal basic income and this Wired tale of the French boat that’s circling the planet powered by renewables.
What we heard
All these tidal sources are important and may contribute, but the main and cheapest contribution comes from efficient use. In other words: it is not sustainable to fly to remote destinations to board a ship that is supposedly cruising to important places that we must see. It is not sustainable to board a jet plane to watch a football match. And it is not sustainable to fly in food from faraway places out of season by airplane just for the kick of strawberries in winter or lamb from down under.
Commenter, continental cyclist, writing below the line of our piece on tidal power.
Where was the upside?
In living rooms up and down Britain, where Christian Sinabaldi, Erica Buist and Deborah Linton captured the agony, ecstasy and weird snacks that friends and families from countries competing at the World Cup shared as they watched their heroes on TV.
