News

A study from Zurich and the Smith School on agile workforce has found that 38 percent of respondents in Malaysia who are currently in full-time employment are looking to enter the gig economy in the next 12 months. Globally, an average of 20 percent of the workforce plan to go freelance.

If the 1.5C climate target were to be met, over 80 per cent of hydrocarbon assets would be worthless. Ben Caldecott comments in the FT Lex column on the Smith School-led concept of stranded assets.

Purchasing carbon offsets "is clearly better than doing nothing," Cameron Hepburn tells Wired. But key considerations include the need for companies to already be reducing emissions and assurance that offsets aren't replacing other actions.

There is currently little economic incentive for industries that emit CO2 to capture it, let alone to draw it directly down from the atmosphere. Identifying valuable products and how to make them might kickstart CO2 removal on an industrial scale, and help bring down emissions in the process, explains this post in the Conversation.

Volume 1 Issue 1 of the new Nature Food journal features two articles from ECI. John Ingram discusses why nutrition security is more than food security, and the wider Interdisciplinary Food Systems Teaching And Learning (IFSTAL) team highlight their unique approach to equip graduate professionals with the skills, tools and capabilities to better understand and manage food-system complexity.

The idea that electric vehicles, or 'EVs', are new is thoroughly misguided. In a video for The Times, Tim Schwanen explains the history of the EV, from its birth in the early 1800s through to the climate emergency today, being touted "an important part of the future of urban mobility". However, he explains, to make our transport systems truly sustainable "we will need to move away from owned vehicles towards walking, cycling and public transport".

A new paper from the School of Geography and the Environment, and the Environmental Change Institute, suggests that wide-scale introduction of large herbivores to the Arctic tundra could be an economically viable way of restoring the 'mammoth steppe' grassland ecosystem and mitigating global warming.

Central Oxford is guarded by statues of 17 unknown figures. What is the history behind the mysterious Oxford heads, scattered across the city? Professor Heather Viles and Dr Katrin Wilhelm explore who they are and how they came to be here, in this short video.

In a provocative new Channel 4 documentary, George Monbiot argues that the biggest problem driving us towards global disaster is how we feed ourselves. Yadvinder Malhi joins George to talk about the importance of trees - and reminds viewers that Britain is one of the most deforested landscapes on Earth.