Hello again lovely email friends. You might have noticed that I prefer to avoid covering things the mainstream media have gathered around—errant politicians and the like—not because it isn’t interesting, but because you certainly know where to find them. But COP26 is a particularly good time for coverage on emissions and the climate crisis, so this week I’m starting with a few articles that I’ve found particularly interesting.

Earlier this year I completed a course at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, in which the case for economic growth as the mechanism of change was substantiated. But there is also a strong opposing argument, set out in the first link below. Both are worthy of detailed study: and I mean that not to devalue the thinking on either side, but rather that it may be necessary to support one while we figure out how to adopt the other, as time spent choosing is time wasted. And there is no time.

• 🤑 Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction: Commander Monbiot at his finest: instead of focusing on ‘micro consumerist bollocks’ like ditching our plastic coffee cups, we must challenge the pursuit of wealth and level down, not up.

• 🤝 If we want to build a just zero-carbon future, climate discussions need to be diversified now: The Conversation undertook a year-long research project to examine the role of six organisations from the public, private, and civil society sectors in climate change decision-making. In particular, that the benefits and costs of taking climate action are distributed between everyone, and not heaped unfairly on underprivileged groups.

• ☠️ Stop Telling Kids They’ll Die From Climate Change: Many young people feel like their future is in peril. To make progress on climate change, we must move past doomsday scenarios.

• 🌳 Climate crisis: what can trees really do for us? This author works in a forest full of beautiful 175-year-old oaks. Global CO₂ levels were around 280 parts per million (ppm) when these trees were seedlings. Now global atmospheric concentrations exceed 415ppm and are rising rapidly. Should these oaks reach 200 years old, they will be surrounded by air containing around 550ppm of CO₂. Can the world’s mature forests stand these changing conditions and continue to offset some of our emissions from burning fossil fuels?

• 🤔 Neutrino Puzzles Point to the Possibility of Multiple Missing Particles: Years of conflicting neutrino measurements have led physicists to propose a “dark sector” of invisible particles — one that could simultaneously explain dark matter, the puzzling expansion of the universe, and other mysteries.

• 🗺 Memory lanes: Google’s map of our lives: Google’s Street View helps us navigate the world, but it’s also a portal on forgotten places and secret moments.

• 🎧 Why Gen Z is plugging in wired headphones and tuning out AirPods: AirPods are now synonymous with a decidedly uncool aesthetic: that of tech and finance bros. They beg to be paired with a Patagonia Better Sweater fleece and worn while on a call where men use incomprehensible words like “synergy” in real conversations.

• 🤖 Intel slipped—and its future now depends on making everyone else’s chips: Apple, Google, Amazon, and other companies are moving away from Intel’s standardised chips toward their own customised designs. If Intel doesn’t change with the times, it risks being left behind.

• 🌆 China cracks down on vanity-project super skyscrapers: Without special approval, cities with populations of less than 3 million must not build skyscrapers taller than 150 metres, and cities with larger populations must not construct buildings higher than 250 metres. See also: Architect Resigns in Protest over Mega-Dorm.

• 🆗 Why we say “OK”: How a cheesy joke from the 1830s became the most widely spoken word in the world.