The end of the year provides us with the time and space to look back – and to look forward.
It might seem rather hopeless, with 2025 amounting to one of costliest years for climate disasters but there are hopeful signs for the future.
The BBC Future pages look at seven quiet wins for climate and nature in 2025 – including surging renewables, ocean protections and forest turnarounds.
And in a piece in today’s Daily Mail, former UN official Paul Clements-Hunt agrees with Matt Ridley that the ‘Green Doom’ narrative of climate change has been a disaster for activists – but lays down the challenge that “the UK can lead a worldwide technological, entrepreneurial and financial revolution to tackle harmful global warming that will boost the economy”.
But what can we be doing in our corner of the world? Can we be looking realistically to “future-proofing Sidmouth“?
In a piece yesterday from the SolarPunk Sidmouth blog [just ‘endorsed’ by That Optimism Man Victor Perton…] we looked at future-proofing Sidmouth with realistic optimism, suggesting that community, creativity and adaptation are Sidmouth’s strengths, which will help us ‘future proof’ the Sid Valley.
There are similar positive or even optimistic moves here in the South West, the latest investment being the UK’s largest biochar carbon removal plant about to open in Wiltshire.
And local authorities are being very pro-active. Devon schools join forces for a greener future at a conference earlier this month, the county council declares that Devon’s carbon emissions continue to fall and for the COP30, key Torbay case studies provide some excellent practical ways ahead from the last year. All very positive/optimistic.
The CAPS project will be relaunching itself in the new year with a new-look newsletter, looking to the December 2025 Newsletter from the Devon Climate Emergency project as an example of sharing realistic and positive stories and case studies in our own back yard.
But to finish this look at the optimistic, again looking at the pages of the Daily Mail, there was a recent story on the discovery at Pompeii which confirmed the long-lost secret that built the Roman Empire – literally. We now understand how the Romans made ‘self-healing’ concrete:
Admir Masic, a MIT professor of civil and leader of the study, said: ‘Modern concretes generally lack intrinsic self-healing capability, which is increasingly important as we seek longer-lasting, lower-maintenance infrastructure. So while the ancient process itself is not a direct replacement for modern standards, the principles revealed can inform the design of next-generation durable, low-carbon concretes.’
So, yes, this time is a good time to be looking back – but also looking forwards.
Happy New Year!
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