James Vaccaro

Amid the global chaos rolling on day after day, it feels almost inappropriate to get worked up about something as boring as interest rates. Many people tune out economics debates unless they are worrying about their mortgages. But the mundanity of monetary policy can be more effective at holding economies hostage than any blockade in […]

Welcome to the future…again. Amidst the season of future-casting, I have been reflecting less on ‘what is happening out there’ and more on the reaction – and on ‘what is happening for us’. A couple of years ago, I got offered a lift in a self-driving taxi. The fascination amongst the group I was with

This isn’t a tale of the future. this is a story unfolding almost everywhere today in some shape or form. Insurance is a mechanism for pricing and spreading risk. It can be instrumental in underwriting a future that is more resilient. But when there isn’t a flow of investment into adaptation at scale to make

That got your attention didn’t it. Exxon CEO, Darren Woods, explaining novel accounting innovation Carbon Measures at COP30, gave the rationale for allocating responsibility for fossil fuel consumers, not producers. He likened it to Macdonalds “being asked to take responsibility for the weight of their customers.” 🍔 Yes. Let’s keep the comparisons going…. 💉 It

It might feel like a new fad, but data centres are very much here to stay’so how we design them into the environment is absolutely crucial. While AI is scratching its metaphorical head to guess how much data there will be (32,000 Zettabytes or so by 2050) the bottom end of the range tends to

It’s been quite sobering to reflect with others on TragedyoftheHorizon – 10 years on from the original Mark Carney box-office blockbuster speech. The sequel, built on the themes of the original, revealing why we’re a decade closer to the precipice, and shining a light on what has to happen now. But I’d only really want

The dry conditions started in late February this year in Andover, Hampshire. It continued for days, then weeks, then months until it became a drought – an increasingly common feature of British weather. By July, with river levels dangerously low, the charity WildFish complained to Southern Water about it draining the River Test to meet

If we want to make sustainability cool(er) then maybe we could ❄️ make cooling cool (again). The heat is dropping off (at least in my corner of the world at the tail end of summer) which might mean it’s OK to forget about precautionary strategies for cooling. But overall – especially in Europe – extreme

Getting ill during nice weather can be a real downer. So it was pretty annoying to have recently caught Covid, again (and yes I’d been vaccinated, and infected, multiple times previously, but that’s not the point). When I returned from my (purely voluntary) self-isolation, I was met with raised eyebrows. “Oh, I didn’t think that

Ocean bottom trawling is not just a bit fishy, it’s proper disgusting. When the amount of bycatch that gets thrown back dead every year is the animal biomass of 9 billion cats 😿😿😿😿😿😿😿😿😿*, it should be an outrage. The ratio of dead discarded bycatch to the catch sold is as much as 5:1. Which makes