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In September 2015, news broke that Volkswagen (VW) had been selling cars in the US that had a so-called “defeat device” installed in diesel engines. It could detect when they were being tested and change performance to improve results.
The German carmaker admitted to cheating emissions tests and it soon became clear that this was not just about US car sales. VW later admitted that about 11 million cars worldwide had also been fitted with the same software.
Modifying an environmental test and masquerading as ‘doing the right thing’ will obviously have no meaningful impact on the environment. You would expect that everyone would have learnt lessons from the car industry’s shameful episode.
Last modified on Sat 3 Apr 2021 08.02 EDT
Hanging plants smother the walls of a new office block proposed for Salford, giving it the look of something from an abandoned post-Covid city, reclaimed by nature. The ivy-covered tower, designed by Make Architects, has been trumpeted as “fossil-fuel free”, set to run on 100% renewable energy and reach net zero operational carbon, with tenants enjoying the “biophilic” benefits of dangling foliage. But not everyone is convinced.
“It’s strange to see something described as ‘fossil-fuel free’ when it is made of concrete, steel and glass,” says Joe Giddings, coordinator of the Architects Climate Action Network (Acan) campaign group. “The production of these materials entails burning a huge amount of fossil fuel.
Power Pop Plus: Top 20 Albums of 2020
John M. Borack chooses 20 of the finest melodically-charged releases from last year
Author:
Mar 11, 2021
To be blunt, 2020 was a sh tshow in so many ways, but at least there was a bright spot as far as music as concerned: the overall quality of melodically-charged releases was quite high indeed. Here are
Power Pop Plus s top 20 albums from The Year the World Was Put on Pause, with a few extras tossed in at the end.
1.
By Elizabeth Hopkirk2021-01-20T13:24:00+00:00
Architects criticise government’s Future Homes Standard response for ‘falling significantly short’
Architects have criticised the government’s response to the Future Homes Standard consultation, saying it does not mention embodied carbon once in 114 pages.
But they welcomed some of the revisions the government has proposed, saying it had listened to concerns they had raised previously.
The government’s response, published yesterday, centres on energy efficiency improvements that will be implemented on new homes through Parts L (energy) and F (ventilation) of the Building Regulations.
Architect Seb Laan Lomas, coordinator of the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN)’s embodied carbon group, said the government had recognised the clamour for embodied carbon to be part of the Future Homes Standard (FHS) but that its response was inadequate.
Power Pop Plus: A Look Back at 2020.and More
John M. Borack explores some of the best of 2020 and a brand new release from Matthew Sweet
Author:
Sweet s fifteenth solo effort is one of his finest in recent memory. Like Paul McCartney s
III,
Catspaw is a grower rather than an instant knockout: songs such as Give a Little, Challenge the Gods, Come Home, and At a Loss will sneak up on you and provide a guitar-fueled gut punch given half a chance. Speaking of which,
Catspaw is most definitely a full-on guitar record: Sweet handles all the six-string action here and does a helluva job, with the beefy sound harkening back to Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine s work on Sweet s 1990s releases. (Sweet handles all instrumentation himself here, save for longtime cohort Ric Menck s typically rock-steady drums.) Only one of the dozen tunes clocks in at longer than four minutes, and the relative brevity of the songs allows Sweet to say what he has to say, tear through a kickin guita