🌱 The Grumpy Optimists #156
This week: geothermal firsts, a parrot comeback, and why even Trump is retiring coal.
Happy Monday. 👋
Welcome back to another edition of The Grumpy Optimists. The end of February has become a milestone for me. Two years ago, on 29 February, I sold Zevero so it could grow into what it is today. We have grown from 5 people wanting to make climate action easier to a team of over 50 around the world with clients as big as Tokyo Government.
I started this blog nearly six years ago as a way to write and show that I can do hard things. I wanted to work in climate and thought that if I wrote about it consistently enough, it might open a door. The irony is that it did, just not in the way I expected. Instead of helping me get a job, it helped me start a company with my co-founder.
I think a lot about how easily that might not have happened. If I had overthought it. If I had worried too much about whether anyone was reading. If I had not asked myself, what is the worst that can happen?
I am very aware that optimism is easier when you have the privilege to absorb failure. But optimism, especially about climate, is not naivety. It is not ignoring reality. It is choosing to believe that progress is possible, and then behaving as if that belief matters.
So thank you, reader, for being a grumpy optimist, for thinking about the world we can create rather than the world we currently have.
👀 News to make you feel good this week
🌍 Nature fighting back
🐟 Waitrose to suspend mackerel sales due to overfishing concerns. Waitrose has paused sales of mackerel over concerns that current fishing levels are unsustainable. Retailers rarely take voluntary steps like this unless the science is clear and the reputational risk is rising. It signals how biodiversity and ocean health are starting to shape mainstream commercial decisions, not just NGO campaigns.
What I love about this is that Waitrose are making a bold decision. They don’t need to stop selling mackerel, but by doing so, they also raise attention to wider issues of overfishing.
🦅 No trees, no food, shot for fun, yet Serbia’s imperial eagles are making an improbable return. Once close to extinction due to habitat destruction and hunting, Serbia’s eastern imperial eagles are coming back. Years of habitat restoration, nest protection and conservation enforcement are bearing fruit. Wildlife recovery is rarely instant. It is the result of persistent, often unglamorous work over decades.
💭 My thoughts? Stories like this are the reason I started this newsletter. Extinction feels inevitable right up until it isn’t. The birds didn’t get the memo.
🌊 ‘The river won’: campaigners in the Brazilian Amazon stopped the privatisation of a waterway. A coalition of indigenous communities and environmental groups successfully blocked the sale of a major Amazon river to private interests. The case shows how local activism can defend critical natural assets against commercial pressure. The kind of win that rarely makes front pages, but absolutely should.
🐦 Berry boom brings hope for New Zealand’s once-doomed kākā. A strong berry season combined with long-term conservation programmes is supporting the recovery of New Zealand’s native kākā.
⚡ Energy shifting beneath the surface
🌋 ‘Magic beneath the surface’: pioneering geothermal plant launches in Cornwall. A new geothermal plant in Cornwall is tapping heat from deep underground to generate electricity for homes, a UK clean energy first. Unlike wind and solar, geothermal provides constant baseload power regardless of what the weather is doing. It has been a long time coming, and Cornwall is a genuinely exciting place to prove the model.
⛏️ Trump has overseen more coal retirements than any other US president. New analysis shows coal plant retirements have accelerated during Trump’s presidency, driven largely by economics rather than any policy ambition. Cheap renewables continue to outcompete coal. The structural shift in the US power mix is market-led, not politically led.
💭 My thoughts? The undisputed champion of beautiful clean coal Donald Trump can’t even stop the decline of coal and the rise of renewables.
🏎️ Toyota to build circular factory in Poland to recycle end-of-life vehicles. Toyota plans to build a facility focused on recovering materials from end-of-life vehicles. Circularity is shifting from pilot projects to industrial scale, which is the only scale that actually matters.
👟 Nike sources 100% clean electricity for Japan operations. Nike has transitioned its Japan operations to 100% clean electricity. For context, Japan’s grid emits roughly 0.45 to 0.50 kg of CO₂ per kWh, compared to around 0.20 kg in the UK and closer to 0.05 kg in France. In other words, decarbonising in Japan avoids more than double the emissions per unit of electricity compared to much of Western Europe. I’m lucky enough to spend a lot of time in Japan, so this one hit home!
🥛 Minor Figures launches powdered milk to cut emissions. Minor Figures have developed a powdered version of their product, dramatically reducing the emissions associated with shipping liquid (which is mostly water). It is the kind of unglamorous supply chain innovation that does not get much attention but makes a real dent. Less liquid, less weight, fewer lorries, lower footprint.
📋 UK Sustainability Reporting Standards: what you need to know. The UK has launched its latest standards in climate reporting. This is big news for corporations in the UK and one I’ll be hosting a webinar about soon. 👀
🎬 Dirty Business — Channel 4. There’s a reason the working title for this show was “Isle of Shite.” A three-part drama about Britain’s sewage scandal, built around real victims and campaigners who spent decades trying to make people care. The facts were always there. Surfers Against Sewage has been campaigning since 1990. The harm was documented. Nothing moved at scale until the emotional reality landed somewhere people couldn’t look away from.
That’s what good storytelling does that data never quite can.
💭 My thoughts? Most of the issues covered in this newsletter suffer from the same problem: the evidence is overwhelming and nothing moves fast enough. Storytelling is one of the most underrated tools we have for closing the gap between knowing and actually caring.
That’s all from me this week. This week’s music recommendation is Look At That Woman by ROLE MODEL.
George, the Grumpy Optimist 💚
Great to see the UK is producing geothermal power.
3 MW might seem small, but the real value isn’t just the initial megawatts or tonnes of lithium. It’s the capability built well-by-well.
This is what industrial strategy looks like in practice: funding early projects not just for output, but for institutional learning.
Hopefully what was learned here is translated into replications that drive down costs and harness new resources.