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David Fickling

David Fickling

Bloomberg

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Greenland’s Icebergs Can’t Quench the Planet’s Thirst

Greenland’s Icebergs Can’t Quench the Planet’s Thirst
27.01.2025 20

Bloomberg

David Fickling

China’s Oil Demand Is Vanishing Faster Than It Looks

China’s Oil Demand Is Vanishing Faster Than It Looks

Is China still the best justification for ongoing crude demand, or the worst? While most of the world remains fixated on the slow-motion car crash in...

21.01.2025 5

Bloomberg

David Fickling

The US Could Learn From First Nations Firefighters

The US Could Learn From First Nations Firefighters

The devastation from California’s wildfires is unique in its horror — but it has precedents elsewhere in the world. And some time-honored...

16.01.2025 20

Bloomberg

David Fickling

The Hollywood Fires Will Cause Harm Long After They Burn Out

The Hollywood Fires Will Cause Harm Long After They Burn Out

What could be more terrifying than a wall of flame sweeping through the suburbs of Los Angeles? The stealthy cloud of pollution seeping into...

13.01.2025 20

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Tesla and Waymo Should Learn From 2024’s Air Crashes

If you yearn for a future where you can travel from place to place in safety and comfort, some of the major transport events of 2024 might feel like...

07.01.2025 7

Bloomberg

David Fickling

The Climate Scorecard Is Looking Bleak in 2025

We’re now almost halfway through a decade where the world needs to drastically cut carbon emissions if we’re to avoid damaging global warming. The...

01.01.2025 10

Bloomberg

David Fickling

The World’s Biggest Dam Is the Last Thing China Needs

If you’re worried about China’s insatiable appetite for coal and its role in the relentless heating of our planet, you might see the building of...

31.12.2024 10

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Here’s the Best Climate News You Missed This Year

Those who follow the energy transition seem perpetually pitched between elation and despair. For every fragment of positive news — surging Chinese...

25.12.2024 4

Bloomberg

David Fickling

The Year’s Worst Climate News You Haven’t Heard About

There’s been no shortage of grim climate news to hit the headlines over the past year. In March, the United Nations’ weather agency declared 2023...

23.12.2024 4

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Sea Turtles Aren’t Vanishing. In Fact They’re Thriving

It’s hard to forget your first glimpse of a turtle in its natural environment. In my case, it happened about 15 years ago, on a cay in Australia’s...

20.12.2024 10

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Green Christmas Stocking Stuffers Aren’t So Sustainable

How do the ecologically-minded make it through the annual festive orgy of frivolous consumerism? Nearly a fifth of non-automotive US retail...

14.12.2024 9

Bloomberg

David Fickling

An OPEC for Solar Power Isn’t Going to Work

What do you do in an energy industry that’s facing its first speed bumps after decades of meteoric growth? In the case of oil, the answer in 1960...

12.12.2024 5

Bloomberg

David Fickling

GM Is on a Road to Nowhere in China

Getting a stay of execution doesn’t mean you’re no longer on death row. That’s the situation that General Motors Co.’s Chinese joint venture finds...

05.12.2024 3

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Can’t Take the Heat Wave? Then Build, Baby, Build

Much of the world might be hunkering down for the start of winter, but in the Southern Hemisphere a blistering summer is building. In my hometown...

02.12.2024 4

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Clean Power Must Offer More Hope to Beat Fossil Fuels

You can regard the depressing denouement of the COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan at the weekend as a sort of diplomatic echo of the US...

25.11.2024 2

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Apple Should Have Learned a Chinese Lesson on EVs

High-tech manufacturing in China over the past year has often felt like watching a looking-glass parody of the US. In America, electric vehicles...

25.11.2024 7

Bloomberg

David Fickling

America Got the World Driving. Now It’s Going Home

Germany’s Carl Benz might have invented the automobile, but it’s the United States that got us to drive them. The relentless export of American...

17.11.2024 1

Bloomberg

David Fickling

A Climate Breakthrough Has Rarely Looked Bleaker

Has there ever been a grimmer backdrop to the world’s most concerted attempt to avert global warming? COP29 — the annual conference for the United...

12.11.2024 4

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Gas Got America Off Coal. Now It’s Coming for Asia’s Oil

To many in the petroleum industry, natural gas is the unsung hero of the energy transition. It may not be a clean fuel, but it’s nowhere near as...

07.11.2024 4

Bloomberg

David Fickling

The Global Methane Bomb Is Starting to Detonate

For all the damage that humanity is causing through our production of greenhouse gases, the numbers involved can seem impossibly slight. Every year...

24.10.2024 20

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Japan Hopes Electric Cars Were Just a Bad Dream

France and Japan are both world leaders in design — but if you’re wanting to keep up with fashion, Paris is the unmissable trendsetter, while...

18.10.2024 9

Bloomberg

David Fickling

It’s OK to Mine the Rainforest for Car Batteries

Attempts to prevent the destruction of the world’s rainforests are badly off track — and in the public mind, electric vehicles are increasingly to...

11.10.2024 30

Bloomberg

David Fickling

A Million-Dollar Chinese Car Is Europe’s Next Threat

The Hongqi L5 might not be the most obvious risk to Europe’s struggling auto industry. Weighing in at more than three tons, as long from bumper to...

09.10.2024 2

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Breaking Our Plastics Habit Is Easier Said Than Done

Could our unshakeable addiction to plastics be broken? That’s certainly the hope of activists. The US — birthplace of the modern polymers industry,...

15.09.2024 3

Bloomberg

David Fickling

EV Charging Faces Deeper Problems Than We Realize

When’s the last time you visited a gas station that sold nothing but gas? If the answer is “never,” you’ve hit on one of the key problems for the...

09.09.2024 2

Bloomberg

David Fickling

The Past’s Dead Hand Weighs on US Steel Takeover

Over the past three years, European governments and the administration of US President Joe Biden have announced a set of ambitious plans to wean...

08.09.2024 2

Bloomberg

David Fickling

You Could Power America With China’s Wasted Energy

By any stretch of the imagination, the US is one of the world’s biggest coal producers. Even after declining by about half since 2008, output last...

05.09.2024 2

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Cathay’s Engines Are Pushing the Limits of Technology

We don’t yet know the details of the problem that caused Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. to cancel flights and inspect its entire fleet of Airbus SE...

03.09.2024 4

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Burning Oil Tanker Doesn’t Need a Spill to do Damage

For those concerned about the environmental damage caused by fossil fuels, stricken oil tankers in the Red Sea are almost as recognizable as the...

01.09.2024 1

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Great Powers Don’t Listen to What the Pacific Wants

In a region that’s used to being taken for granted by its neighbors, it’s remarkable what a little agency can achieve. That’s what the...

30.08.2024 2

Bloomberg

David Fickling

An Activist Investor Could Green Japan for $700 Million

Billionaires with an eye on their legacy rarely do things on a small scale. Take Australia’s fifth-richest person, Mike Cannon-Brookes. The...

28.08.2024 3

Bloomberg

David Fickling

‘Cruisezilla’ Is a Greener Holiday Than You’d Think

For many people, cruise ships sound like one of the blander circles of hell: Enormous floating holiday parks laden with lukewarm buffet food, bored...

24.08.2024 10

Bloomberg

David Fickling

An Electricity Protection Racket Makes Pakistan Opt Out

Anyone running a protection racket knows the rule: Squeeze your marks too hard, and they’ll end up breaking. That’s what appears to be happening in...

21.08.2024 2

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Burn More Fuel to Stop Air Travel Cooking the Planet

Airlines aren’t always the best allies in the fight against climate change. But one place where they’re world leaders is in their fanatical drive...

21.08.2024 3

Bloomberg

David Fickling

A Flood of Hydro Is Washing Coal From China’s Grid

Summer rains are leaving China sodden. That’s pushing coal underwater. After several years of drought, rainfall has been lashing the country for...

15.08.2024 2

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Green Power Is Losing the Battle to Clean Up Hydrogen

In the race to clean up industry, clean energy is slipping behind fossil fuels. That’s because we’ve pinned a lot of hopes on the prospects of...

13.08.2024 2

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Your Favorite Wine Regions Will Feel the Heat

What’s the first industry to fall victim to climate change? There’s a decent argument that it already happened — more than 600 years ago. When the...

11.08.2024 1

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Olympians Must Resist the Return of Spurious Gender Tests

If you want evidence that the malign effect of our era’s culture wars is causing us to go backward on issues that were once considered settled,...

09.08.2024 2

Bloomberg

David Fickling

In Praise of Forest Plantations

Among all the landscapes created by human industry, timber plantations may be one of the most maligned. Spreading across the land in rows as...

06.08.2024 2

Bloomberg

David Fickling

China’s Abandoned Building Sites Are Killing Oil Demand

To get an idea of why the oil industry keeps failing to see the demand lift from China that it’s been waiting for all year, consider this: The area...

06.08.2024 40

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Triathletes Are Lab Rats for the Seine Cleanup Stunt

What’s not to like about a sparkling bathing spot in the middle of a global city? Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) bet to...

31.07.2024 3

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Honda’s Two-Wheel Indian Rivals Leave It in the Dust

Which automotive company, more than any other, is responsible for getting the world’s population moving? Ford Motor Co., whose Model T turned the...

31.07.2024 10

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Olympics Host Cities Don’t Belong on a Warming Planet

What’s the biggest event at the Olympic Games? There’s a good case that it’s not running, or swimming, or gymnastics, but the celebration of...

25.07.2024 1

Bloomberg

David Fickling

China’s Cement Boom Is Over. We Can All Breathe Easier

Imagine if France, or Taiwan, or the United Arab Emirates eliminated their carbon dioxide emissions in a couple of years — and no one noticed....

22.07.2024 1

Bloomberg

David Fickling

Hydro Power Is Facing a Deepening Dry Spell

The world’s biggest source of renewable energy has been going through a dry patch. Generation from solar farms roughly tripled between 2018 and...

15.07.2024 20

Bloomberg

David Fickling