The author has an excellent and accessible way of showing the problems caused by the Climate Crisis - but the "action" part is mostly missing. Take this example:

So something you can do right now to tackle them is to divest your money from them. Find out if your bank still has investments in fossil fuels and if they do, change your bank! It’s a quick and easy way you can take action.

That's a pretty good suggestion. But there's no follow up. How do I do this? What platforms should I use? Which resources could help me? And, sadly, it is fatally undermined by the next line:

It won’t fix the problem but it’s a tactic to get us on the way there.

Although it (quite rightly) eschews rehashing arguments about whether climate change is real, it does meander through lots of other political and sociological theories. Sometimes to the detriment of the core argument.

The fact that the climate crisis is inherently woven together with oppressive systems of white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy, both in its causation and its impacts, means that this crisis doesn’t ask us to leave behind what we are already fighting for, but instead to find a way to connect our struggles

Is it though? Because of the constant need to tie everything back to the original sins of racism and colonialism, the argument gets completely diffused. It isn't enough for us to tackle pollution, we have to tackle everything everywhere all at once.

Similarly, it falls into the same trap as lots of other socialist works.

Truly tackling the climate crisis requires each of us to go to the roots of poverty, of police brutality and legalised injustice. It requires us to move away from capitalist exploitation, which exists only to extract profit. Climate justice offers the real possibility of huge leaps towards our collective liberation because it aims to dismantle the very foundations of these issues. This is a far more exciting prospect to me.

Is the Climate Crisis tied in with police brutality? There's an interesting discussion in the book about why so many white protestors are willing to get arrested - in part because they believe the police will treat them more fairly than protestors from a racial minority.

Assuming we accept the arguments that colonialism is the root cause of all this, what action can be taken?

Reparations must go beyond paying cheques to individuals and instead be investments into infrastructure, education, healthcare, housing and energy. These investments will raise the living standards of all oppressed people

OK, great idea. But how? That's nothing an individual can do.

It is so frustrating to read paragraphs like:

We have to take action in order to make things better. We have to join movements and take drastic action because the world as we know it quite literally depends on us doing so.

Yes! I agree! Which movements should I join? How can I find them? What can I do to help them? Where should I target my actions?

There are no answers.

Or this:

Campaigns like Clean Air for Southall and Hayes (CASH) are yet another painful reminder that the most toxic substances, most dangerous industries and the most polluted roads are in the backyards of the poor, which in this country all too-often means the backyards of Black people and people of colour.

Brilliant! But did CASH succeed? What lessons can we learn from it? How do I start something like that? Where can I find out more?

Again, no meaningful discussion of the actions people can take.

Or this:

Consumers’ cannot stop climate change because capitalism is not compatible with a climate-just world. But active citizens CAN. Movements CAN. WE CAN when we challenge and disrupt these systems, rather than limiting our power and actions to those which are within it.

I am genuinely fuelled by her ambition and righteous indignation. How do I disrupt these systems? Give me some action I can take.

The title of the book is "It's Not That Radical". The problem is, the book is radical.

The more I read and watched, the more I was overwhelmed by how many alternatives to capitalism there are, and how much there is to know. But the deeper I got into my research, the more I realised that we can’t expect everyone to read ten different books, watch dozens of talks, be able to understand academic papers or have hundreds of conversations in order to work towards a world beyond capitalism.

The problem is, people like capitalism. They continually vote for it. They like having new cars, shiny gadgets, and exciting distractions. Telling people that they have to accept a lower standard of living isn't likely to change minds.

To be fair, the author does realise this. They look back on their past actions and realise how alienating some of them were. It's important to have a Theory Of Change if you want to actually engage with people.

We aren’t actually toning down our demands. We aren’t making them conform to the system. We are just finding a way to communicate our demands so that they will be listened to and understood. I think that, in the contexts we are facing, this sort of practicality is of the utmost importance.

The book is a bit rambly, but does eventually settle on some reasonable action to take. It also correctly points out that every campaign rests on the backs of the often-invisible people doing the ground-work.

Actions and campaigns don’t just spring up out of nowhere – they require a huge workforce with a wide variety of skills. All of these roles are valuable. It’s so much more than people on the streets or behind a megaphone.

The latter half contains an excellent section on the perils of fame and the dangers of cancel culture. It is painfully self-aware and an excellent antidote to some of the gleeful destruction out in the world. There's also some beautiful writing about her personal philosophy, what drives her, and the importance of empathy.

To see no stranger is to open one’s heart to empathy; to try and see every person as a nuanced, messy person.

It becomes refreshingly egoless and uplifting. This isn't about one person, it is about all of us.

The strongest part of the book is the author's rules for action. They are a perfect encapsulation of understanding the theory of change necessary for something to be successful:

Ahead of partaking in any action, I ask myself the following questions:

• Does this have the potential to create lasting change?
• How does this fit onto our roadmap for a completely transformed and liberated world?
• Will this help to shift the Overton Window closer to a place that allows us a liveable future?
• Will this help improve the material conditions of the lives of those most affected and oppressed?
• Could this prevent any of the above?
• Is this just a distraction from work that could truly build a new world?
• What can I do to modify or change this action so that it cannot be co-opted?
• With arrestable actions, it’s also important to add: is it essential for this to be arrestable?

That's an excellent list for anyone to follow.

I am probably not the target audience. If you're looking for a radical view of what needs to be done, or are happy to be radicalised, this is excellent. If you're looking for concrete steps you can take, you might find it a bit lacking.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.

Starting with this build, we are introducing the Power Grid Forecast API. This API empowers app developers to optimize app behavior, minimizing environmental impact by shifting background tasks to times when more renewable energy is available in the local electrical grid. Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26052

Some computational processes take a lot of electricity. Back in the old days, batch computing meant that programmers could use "spare" CPU cycles at night. Their code ran when no-one else was using the machine. These days, it is common for computational tasks to be outsourced to where-ever electricity is least polluting. For example, shifting overnight processing to countries on the other side of the planet with excess solar power. With Windows' new APIs, they can wait until electricity is too cheap to meter before doing something computationally expensive.

Computing budgets are usually set in terms of FLOPS, Watts, or seconds. I think it is fascinating that we might soon routinely add CO₂ to that equation.

I've written before about domestic appliances being smart about their electricity use. It would be brilliant if your freezer knew to wait 10 minutes for less-polluting power before running its compressor. Similarly, you could tell a clothes dryer to be finished by the time you get home - but let it decide when to actually run.

I also wonder if a games console could drop its FPS, or outsource some of its processing to the cloud, when domestic electricity becomes too expensive.

Of course, the downside is obvious. Can your code refuse to run if it thinks it will cause harm? Is there an interpretation of the laws of robotics which prevents a machine from polluting?

I don't really think that domestic devices will refuse our requests in the near future. But I am curious what incentives - financial or otherwise - there might be to encourage more efficient resource use.

So our winter electricity bills must be massive, right?

Nope.

The normal cost per kWh is 28.5p (including VAT). We're paying less than half that - 12.4p per kWh.

This is thanks to two things - a smart tariff and a home battery.

The Octopus smart tariff charges us a variable amount throughout the day. Every 30 minutes the prices change to reflect the demands on the grid. During peak times, it can go as high as £1/kWh. That's a good incentive not to run the tumble-dryer at the same time as the rest of the country is cooking dinner!

During quieter times, the price of electricity drops - there isn't much demand at 3AM so prices fall. Sometimes they fall to zero. Other times, they fall into negative territory and we get paid to use electricity.

Now, that's all well and good, but most people don't want to shift their consumption habits. The dishwasher goes on when it is full and dinner is cooked before Coronation Street starts. That's where the battery comes in.

We have a 4.8kWh battery. It is hooked up to the Internet and knows what our energy prices are minute-to-minute. When electricity is cheap, it charges up from the grid. When electricity is expensive, it discharges into our home. If we boil the kettle at 7pm, the sensors on the battery detect that we're using expensive electricity and starts outputting stored electricity.

Essentially, we don't have to alter our lifestyle at all. Here's a typical December day. The graph is quite complicated, so let me step you through it.

The bottom graph shows how expensive it is to buy electricity throughout the day. As you can see, there is a peak in the early evening when electricity becomes expensive.

The top graph has two interesting lines on it. The purple line shows how much electricity we're drawing from the grid, the blue line shows what the battery is doing. Early in the morning electricity is cheap - you can see the purple line rising as the blue line falls. That shows the battery is charging. You will notice that it only charges at the cheapest possible times.

In the evening, you can see the purple line dip to zero and the blue line rise. That shows the battery is discharging into our home and there in no electricity being purchased from the grid. There's a similar dip at about 0830 when there's a little spike in price. Clever battery!

I want to stress that is is all automated. I don't have to do a single thing. The battery speaks directly to my electricity provider to get the half-hourly costs. The battery can predict what our usage will be, but keeps most of the electricity for the expensive times of day. Our smart meter sends our usage back to the energy company automatically.

Savings

Against a normal tariff of 28.5p/kWh, I'm paying 12.4p/kWh. That's a saving of 16.1p/kWh.

The bill above shows 320kWh per month, which means a saving of £51 from the electricity I buy. That's approximately a 55% discount.

We've had that battery since August, so about 5 months. In that time it has saved us approximately 500kWh. We only moved onto the smart tariff a few months ago, so work out the savings there is complex - but I estimate it's about £130.

December is a high use month (lots of lights on and oven cooking). During summer, the battery mostly fills up with free solar power. It is hard to predict exactly what we'll save in a year, but it should easily shave 50% off our electricity bills.

Cost

But, of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Our 4.8kWh battery cost about £2,700 to supply and install. That's a large chunk of change. Based on our current projections, its payback period should be about 7 years. Of course, if electricity prices rise significantly, the payback period will shorten.

Solar panels are also expensive to install - between £4,000 and £12,000 depending on your property and how complex your roof is. They mean we pay virtually nothing for electricity in spring and summer. Again, the payback period is under a decade.

We can also sell our excess solar back to the grid. In theory we could also buy cheap electricity in the morning, store it in the battery, and then sell it back at peak times. In practice it isn't worth it; the cost of buying electricity at peak is higher than the price we could sell it for. So it makes sense to use the power rather than selling it.

If you can afford the large up-front capital costs, solar + battery allows you to make massive savings with a dynamic tariff. In times of solar excess, we pay close to nothing per kWh. In winter, we shift our consumption to pay at the cheap rate.

Effectively, it's like pre-purchasing all your electricity for the next decade.

Final thoughts

There's no doubt that the cost makes this prohibitive to many people. Ideally, the state should be mandating that all new homes have solar panels and space for optional batteries. We also need V2G (Vehicle to Grid) to allow electric cars to act as home batteries.

But there's no doubt that these technologies actually work! Yes, solar works in rainy London. And, yes, even fairly small batteries can make a significant difference in winter. We're on the cusp of a domestic energy revolution. When coupled with a smart tariff, it means people don't have to change the way they behave in order to save energy.

Nukes are clean! They are cheap! They are safe and healthy! They are brilliant! Nuclear power will save us all!

Look, I 100% agree that nuclear power is theoretically better than every renewable power source. Nuclear totally clean⁰! Fewer people die of nuclear radiation poisoning than fall from roofs installing solar. Governments never need to cover-up the true cost of nuclear fall-out and decontamination¹. Why can't people get it through their thick skulls that nuclear power is just so fricking cool?!

I agree! Harnessing the power of spicy rocks is a pretty nifty way of making electrons flow.

But here's my real test for nuclear power. Why can't I have a mini-nuke at home?

I'm quite serious.

On my roof I have 5kWp of solar panels which provide 100% of my electrical needs throughout the year. I also have 4.8kWh of battery storage. This technology exists. It works.

If I wanted, I could install a wind turbine. I don't think I need planning permission for that. It might not be cost effective - but plenty of people will sell me one. Again, totally feasible.

I have an incoming gas supply which I use for heat. I suppose I could buy a mini turbine to turn that into electricity. Or I could use a thermoelectric device to turn gas heat into electricity. Bit of a faff, but doable.

Similarly, I can burn wood (or coal) at home and use that for energy. I can go into the woods right now and pick up some sticks which will turn into lovely heat.

I could even buy a petrol / diesel generator and - although the fumes would be disgusting - I could make electricity that way.

Finally, if there were a river running through my property, I could install a hydroelectric generator. There isn't, so I can't. And I don't think my domestic water pressure could do more than power a few LEDs.

So where's my home-nuke kit?

Every other form of electricity generation has a version which can be reasonably installed in the home. Some of them have to be installed by a competent and qualified person. Some of them need yearly check ups. Some of them require planning permission or emissions controls. But they all provably work.

Except nuclear.

Is it because it isn't cheap enough at a smaller scale?

Would the risk of a small nuclear explosion be that much worse than the occasional gas explosions we have?

If my solar panels fell from the roof, they're fairly light but would still give you a nasty bump on the head. A fly-away wind turbine could probably kill someone nearby.

Burning wood, coal, oil, and other combustibles can create some pretty noxious pollution. Would a micro-nuclear reactor be better?

Perhaps there's an alternate future where Chernobyl and Windscale and Three-Mile Island never happened and we're all driving around with Mr Fusion reactors on our cars².

I would be perfectly comfortable living next door to a large, well-managed nuclear power station. But would you sleep soundly knowing your neighbour had a small Generation IV reactor in their basement?

In 1954, the first grid-tied nuclear power station went online. It's 70 years later and nuclear power is no closer to a domestic version. Perhaps the pro-nuclear dudes have an answer for that?