This Curious Minds digest is based around a prominent topic in the news: “the first energy squeeze of the green era”. If you are looking to study a scientific or social science degree (e.g. Geography, Economics, Politics etc.), it is crucial to examine current affairs articles and topics in the news. This digest will pose a range of questions around the energy market shortage, and will start you thinking about the potential causes and implications.

For students applying for a social sciences degree, it is important to understand the linkages between adjacent fields. The following questions were asked to an Economics candidate at Cambridge during his interview. In this Curious Economics Minds digest, we encourage you to interrogate and explore the following questions in detail, thinking about how Governments, Environmental Policy, and Business intertwine.

Sophie is an MU Sustainability/ Geography expert, with extensive knowledge on marine environments and seascape ecology, her specialism in her current job as a research assistant in the Oxford University Seascape Ecology Lab. Sophie has contributed to three recent academic papers about the Seychelles, Blue Carbon, and the Arctic and worked with a range of academics with specialisms from Maritime Law to International Climate Policy. Find out about her exciting research on the growing interest in marine ecology to include indigenous knowledge in conservation efforts.

MU Mastermind, Domantas (Natural Sciences (Chemistry), University of Cambridge), is interested in a field of research which explores how chemistry can be used to produce and store clean energy to fight global issues of air pollution and man-made global warming. Explore this topical field of chemical research to know more about uses of chemistry in the modern world, and consider the multiplicity of factors involved in combatting climate change.

Under almost any given country’s legal system, its citizens – its people – have rights: to exist freely, to be free from exploitation, to be safe from harm enacted by another. The same is not true, however, of the natural world. The Amazon rainforest is felled at an astonishing rate, the Great Barrier Reef suffers massive bleaching on a regular basis, and countless other small acts of pollution and degradation occur the world over, every minute of every day. But what if these wonders of the natural world could be protected in the same way? What if a river, or a forest, or a whole ecosystem could become a person?