"Under the guise of 'green transition', a new colonial plunder is taking place." "We need a form of transition that doesn't harm us." "We categorically reject sowing discord between workers and nature defenders." Bob Myers reports on a meeting in Bosnia peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/09/25/b...

Les Levidow: Labour has lulled some campaigners with a narrative combining 3 false promises, that (1) novel decarbonisation technologies (e.g. carbon capture and hydrogen) + (2) more renewable energy will (3) achieve Net Zero Emissions (NZE). peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/09/08/o...

"Public transport finance could & should be radically overhauled, to release it from dependence on fares. We in @farefreelondon.bsky.social advocate a system that is not only publicly owned, and generously funded, but also free at the point of use." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/09/04/b...

How zero-fares succeeds & fails in Krivyi Rih, Ukraine: "Buses & trolleybuses are perceived as belonging to the public domain or common weal, while [privately-run minibuses] are something new, modern and non-socialist, harbingers of capitalist modernity" peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/08/29/f...

Our free-to-download pamphlet, Remaking Home Heating in the UK, is here on the People & Nature site. peopleandnature.wordpress.com/decarbonisin... In it, Tom Ackers argues for wholesale electrification (including district heating & heat pump installation), & a universal programme of deep retrofit

A universal programme of retrofit is needed to stop UK homes leaking heat. Here Tom Ackers shows that the Low Energy Transformation Initiative proposals are a convincing alternative to the government's lukewarm promises peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/08/13/r...

Electrify, electrify, electrify, Tom Ackers argues in this excerpt from our free-to-download pamphlet, Remaking Home Heating in the UK. District heat networks and heat pumps can keep us warm peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/08/13/e...

"We need a 'twin track' approach to remaking home heating: wholesale electrification (incl. district heating & heat pump installation), & universal programme of deep retrofit" - Tom Ackers in a free-to-download pamphlet, Remaking Home Heating in the UK peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/08/12/h...

Homes leak heat & people suffer as a result, writes Tom Ackers. Fabric efficiency is poor, & the govt's awful monitoring system, based on Energy Performance Certificates, should be replaced. Free-to-download pamphlet, Remaking Home Heating in the UK peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/08/12/f...

Climate Injustice by Friederike Otto reviewed. In mainstream discourse, global heating "is gutted of content, stripped of its origins in economic activity & social hierarchies". The responsibility of powerful humans in corpor'ns & gov'ts is concealed. peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/08/07/c...

“I am using this trial as a tribune from which to denounce the war publicly”, Dmitry Ivanov told a Moscow court, before it sentenced him to 8.5 years in prison, for 12 social media posts. More than 30 others have used the Russian courts to speak out peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/07/28/h...

"Oleg Dubrovsky concludes that his efforts at socialist propaganda failed almost completely, but his organising around wages, hours and workplace conditions had some success." Review of a memoir by a lifelong workplace activist in Dnipro. peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/06/29/u...

Alexei Rozhkov, kidnapped, tortured & sentenced to 16 years for protesting against Putin's war: "Truly, culture and freedom are what make us human. They are things that are so hard to obtain, and so easy to lose. It’s impossible to remain indifferent." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/06/10/r...

I am on substack now, as well as at peoplenature.org. People and Nature peopleandnature.substack.com?r=5toglo&utm...

Kremlin propaganda, using Red army victory in 1945 to justify ethnic cleansing in Ukraine, would have Vasily Grossman turning in his grave. So would Labour politicians who facilitate genocidal war crimes in Gaza talking "democracy" on VE Day. 1/2 peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/05/02/v...

Yevgeny Khaldei, who took that iconic shot of the Red flag in 1945, as a Ukrainian Jew suffered official Soviet discrimination & censorship. In 1999 I interviewed his children & wrote this: a counterweight to the VE Day hypocrisy coming up next week peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/05/02/t...

Solar power expanding. China leads (40% of global capacity). Most is big solar farms; rooftop solar a close 2nd. Outside the rich world, businesses & well-off households use it to back up unreliable grid electricity. Poorer households left behind. 1/4 peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/04/24/r...

"Technologies are not rabbits pulled out of hats. They are instruments of labour. [...] Instead of inventing for renewable technologies social powers they do not have, we should consider how they are used now, by capital, and how we can change that." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/04/23/t...

We lost this battle, but not the war. We campaign for free public transport & against the Lower Thames Crossing. "We don’t need more tunnels. We need rational, low-traffic, socially just transport policies, to make our city an even nicer place to live." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/04/09/s...

"We are not required to endorse long-term rearmament programmes, in order to support politically the provision to Ukraine by western European states of the weapons and ammunition it needs." Photo by Solidarity Collectives 1/3 peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/03/28/s...

When we are taught a lesson by a 67 year old russian historian, former USSSR dissident. Jailed at 19. Jailed at 67. #freeskobov #impeachkrasnov 🇫🇷🇪🇺🇺🇦

"What challenges does the war present to Ukrainian society & the EU? What tensions & contradictions has it exposed? What changed in the symbolic opposition between the pro-Russian east & pro-European west?" Interview with Daria Saburova & Denys Gorbach. peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/03/18/u...

"We need to separate, analytically, 2 strands of Trump’s policy: (1) ideological kinship with dictators and mass murderers like Putin and Netanyahu, (2) related but not the same, his assault on the alliance between the US & western European powers" peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/02/23/t...

Why I sabotaged a military train, by anti-war prisoner Ruslan Siddiqi. "The Russian gov't cut off all opportunities to influence the situation peacefully. Not surprising that some prefer to leave the country, & others take up explosives." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/02/19/y...

"We want to use energy differently, as part of living differently – which is surely what the labour movement has always aspired to." From our recent Energy Strategy Day, this talk by Simon Pirani (@peoplenature.bsky.social) has some food for thought.

"Focus on policies that address global warming on 1 hand, social inequality on the other", e.g. Energy 4 All, free public transport, & "counter the right wing narrative (also taken up by Labour politicians) that action on climate hurts ordinary people" peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/02/12/c...

"The rapid expansion of decentralised solar hints at a utopian dream, very low-carbon electricity controlled by people, not corporations. But implemented this way, by the market & excluding households that need it most, it appears like a nightmare." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/02/07/p...

Will capital "turn off oil & gas, & replace the world’s energy needs from renewables, before climate chaos becomes the norm"? That's like "someone ripping out their own heart with one hand, while trying to construct a replacement organ with the other". peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/02/04/t...

Heroism in a Russian courtroom

Skobov, twice incarcerated in Soviet times as a socialist dissident, behind bars again. Of the Kremlin's rulers, he told the judge: "Murdering hundreds of 000s of people is how they bolster their self-esteem. They are degenerates, scum, Nazi riffraff." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/01/21/a...

There’s an ocean of naturally-occurring hydrogen under the earth’s surface. Steve Drury explains what the geologists know so far, and Simon Pirani responds to claims that this could be a magic bullet to sort out climate change peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2025/01/15/w...

Saudi Arabia is using carbon capture and hydrogen to greenwash its plans to expand fossil fuel output. The UK government is helping, with Keir Starmer's trip to the Gulf, and seeking funds for its own false solutions peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/12/20/l...

What can we expect from the new transport secretary? Here's a "cautionary tale about the cynical greenwashing used by Heidi Alexander and London Mayor Sadiq Khan to justify the tunnel". From the horse's mouth. peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/12/02/s...

Russian political prisoner Igor Paskar painted his face with Ukrainian colours & threw a Molotov cocktail at the porch of a security police building. He was arrested, tortured & sentenced to 8.5 years. Here's his story. peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/11/26/r...

I wrote a review, & tried to connect the history of oil with the nightmare we see every day in Gaza

Simon Pirani reviews Crude Capitalism: oil, corporate power and the making of the world market, by Adam Hanieh. 'We are dealing with a many-headed hydra that combines wealth, power and terror in complex ways.' peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/11/18/o...

Peter Somerville reviews Overshoot by Andreas Malm and Wim Carton: "wind & sunshine cannot be bought or sold, & so are not commodities, but "they generate electricity, a commodity of crucial importance", that in capitalism has value and produces profit peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/11/18/o...

Labour's carbon capture fraud: "The govt’s partnership with fossil fuel co's runs more deeply than conspiracy. It is ideological". It uses false narratives to co-opt union leaders, while sidelining critics including scientists, and criminalising protest peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/11/01/l...

Lithuanian trade union organiser and activist Jurgis Valiukevičius: "You [in western Europe] had fascism, revolutions, & dictatorships – but it always was your own history. For our societies, fear of being occupied by some other country is more real." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/10/29/l...

"Elites opportunistically use climate change to push a technology that would amplify the risk of annihilation. Greater, swifter, and cheaper emissions reductions can be achieved by a range of other measures". Nagraj Adve reviews M.V. Ramana's new book peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/10/11/c...

"Nigerian environmental activists and NGOs argue that most new investment should go to renewably-produced electricity, and development of the electrical grid, to address the lack of energy access, & turn the tide against fossil fuels." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/10/03/n...

"Capitalist development cannot hope to address the real needs of people for decent homes. Nigeria’s political elites evince no inclination to change the apartheid status quo. Non-market strategies for provisioning decent homes need to be found." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/10/03/n...

Towards sustainable homes for all in Nigeria. "The economic logic of construction should not be conformed to private profit: the focus instead needs to be on high quality, well-paid jobs – and on putting money into communities." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/10/03/n...

Published today on People & Nature as a free, downloadable PDF: Making Homes and Energy Transition in Nigeria, by Tom Ackers. "Housing has become a battlefront against the working class and peasant communities." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...

Free public transport is expanding worldwide. It is a socially just way to open up cities. It combines well with policies to cut car traffic, to actually do something about climate change. Fare Free London want it in London too. peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/09/19/f...

Developing a socialist approach to technologies. "Public ownership is not enough. It needs to be combined with a liberatory vision of the future, and of the ways that technologies, liberated from capital, can be re-made" peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/09/13/t...

An interview with Crimean Tatar activists working to support 100+ political prisoners, and recalling eight decades of repression. "When Russia invaded in 2014, we decided that we would not allow Russia to drive us from our homes a second time.” peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/08/16/c...

"Unlike nukes, renewable electricity is free of inherent links with fearsome state structures & the military, & compatible with flexible networks, cuts in throughput & changes in energy end-use that are the key ways of cutting greenhouse gas emissions." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2024/08/09/s...

Hello, Bsky social. On the People & Nature blog, I write about climate & ecological crisis, social & labour movements, and more. I write about Russia & Ukraine, countries I know well. And post stuff from friends. Please visit! Simon Pirani. peopleandnature.wordpress.com