Hi bsky people - if you care about how the EU seeks to fund all things "social-ecological transformation", which institutional architecture has emerged out of it, and why it is both contested and an unrealized promise: please have a look at our special issue on the politics of sustainable finance 👇

The UK's last coal-fired power station shut a year ago yesterday. Always worth remembering this was anything but a just transition ... theecologist.org/2024/feb/12/...

Not April 1st, not @theonion.com. Just another Monday in Trump land www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

New book 📚 // In #TheMeaningOfGrowth, CUSP researcher @maitrereynard.bsky.social investigates the roots of political resistance to environmental science and policy in Western societies, and suggests a new approach to overcoming it. With a foreword by @timjackson.org.uk → cusp.ac.uk/themes/m/rd-...

🚨New article🚨 Why has the promise of universal ownership been broken, as @benbraun.bsky.social has suggested? Our argument: because the Big Three are hardly universal. They mainly invest in those that can insulate themselves from environmental harm - big tech & financials in the Global North. 🧵

Curious to see that UK-headquartered fossil fuel giants Shell and BP have the highest number of marketing contracts globally - according to new research from @cleancreatives.bsky.social Major polluters require advertising and PR firms to maintain their social licence to operate.

I reckon a fossil fuel being heavily promoted at climate week is a bad thing

The attempt to financialize psychedelics has collided with the unruliness of these substances both as therapeutic assets and as vectors of cultural resistance. Our article of the week traces the rise and fall of commercial psychedelics. By Sandy B. Hager in @finandsoc.bsky.social buff.ly/7QsCdDI

Latest on the CLaSP blog: Why has China’s digital economy developed along such a distinctly consumer-facing path? @js-tan.bsky.social explains 'The Labour Foundations of China’s Consumer-First Internet' www.claspblog.org/blogposts/7l...

We are organising a small lecture series at CITYPERC this semester on "Financial Futures: Tech, Green Transitions, China and the Global South" with four brilliant speakers: @nataschavanderzwan.bsky.social, @johannespetry.bsky.social, David Kampmann and @bbonizzi.bsky.social

A new piece on extractive capitalism for @thetls.bsky.social, reviewing 4 new books, including @triofrancos.bsky.social's much-anticipated EXTRACTION and Partha Dasgupta's widely- praised ON NATURAL CAPITAL

Issue 2 of The BREAK–DOWN lands with us on Wednesday. Subscribe now for £22, and get the best climate writing delivered to straight to you www.break-down.org @the-breakdown.bsky.social

Welcome to Rip-Off Britain. A country remade by privatisation. Our latest project — Who Owns Britain? — explores how a radical experiment transformed our society and shapes your life. 🧵

Absolutely fantastic piece on the interfaces between climate risk and insurance in the Polycrisis newsletter today, by @70sbachchan.bsky.social and @katemac.bsky.social Not a doom loop, but “communities of fate” and the moral economy of the welfare state. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/ins...

Spineless attacks on nuclear power! 🪼

Up early and on my way from London to Copenhagen for the Finance and Society conference. Looking forward to a great programme! Always a highlight of the academic year. financeandsocietynetwork.org/wp-content/u... Say hi if you're around 👋

Yep. "…clear that fossil-fuel companies, and their adjacent organizations, are the primary lobbyists for CCUS subsidies and that these subsidies benefit fossil-fuel companies at the expense of both taxpayers and the future health of our planet" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Lloyds has completely abandoned efforts to green its underwriting, permitting coverage of thermal coal, oil sands, arctic exploration. New CEO says that "Lloyds is apolitical"! on.ft.com/3I3UdbF

Waiting for that tipping point when most sensible people realise that transporting a single 80kg person in 2.5 tonnes of SUV was not the height of technical advancement but peak stupidity for the human race. Tax SUVs out of existence

Drawing on the likes of Leah Downey, Arjun Jayadev, Leon Wansleben & @geoffmann.bsky.social, I have a new piece in @nybooks.com on money, power, and central banking.

"Perhaps because we’ve become so adept at cooling the indoors with air conditioning, we’ve forgotten the importance of cooling the outdoors, too. There's no technology that cools it as effectively as a tree... essential public infrastructure with major implications for energy use and public health."

“The figures show ... that the [Right to Buy] discount resulted in councils giving up £194bn in equity. More than 40% of the homes sold under RtB are now privately rented.” A £194bn giveaway in public wealth. @davidjmadden.bsky.social in @theguardian.com 👇 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Punjabis saved Italy's parmesan industry www.instagram.com/reel/DJMYbYb...

Insurers regain appetite for coal despite climate pledges - demonstrating stranded asset risks are low for financial actors who can selectively dip back into underwriting e.g. coal on a year-by-year basis to bump profits on.ft.com/4faZRoC

Please complete this survey on parental leave in the UK, as the gov reviews this broken system. Having taken shared parental leave twice, I can say that it is stupidly hard to organise & too often makes no financial sense. Mat pay is too low, statutory pat leave is too short! bit.ly/4fgwPUQ

🧵Yesterday’s trade deal is predicated on forcing the EU to buy more US oil and gas—specifically triple what it imports now. Lots of scoffing among the data crowd. Fantasy or not, achievable or not, the fight against further #LNG build-out just got even harder. 1/4 www.politico.eu/article/eu-t...

More than 40 students currently trapped in Gaza with full scholarships to UK Universities are asking for a safe route to come and study. Please sign and share ⬇️ docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

HSBC signed up to the Net-Zero Banking Alliance and pledged to provide up to $1 trillion to help the net-zero transition back in 2021 Since then its public pledges have been repeatedly undermined by deals done behind closed doors Was HSBC ever serious about going green?👇

⚠️Who should phase out fossil fuels first?⚠️ As countries confront the need to ditch oil, gas, and coal to meet climate goals, one question looms: Which nations should move first and fastest? @lslothuus.bsky.social offers a geopolitical approach to answering this question 🧵

One really consistent pattern whenever I look at the energy and financial data for large big tech companies is that energy + revenue are being decoupled. They keep having to buy more and more energy each year to make the same $1 of revenue. This is a pretty new thing ketanjoshi.co/2025/05/31/t...

Check out the first part of this deep dive into BlackRock & its political economic effects. It'll be an excellent teaching resource too! open.substack.com/pub/thisisfi...

The Age of Irresponsibility is over, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney told City in 2015 bit.ly/3GGSR6e after many financial scandals. This month Chancellor told City controls introduced to stop them happening again will be weakened. Sacrificed on the altar of growth

New government data on the impact of the two child limit: 469,780 households now affected, with 1,665,540 children in those households Almost 40,000 more children affected since last year It's a child poverty machine & it will cost us all more in the long term - get rid of it

An inspiring change in Paris. Great to see new urban forest, even better when it is space reclaimed from cars. 🌲

"In Ireland, nearly half of all units delivered since 2017 were purchased by investment funds. Across Sweden, the share of private rental apartments with institutional investors as landlords has swelled to 24%. In Berlin, €40bn of housing assets are now in institutional portfolios, 10% of the total"

Just reposting in case of interest. Applications close next week. Come to work with @harveymurenow.bsky.social, Jack Copley, Eugenia Giraudo and me!

Climate change is a driving force in cost of living pressures. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07... The insurance industry knows this, politicians keep kicking the can down the road.

Richard Machine of our Council of Management summarises what's happening with the welfare reform bill: uk.news.yahoo.com/welfare-refo...

New on the CLaSP blog: Looking at platform workers in Argentina, Sofia Negri asks how we can build a future of work that transforms the salaried relationship to reconcile autonomy with social protection www.claspblog.org/blogposts/ac...

one of france's nuclear power stations is turned off because it's 28°C so the water in the river is too hot to cool the reactor this is while it's gonna hit 40°C in other parts of the country building the world's most expensive kettles that rely on plentiful cold water isn't a climate solution

Proposed NOAA budget zeros out ALL climate laboratories and cooperative institutions. GFDL, NSSL, GML, etc. This appears to also end the US greenhouse gas sampling network, including at Mauna Loa, the oldest continuous carbon dioxide monitoring site on Earth. www.commerce.gov/sites/defaul...

Almost every paragraph of this article describes another atrocity or war crime, with first-hand testimony from Israeli soldiers. Beyond obscene, and the callous indifference of the UK political and media establishment equally so. archive.ph/3LjoW

Incredibly clear and incisive warnings about the dangers of ceding our lives to data scraping platforms posing as 'assistants'.

In the age of asset manager capitalism, do asset owners still matter? And what does this mean for the green transition? @nataschavanderzwan.bsky.social and I investigate this through an in-depth study of how some of the most important asset owners - pension funds - invest. Now out in SER! 🧵

The housing conflicts around heating/cooling in cities affected by climate crisis are only going to intensify. Much of the focus on British housing has been on cold & mould understandably, but inequalities around heat are severe & worsening here.

New report from @instituteforgovernment.org.uk out today - social care is having to be rationed by local authorities in areas of high demand www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

"This fantasy bears the unmistakable imprint of early 2000s neoconservatism. It is a reheated version of the same delusions that underpinned the US invasion of Iraq." Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi in the @newleftreview.bsky.social newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

HSBC helped raise billions last year for companies expanding the production of coal in deals that seem to violate its coal phase-out policy The bank was ranked the UK’s second largest funder of fossil fuel companies in a recent report by ‪@ran.org

Banks boosted fossil fuel finance by more than a fifth in 2024, report says https://www.ft.com/content/dbb34bdf-fff6-4df3-93ea-de779b5783e7