Super fun to talk about the US-Venezuela-Guyana oil triangle with @kendrawrites.com for SciAm's Science Quickly pod: www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/epis...

"An actuarial review of key #climate change assumptions shows we may have seriously underestimated the rate of warming as well as the related economic impacts. Unless we rapidly change course, climate damages will start to impact growth & future prosperity" #ClimateEmergency

A third of a billion spent on ruining people’s lives doesn’t seem a wise use of education spending

1/ I recently wrote about Frances Perkins—FDR’s Labor Secretary and first woman cabinet member. She is best known as the architect of the New Deal but she had a lesser-known achievement: She dismantled her era’s version of ICE.🧵

The finance industry is relying on climate models that understate the speed of climate change and likely economic impact. New report warns that climate-driven inflation, financial shocks, and insurance withdrawals could happen sooner than anticipated. 🧪 greenfuturessolutions.com/news/parasol...

This thread responds to Prof. Christian Dunn’s Telegraph piece on #climate communication. I argue it misdiagnoses public disengagement, underplays escalating scientific risk, & reproduces a media narrative that has actively shaped, not merely reflected, public resistance to climate action 🧵

A brilliant essay by @sammyfeldblum.bsky.social on what the unravelling of Thames Water tells us about privatisation, market failure and the place and politics of water in the climate crisis

what a read, on the global political economy of online scams www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

New open-access paper out (with Valérie Boisvert) in @econsocjournal.bsky.social , as part of this great special issue! Read it here: shorturl.at/L2Ui8 Core question: If conventional accounting is a growth infrastructure, then what exactly are the different forms of green accounting? A short 🧵 1/7

The private equity investment strategy of USS should be subjected to scrutiny. How USS became main shareholder in debt-laden zombie firms like Thames Water and G.Network is a scandal. Trustees should read research by USS members instead of advice from asset managers www.ft.com/content/2ca2...

Happy to have written about plastic for @thepolycrisis.bsky.social. Thanks to @70sbachchan.bsky.social for sourcing the excellent graphics. And thanks to @rebecca-altman.bsky.social and @anjakrieger.bsky.social for being my go-to's on all-things plastic. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/pla...

This is a great, important piece by @joelkhalili.bsky.social for @wired.com - on how many Bitcoin miners have pivoted to generative machine learning. Plenty of technical overlap but just the core equation of [more GPU-melting-overconsumption] = [more money] is perhaps the most relevant

1/ This year, OCI’s research team challenged powerful blockers and helped shift the story on fossil fuels, uncovering evidence and exposing injustice. Here’s what we did and why we need your support for 2026 🧵

“They can’t [fix it], because it bankrupts the industry as we know it.” Captivating read on the millions of toxic abandoned oil wells in the US, the failure of regulation & the activists trying to hold the industry & government to account for cleaning up. www.motherjones.com/environment/...

Von der Leyen & the EPP partners with the far-right bloc to pass the first 'omnibus' law & slash reporting requirements for EU businesses on their ecological impacts & respect for human rights/labour laws in their supply chains. www.politico.eu/article/eu-s...

How Google Maps determines restaurant survival. This brilliantly unearths the political economy of the algorithm here. "You start seeing an algorithmic market - one where visibility compounds, demand snowballs, and who gets to survive is increasingly decided by code."

Every welfare reform in living memory is dressed up in punitive language. And yet the challenges are as great now as ever. Perhaps a messaging focused on support, to generate greater trust, might be worth trying? giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

"Our analysis shows that in the aftermath of extreme weather events, lower-income neighbourhoods are less likely to rebuild and do not return to their pre-disaster state, whereas higher-income areas rebuild and tend to improve...highlighting increasing disparities in their built environments."

Pleased to see this paper now published - in it, I examine the status of Keynes as a post-growth economist www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A few Autumn/Winter Epping Forest photos

To close our affordability series, I wrote about captive pricing. If you're at the ballpark or the movie theater and have no choices for concessions, they've got you. But it's more widespread than that: ambulances, auto sales, airports, anesthesia... it's becoming inescapable.

Wild how the Fed chair saying that *entire regions of the United States* won’t be able to get a mortgage in the next decade barely registered as a news event

Well done to Steve & others involved in producing this 👏 Now we just need university governance to live up to such principles! The code, usefully, lays out practical steps towards this. It's collective/political pressure & organising that can make it a widespread reality.

2025 was heat and drought. 2024 was incessant rain Three of the five worst British harvests on record have now occurred since 2020 Some farmers are asking whether the growing impacts of the climate crisis are making it too financially risky to sow their crops www.theguardian.com/environment/...

1/6 🚨🌾🧵 Everyday cereal products across Europe contain high levels of the forever chemical #TFA, our new PAN Europe study reveals. #TFA is an ultra-short #PFAS and a breakdown product of other PFAS, including PFAS #pesticides. www.pan-europe.info/press-releas...

THE ASSET CLASS, my first book, will be published by @wnbooks.bsky.social on 9 April 2026. It’s a narrative investigation of private equity, a secretive and relentlessly destructive wing of finance that penetrates almost every aspect of our lives - and it’s available to pre-order now!

The classic early retirement story! @will-davies.bsky.social & I wrote about this movement & all its contradictions back in 2020. doi.org/10.1080/1753... I assume FIRE has been turbocharged post-pandemic, with the combo of job disillusionment & asset appreciation.

Last week, Comptroller Lander recommended NYC’s pension funds drop BlackRock + 2 other public asset managers due to inadequate decarbonization plans.   After evaluating the pension systems’ 49 managers, only 3 failed to submit plans with the seriousness we expect. comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/com...

Today's new @publicenterprise.bsky.social report is a comprehensive analysis of the capital structure of the entire AI sector: data center real estate, GPU markets, private credit, you name it. It's also a financial risk management framework for policymakers! publicenterprise.org/report/bubbl...

Senior MPs including Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick and Darren Jones are claiming tens of thousands of pounds a year in taxpayer-funded rent expenses while either calling for or implementing benefit cuts on the poorest By me, for the Big Issue www.bigissue.com/news/politic...

GEP's Special Issue on "The North–South Politics of Global Just Transitions" is now out, guest edited by Chuks Okereke, Ken Mbeva, Reuben Makomere. Several articles are available open access, including the introduction. Check them out at the link below! direct.mit.edu/glep/issue/2...

'Iran’s capital must be moved because the country “no longer has a choice,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday in remarks carried by state media, warning that severe ecological strain has made Tehran impossible to sustain' #Iran 🇮🇷

Worth remembering as this unfolds that it was disabled people and people from ethnic minority backgrounds who disproportionately died. Tens of thousands needlessly lost their lives, many who died alone or with just an iPad. Thousands more were left with life changing Long Covid. A true scandal.

As @glenpeters.bsky.social says, we're way off target for any 1.5°C scenario. To see how far off, each of the red/green bars represents the decrease in CO₂ emissions during COVID. Even if we achieved that from now until the end of 2030, we would still miss our 1.5°C target by a significant margin.

Check out the brilliant @cibled.bsky.social in @econsocjournal.bsky.social on the extremes of Becker's human capital theory & its normalisation of inequality. doi.org/10.1080/0308...

🚨You always wondered about how to make sense of the many accounts on Green Finance? We got you covered: @nataschavanderzwan.bsky.social @danmertens.bsky.social ky.social Julius Kob and I critically review existing accounts and argue for an integrated analytical approach👇 doi.org/10.1017/fas....

"the Fed's primary concern is the systemic threat that [firm or sector risk] poses – even if stabilising measures benefit the too-big-to-fail constituency first & foremost. The administration ... is more interested in a discretionary, patronage-based approach." newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

turns out if you want people to live car-free you need to emphasize the safety and accessibility of modes that aren't cars

Today is the official UK publication day for Silicon Empires! I'm excited to have it out and hear what people think. There's an enormous amount happening every day in AI, and it's difficult to gain a stable perspective. I wrote the book to try and get some secure hold on that constant flux. 🧵

And here was me walking around warning people of the 8-9% success rate 😮‍💨

Chief Economist at Nesta, the 'innovation agency', seems to have run out of innovative ideas...

I feel like this one is talked about, tho it could always be more so. The question is rather why not enough change is happening despite the fact that we know how bad things are. In many ways the answers got more obvious recently.

“[Last year] CO2 in the global surface atmosphere increased by 3.5 ppm, the largest one-year increase since modern measurements began... This increase was driven by continued fossil CO2 emissions, enhanced fire emissions and reduced terrestrial/ocean sinks… which could signal a climate feedback.”

🎉 Just launched! We’ve collaborated with @cplusc.bsky.social to launch @transitionsec.bsky.social — a new research centre that will develop alternative approaches to security and investigate the US & UK military industrial complexes as economic, climate and geopolitical threats. Find out more. 👇

It's finally here! 100+ scholars, global scope, practical insights. “Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment” shows how organized interests stall policy—and how governance can respond. Open access available now! Or order for paperback and hardcover. cssn.org/wp-content/u...

techpolicy.press/generative-a... Lots of good stuff in this article on AI and productivity, including the concept of 'workslop': “AI generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.”

Every day is a good day to point out that 92% of Reform's donations were found to come from figures and groups linked to the fossil fuel industry. @desmog.com

Insurance industry maps millions of UK homes at increased risk of flooding as climate change impacts ratchet up Obviously, the insurance industry needs to make money and can't afford claims likely to result from higher flood risks So... no insurance for some? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

An important reminder in the context of: 1. The UK gov's pledge to invest £22bn in CCS; 2. the surge in fossil fuel lobbying in advance of that pledge.