Good piece by @pgreenfielduk.bsky.social on the current state of the carbon markets. Almost 3 years on from our investigation, the market is reforming, but has the Trump White House killed corporate interest in protecting forests? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Can't recommend today's SourceMaterial offering enough, by @marcusleroux.bsky.social. It's the story of the son of a lorry driver from Calabria who has often struggled to distance himself from the Italian mafia and is now poised to buy 11 North Sea gasfields www.source-material.org/mazzagatti-v...

Got doorknocked by Tower Hamlets Labour, who are trying to win back the Tower Hamlets mayoralty from the socialist Lutfur Rahman. The two councillor candidates on my doorstep made the eye-opening claim that Rahman has failed to build any social housing, so I thought I'd look into it 🧵

Just tried to sign up for Substack, didn't select any interests, and two of the first recommendations are Matt Goodwin and Nick Griffin. What on earth. I don't support Huddersfield either but I'm less worried about impressionable people being groomed into following League One.

New from me: I've seen an internal memo from Amazon Web Services. It reveals, for the first time, figures on water consumption by Amazon's data centres. It is also enlightening about their approach to transparency, which they warn is "a one-way door" www.source-material.org/amazon-leak-...

'Amazon hides its water consumption' was one hypothetical headline the memo warned of always amusing when someone writes down the thing they don't want to happen nice work from @lukewbarratt.bsky.social @rosafurneaux.bsky.social @source-material.org www.source-material.org/amazon-leak-...

I'm extremely proud of all my SourceMaterial colleagues today for their work over the last year

🔴 NEW 🔴 Nigel Farage will this afternoon headline an anti-climate event at 55 Tufton Street convened by a lobby group with close ties to Trump. 📝 @desmog.com scoop with @adambarnett.bsky.social

“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel, and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy—knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.” —Ex-Israeli PM nymag.com/intelligence...

The Onion has suddenly become the Western world's most necessary news outlet

Great story here, with powerful details on the local environmental injustices and settler colonial dynamics related to data centers.

No one has ever LinkedIn this hard. I am CRINE.

One thing that tells you a particular social, cultural or political viewpoint is widespread, common sense, normal and uncontroversial is when a corporate representative of a household name global brand feels the need to come out and publicly distance their brand and products from said viewpoint.

Feels significant: the FT has published an editorial calling out "the West's shameful silence on Gaza". It writes: "Each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that [Netanyahu aims] to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land." www.ft.com/content/f5fd...

Isobel Oakeshott is a Reform cheerleader - but in 2018 she said the Kremlin “struck gold” with Arron Banks, who Reform’s West of England mayoral candidate. The article is still online. New from @marcusleroux.bsky.social on Democracy for Sale democracyforsale.substack.com/p/does-isabe...

Not the most important thing about 'White Potus' but SNL's sketches are always *way* too long. They have one idea and try to string it out for five whole minutes.

"The European Commission’s AI Continent Action Plan is closer to fiction than reality. Steeped in hype, the EU will burn more fossil fuels, rinse and repeat the past, all in the name of leadership." My piece on @techpolicypress.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/the-eu-ai-co...

No it is not "in the cloud", but very much down to Earth. And #ClimateEmergency not the only threat - what about water and other resource use? So we can have such #AI slop as "shrimp Jesus"? www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

New from me: I've spent the last 6 months compiling a map of data centres, whose locations are generally secret, operated by Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Cross-referencing that map with areas of water scarcity shows many are in the world's driest areas. www.source-material.org/amazon-micro...

Revealed: Big tech’s new datacentres will take water from the world’s driest areas A really clever data story from @source-material.org and the Guardian. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

New from me: I've spent the last 6 months compiling a map of data centres, whose locations are generally secret, operated by Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Cross-referencing that map with areas of water scarcity shows many are in the world's driest areas. www.source-material.org/amazon-micro...

Fascinating story from @dominicponsford.bsky.social on the mainstream news outlets in the UK that have quoted 'experts' who, it turns out, don't even exist pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/d...

I was interviewed for the latest File on 4! It was really interesting working with the team as they looked at various issues with the UK's biggest carbon offsetting registry, from the potential exploitation of forest communities to issues with carbon counting. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

The Carbon Offset Trap: BBC File on 4 has taken an in-depth look at the current state of carbon markets. Our reporter @lukewbarratt.bsky.social spoke to them about some of their findings. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

"Yes, there’s danger in opening our gates to this statue. But there’s also danger in keeping it out… the danger of eroding the sanctity of the gift-giving process."

A convicted fraudster regularly seen in London members clubs is launching a new political strategy firm Interesting update on Farage ally George Cottrell by @ethanshone.bsky.social www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-mone...

Former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is being flown to The Hague, his daughter says, after his arrest on an ICC warrant

🧵Something that caught my eye in the coverage of the oil tanker collision in the North Sea was a Department of Defense agency spokesperson telling CNN that the tanker was delivering military jet fuel to Killingholme, England, a tiny village in North Lincolnshire. (1/3)

A ray of good news: owners of the Solong say it was not carrying sodium cyanide after all. It had been, and 4 containers on board had previously held it, but these appear to have been offloaded prior to its final voyage.

Sorry to say we failed

Great to see @luciemheath.bsky.social nominated for environment journalist of the year at the Press Awards! Congratulations, well-deserved www.thepressawards.com/finalists/lu...

🧵Twice a day, sirens sound in the shadow of Touk Meas Mountain in Kampot province, Cambodia. "We're often coughing," said Pheara, who lives nearby. Here, a cement kiln producing hazardous emissions is supposedly at the heart of the global fight against plastic pollution.

“We’re often coughing,” said Pheara, a 32-year-old mother of a six-year-old. With Sara Hussein at @afpnews.bsky.social, I looked into plastic offsetting, which some say can solve the pollution crisis, and found that it is largely based on burning plastic.

NEW INVESTIGATION 🚢 Companies including Shell and Total import millions of tonnes of gas a year to Europe from the Russian Arctic on specialised LNG tankers. Last winter, these shipments relied on a fleet of sanctioned icebreakers to cross Siberian waters 🚢

Supporting Heathrow's third runway and now backing Drax, both prove Rachel Reeves wasn't lying when she said at Davos that growth was more important to this government than the UK's climate change goals.

Wow, only just seeing this: the editor of Euractiv, a website that covers EU policy, has completely gone off the deep-end with an Islamophobic rant published as an editorial on the site. He's now doubling down despite open criticism from his own staff and Amnesty. www.amnesty.eu/news/mainstr...

It's always nice when a story has an immediate impact! I got hold of leaked documents late last year showing Dawn Meats' new incinerator in rural Ireland could emit illegal levels of sulphur dioxide, which can cause respiratory illnesses. Now the Irish EPA has acted to ensure that doesn't happen.

cool name for a town

Mega-farms in East Anglia have breached environmental regulations 700 times in the past seven years, according to documents obtained under FOI by NGOs. There are some pretty worrying revelations in here www.theguardian.com/environment/...

As someone who has reported on AI for 7 years and covered China tech as well, I think the biggest lesson to be drawn from DeepSeek is the huge cracks it illustrates with the current dominant paradigm of AI development. A long thread. 1/

Rachel Reeves has come a long way from her job looking precarious in January. She's pretty effectively outmanoeuvred Starmer over Heathrow's third runway, to which he was previously opposed www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cg...

Very interesting analysis by Carbon Brief on the carbon impacts of airport expansion in the UK www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-...

Wow, debt owed to private lenders by lower-income countries has *quadrupled* since 2000. Interestingly, 90% of these loans are governed under English law due to role of City of London, so UK gov't has the power to enact a Debt Justice Law. Report by CAFOD out today: cafod.org.uk/about-us/pol...

Those who armed Israel must go to jail. Those who used platforms to justify Israel's mass slaughter must have their reputations destroyed. If not, we will normalise depravity which will lead to the ruin of us all. New column 👇 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Professor: you have a 10-page essay on odysseus due tomorrow Me [under breath]: motherfu- Professor: no you're thinking of oedipus

Really interesting story on the ongoing issues at Drax, which is supposedly the UK's largest source of renewable energy. They don't like the EU ban on burning wood from old-growth forest because they harvest wood from old-growth forests in British Columbia www.ft.com/content/37be...

Don't think too much about the symbolism but I just had to throw away my Jeremy Corbyn mug because it was too cracked and broken.

This was one of the most extraordinary stories I worked on, looking into Samuele Landi, a convicted Italian fraudster who helped broker a carbon offsetting deal between an Emirati sheikh and the former world-class footballer and then president of Liberia George Weah.