Correct your priors: Private money is going after clean energy, governments are using public money to prop up fossil fuels "About 59% of all money spent on the fossil fuel system came from taxpayers in 2015. By 2025, that climbed to 68% and spiked at 78% in 2022." www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Polycrisis book club is now on youtube @jwmason.bsky.social @arjunjayadev.bsky.social 's explanation of their title 'Against Money' is great: Against mainstream barter theories Against collapsing the world into money, Against the rule of money @katemac.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=62lD...

Well, at least some in Europe are taking a hard look at those exposures. "Shorting America", as they call it in Kiel. www.kielinstitut.de/fileadmin/Da...

The EU methane regulation "has become a defining test of Europe's ability to maintain ambitious climate and energy policies" the US lawmakers wrote.

The digital euro is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to restore people’s access to public money and to realise a sovereign payment system in the digital age. Trilogue negotiators should not squander it by designing it in a way that serves the banking sector first and the public second.

Norway's prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre has been vigorously touring the continent since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran, telling everybody who wants to listen that Norway's Arctic oil and gas are crucial for Europe's energy security. But is it?

Nearly half of EU member states, oil and gas companies and the US administration claim the EU's methane regulation is unfinished, causes legal risks, and could disrupt Europe's gas supplies. But does it?

FT loves that Germany will introduce a funded pillar to its pension system because it will ... "create a bigger pool of investment capital." I know only a few things but one of them is: Bigger pools of pension-related investment capital is the last thing rich countries need.

€31bn in 2023 alone "As far as Germany and the car industry is concerned, comparable sums of money were available for reinvestment in the form of record-breaking profits. But rather than being plowed back into much needed new investment, they were paid out to shareholders in the form of dividends."

Trying something a little different at Blood in the Machine this week, something that no one has ever attempted or thought of before: A podcast. The idea is to document the vital and widening resistance to big tech and AI, and give the mic to the voices behind it.

Economic growth was once closely linked to increasing environmental degradation. More recently, however, many high-income countries have continued to increase GDP per capita while reducing their environmental impacts.

Brutal. 100,000! Volkswagen is planning to cut up to 100,000 jobs and end production at four plants in Germany in a significant acceleration of its cost-cutting plans as Europe’s largest carmaker seeks to survive the rapid advance of Chinese rivals.

EU commission cites ‘no overriding public interest’ to keep Gaza reports secret, on day UN calls out genocide

🚨 BIG DECISION. Court tells oil firm to include Scope 3 emission in its climate plans. “The extraction, refining, and sale of a barrel of oil inevitably lead to its combustion, regardless of the location or time and are part of the negative impacts resulting.” www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Replacing combustion engines with electric cars and switching industrial heat from fossil fuels to electricity are among the most impactful ways to decarbonise. Yet, in exactly in these areas Europe is weakening its policies.

Caixin Global: Chinese resource giants aim to weather Indonesia’s mining upheaval – ‘Indonesia is aggressively accelerating its pivot toward resource nationalism’

Boom: "...there is little sign of the dollar losing control of the global financial system. For as long as China is determined to maintain its trade surplus and its capital controls, no amount of payments in yuan, whether for oil or anything else, will change that reality" www.ft.com/content/0948...

Israel's crimes in Lebanon, West Bank and Gaza are barely getting reported in the western press.

Israel has bombed and bulldozed €150m of EU-funded buildings in Gaza and West Bank – but never paid back a cent

Counterpoint: Easy to make case that the ECB should not have hiked in an undifferentiated manner. The EMPN team are making that case in our upcoming Monetary Dialogue Paper, out next week. @claraleonard.bsky.social @jvtk.bsky.social

So....everyone knows German firms are investing like mad in China. But not the other way around. China has become the largest source for FDI into Germany, per the Germany Trade and Invest (GTAI 2025). Replaces US as Germany's top FDI investor! www.gtai.de/en/meta/pres...

The European trade deficit with China amounted to €360bn in 2025, or roughly €1bn a day. The commission and a growing group of member states want to take stronger measures to save European industries.

I spoke to @poltheoryother.bsky.social last week for some reflections on heatwaves, ocean currents, a dose of geoengineering and the state of climate politics. Give it a listen! (then don't tell me if you do because I'm always too scared to listen back) podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/h...

Right Economy wise action to avoid costs & harm,to incentivise innovation & competitiveness,to ensure reliability & direction of travel And yes,we need to address concerns, support fairness & provide adecuate response to short term challenges,but not to betray next generation or to kill early movers

China went from ~11% electricity in 2000 to nearly 30% in 2024. Fastest in the Global South by far. Indonesia is the other big mover, up nearly 17 percentage points from a low base, while India added a bit over 8 points. More in Bright Spots: janrosenow.substack.com

Got a piece up on Polanski, MMT, economic policy and all that. Punchline: Polanski is right that the current institutional and operational framework is past its sell by date, and Greens are asking the right questions — but Richard Murphy’s MMT is not the answer. blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...

heel goed van @nrc.nl

Dear colleagues at @politico.eu, I get it you are apparently very proud of having scored an interview with world-famous "coalition-builder" and "compromise-embracer" Geert Wilders' Afrikaaner MEP. You even sent out a press release about it. We know it now, no need to keep banging on about it.

Purtroppo fanno bene a presumere che verrà utilizzato per sussidi anziché per investimenti di medio termine. Questo è il paese, visione con raggio a dopo domani prima mattinata.

Von der Leyen may be caving to Meloni, but on green investment, relaxing EU deficit limits is exactly right

"China spent $18 billion and have the world the cheapest way to make energy. If industrial policy in the west had delivered this kind of bang for its buck, we would be patting ourselves on the back." More of this rant please, @adamtooze.bsky.social! www.ft.com/content/b6ca...

Russia's attacks on Ukraine's gas and coal plants are driving Kyiv's shift to cleaner energy sources. But a lack of access to Europe's capital markets is severely restricting the country's transition.

For climate science, if not policy development, RCP8.5 is still very useful. It has high signal to noise. It gives some idea of what might happen if models are underestimating climate sensitivity. It gives a good end-point so that reduced-form models can interpolate rather than extrapolate.

Spring in Ukraine: May the Force Be With You

Life in Ukraine and Kyiv goes on. But there are islands of hurt, destruction, loss, scattered across the landscape, hidden behind polite smiles, encoded in the language

Our dependence on the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf countries should lead to an accelerated transition away from fossil fuels, which we need for climate, too. Norway has a different idea.

With Hormuz shut, Norway urges EU to rethink Arctic oil ban — despite analysts and environmentalists doubts

‘A world where we support smaller companies with grants, tax breaks and open innovation spreading across networks of companies is, for me, a better world than one dominated by a few Goliaths,’ said professor Bernardo Pimentel. ==> @euobserver.com

Absolutely insane that one has to make an argument about this

"Looking at global politics now, there simply isn’t a scenario in which geoengineering could be deployed without going wrong — whether it comes as a subscription service from a secretive startup or not."

‘A world where we support smaller companies with grants, tax breaks and open innovation spreading across networks of companies is, for me, a better world than one dominated by a few Goliaths,’ said professor Bernardo Pimentel. ==> @euobserver.com

Merkel as EU negotiator with Putin would be a *masterstroke*. I'd almost prefer Schröder: a more honest moral capitulation.

Zo hadden wij er samen met het FD nog één, ook al jaren en jaren aan de gang, geen haan die er naar kraait. www.platform-investico.nl/onderzoeken/...

I contributed a book chapter on a key EU policy problem: fiscal consolidation pressures and rising defence spending risk crowding out public investment in the green and digital transition. I discuss options for creating more fiscal space under the reformed EU fiscal rules.

How did an extraordinary act of espionage open the way for the creation of the VOC, the Dutch East India Company?

Stellantis is giving China’s Leapmotor access to a plant in Spain to build an EV together One of the first instances of a major Western automaker relying on Chinese technology to bolster its lineup in Europe. Production of the SUV could begin in 2028 www.msn.com/en-us/mo...

A few years ago my brother, who is into trees, decided to make prints from trees. It took him time to master the process but now the product is gorgeous. The next step requires money. Check out the crowdfunding page – donate and he'll send you a print. 🌲 🌳 🌴 www.startnext.com/en/konkrete-...

Elke krant: 'Shell veel meer winst door Iran-oorlog' Telegraaf: aandelen kopen? Stem van het volk.

Where did the EU’s €577bn Covid recovery money go? Auditors say it’s hard to tell >>> @euobserver.com

In a world of fossil price shocks and Chinese cleantech dominance, carbon shock therapy emerges as the default stance of states unwilling, or unable, to support their industries through a green transformation. New with @danielagabor.bsky.social on green macrofinancial regimes in the Hormuz crisis.