It's a striking image, two female leaders - Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen - holding the signed trade deal side by side. Whatever your politics, it's historically notable and visually powerful […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

“Lower-value human capital” That is the name of the people that are set to lose their jobs to artificial intelligence. Dehumanisation has always been the psychological mechanism that allows people do harm while feeling morally untouched. Once human beings are re-framed are reframed as units or […]

What Comes After Extinction? There is something disquieting about reading a headline announcing that a chicken has been hatched inside a 3D-printed shell. Not because it sounds extraordinary, which it does, but because of what it is pointing toward. A future in which extinction may no longer […]

Can cities still matter? It’s an urgent question. National governments dominate headlines, billionaires dominate economies, and social media dominates attention. Yet the actual quality of life still depends overwhelmingly on cities. Today, I'm writing about Zohran Mamdani and the return of […]

People have spent years talking about leaving Google, but at some point the talk has to give way to action This company believes it has people locked in. If anyone wants to challenge that belief, now would be an excellent time. There are a lot of alternatives that can help you disentangle […]

This month marks twenty years since Al Gore’s climate documentary reshaped the public conversation. It was a turning point for global awareness, and for me too. That was the moment when my focus shifted from broad environmental issues to the climate crisis itself […]

In the photo below, officials from China and the U.S. are busy discussing matters of “global importance” during the U.S. president’s recent visit to China. Look closely, though, and you’ll notice something is missing from this carefully staged scene. Can you see it? Here’s a hint: it’s the […]

Since I read it (in Jabr, Ferris's book Becoming Earth), I can’t stop thinking about it. "a single gallon of gasoline represents 100 tonnes of ancient life, roughly equivalent to 20 adult elephants". I knew it was a lot, but not that much. A full tank is […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

In the photo below, officials from China and the U.S. are busy discussing matters of “global importance” during the U.S. president’s recent visit to China. Look closely, though, and you’ll notice something is missing from this carefully staged scene. Can you see it? Here’s a hint: it’s the […]

"Note to politicians: You can just do stuff regular people actually need and want and it's ok." Here’s a list of things Zohran Mamdani has done in just four months by First Dog in the Moon […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Climatehistories/116540334002344674 Looking at the UK local election results, one thing stands out to me. The Right’s greatest success is a Left that’s afraid of itself.

Global sea temperatures were the second‑highest ever recorded in April, raising concerns that a developing El Niño would intensify extreme weather. For context, April 2024 was the warmest on record, followed by April 2025. Across Europe, Spain reported its […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

If you missed the news, the UK held local elections yesterday. I live in a traditionally Conservative patch and, given the party’s recent decline, Reform made a noticeable leap. County-wide, the Liberal Democrats came out on top. But in our Ward, we’ve been […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

While we fixate on wars and geriatric online outbursts, South Asia is being scorched by a record‑breaking heatwave that has driven temperatures to dangerous highs, disrupting daily life for hundreds of millions. Heatwaves are no stranger to the region’s […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

While researching something, I stumbled on this illuminating 2017 words by Jeff Bezos. "I have won this lottery. It's a gigantic lottery, and it's called Amazon.com. And I'm using my lottery winnings to push us a little further into space. ... It's a passion, but it is also important." Don't […]

Before climate change became political, there was Santa Barbara. Today, I'm writing about how a 1969 offshore oil blowout in California shocked the American public, and helped create the EPA and modern environmental law. Nixon, Vietnam, and a catastrophe that forced United States to look in […]

Are smartphones and other digital distractions really eating away at our attention spans? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Our brain’s ability to concentrate is not shrinking. Our environment — and the habits it trains — is. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01407-w

As all classical Star Trek fans know, the show tackled some of the toughest questions in the universe. So here Captain Picard raises an issue that, sooner or later, we too will have to face in some form.

The COP process has long been held hostage by petrostate vetoes. Could this week in Colombia be the moment when climate politics begins to move in a different direction? […]

Why does the English‑speaking world seem so spectacularly unhappy compared to everyone else? My amateur guess: only about 20% of the world speaks English, yet roughly 60% of the internet is in English. English speakers aren’t inherently more miserable, they […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Major fossil fuel producers - including Nigeria, Canada and Australia - getting together to find concrete ways to transition away from fossil fuels. Could this conference be a 'turning point' for the world's use of fossil fuels? #climate […]

Ghana has rejected a bilateral health agreement with the United States, Reuters reports. According to President John Dramani Mahama, the deal came with a small catch - Washington wanted access to sensitive health data on Ghanaian citizens. Ghana declined […]

Without a free press, governments aren’t held to account, least of all on climate policy. The journalists who investigate illegal dumping, who follow the money behind fossil fuel lobbying, and who report from the frontlines of floods and fires depend on a press that is free to operate without […]

The COP process has long been hostage to the veto of petrostate interests. What happened this week in Colombia may be the beginning of something different. 60 countries agreed to form a coalition committed to accelerating clean energy deployment and phasing out coal, oil, and gas […]

BP’s profits didn’t just rise when the Iran conflict disrupted global oil flows, they more than doubled in the first quarter. Once again, the energy giants made money while households struggled with soaring bills […]

“A lot of people are talking about walking in nature, touching grass. What we’re saying is, don’t just touch it, smell it. Go out and smell woods.” A triple threat of pollution, extinction and warming temperatures is altering the way the planet smells. Scientists are only beginning to […]

Interesting reading. China’s Great Green Wall is one of the largest efforts to stop deserts from advancing, it's a vast band of new forests across northern China that acts as a barrier against desertification. It has succeeded where many similar projects have stalled or failed, giving other […]

More than 50 countries incl Germany, UK, Brazil, Nigeria and Australia will meet in Colombia this week for the first international effort to phase out fossil fuels, despite the absence of the world’s three biggest emitters. Success will on whether the talks lead to concrete steps such as new […]

40 years ago, at 1:23 a.m. on 26 April 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. The blast tore open the core and sent an invisible cloud of radioactive material into the night. It drifted across borders, over mountains and seas, indifferent to the lines that […]

One in three children starting school in the UK doesn’t even know how a book works. Some try to zoom the pictures like an iPad. And that's just one of the shocking findings in this study, which confirms what any experienced teacher can tell you: every year […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Who Is Killing the Scientists? This might be the weirdest thing I’ve read in weeks. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/21/us/deaths-disappearances-scientists-investigation

Book of the week: Basilisk by Matt Wixey Basilisk is about fear. Not the fear of monsters, but the fear that the digital world made us vulnerable to forces we cannot easily see or name. That an idea, carefully constructed, might reach through a screen and alter who you fundamentally are. As […]

You’ve probably driven past one without noticing. A windowless building, quietly consuming as much power as a small town. This is the modern data centre. And it is beginning to reshape the energy system in ways we are only starting to recognise and confront […]

You’ve probably driven past one without noticing. A windowless building, quietly consuming as much power as a small town. This is the modern data centre. And it is beginning to reshape the energy system in ways we are only starting to recognise and confront […]

You’ve probably driven past one without noticing. A windowless building, quietly consuming as much power as a small town. Today, I'm writing about data centres, how they became one of the largest and least discussed forces reshaping global electricity demand […]

Interesting. And being in this generation, I can safely say there’s a lot of truth in that, more than most people are willing to admit. Children of Generation X (born and raised in the 1960s and 1970s) developed resilience as a result of their parents’ indifference and neglect […]

Better late than never, sure, but why we always have to wait for the drama to unfold, or for a crisis to finally force us into action, remains beyond me. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/apr/20/ed-miliband-to-double-down-on-net-zero-with-measures-to-combat-iran-energy-shock

"The tragedy, the real one, is that this farce is not a temporary break from power. It is power. The men lecturing the Pope on Christian theology are the men with the missiles. And they are not embarrassed. Embarrassment, after all, depends on self-awareness. In the current political landscape […]

"The world is being ravaged by ​a handful of ​tyrants." Welcome to the Resistance, Pope Leo. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/pope-leo-cameroon-decries-world-ruled-by-tyrants-after-trump-attacks-2026-04-16/

Last week, I wrote about the deepening drought in the United States and suggested it could evolve into something reminiscent of the Dust Bowl years. A few readers asked what those years were. So, here’s the story of how an ordinary stretch of farmland became the centre of one of the harshest […]

Last week, I wrote about the deepening drought in the United States and suggested it could evolve into something reminiscent of the Dust Bowl years. A few readers asked what those years were. So, here’s the story of how an ordinary stretch of farmland became the centre of one of the harshest […]

The question isn’t whether the AMOC will keep weakening, but how quickly it will weaken and how extreme the change will be. The mid‑century tipping point that Prof Stefan Rahmstorf highlights isn’t far-off theory. It falls within the lifetime of many people alive today. What we decide now - […]

Are We Entering a New Nuclear Era? Nuclear power, long shaped by fear and failure, is finding its way back into the centre of the climate conversation. As energy demand surges and the pressure to decarbonise intensifies, governments and corporations are giving it another look. Can a technology […]

Book of the Week: On the Calculation of Volume (books1-3) by Solvej Balle. What if you alone remembered every day, while the world quietly erased its own past? What would still matter? A novel where time loops, consequences fade, and one unsettling question emerges: what happens when […]

Orbán concedes election to Tisza’s Magyar That’s it. Margin too big for him to attempt to rig the vote Important day for Hungary - and Europe. #hungary

This week, The New Yorker dropped a bombshell profile on Sam Altman and #openai, packed with leaked internal docs. The man is portrayed as a master manipulator, cunning yet clueless, unethical, and a pathological liar who barely grasps the tech he’s selling. Even his allies call him dangerous. […]

Today I'm writing about the drought in the United States. More than half (56%) of the country is now in drought. That number is easy to read and easier still to overlook. But on the ground, it translates into water shortages, rising wildfire risk, and a growing pressure on landscapes and […]

New post on The Climate Historian Rethinking intelligence, society, and survival in a fractured age. https://open.substack.com/pub/theclimatehistorian/p/in-the-company-of-whales?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Conditions in #Lebanon have become so severe that the American University of Beirut Medical Center is urgently appealing for donations of all blood types, as well as for medical supplies and equipment, to cope with the surge of casualties from the recent […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

The last few weeks I found myself working with soil, planting seeds, and taking part in the slow but rewarding process of growing food. What started as a simple garden became a way to step away from the constant noise, reconnect with the essentials that sustain us, and see crisis not as an […]