Grid bottlenecks aren’t a failure of the energy transition — they’re proof it’s working. Renewables got cheap fast, and now the grid has to catch up. Time to build the wires for the clean energy system we already have.

🚨 LSE Assistant Professor in Political Science 🚨 We’re hiring a tenure-track assistant professor - any area of empirical political science - to join our wonderful Government Dept @lsegovernment.bsky.social Any questions, please reach out to me 📣 Please share! 📣 jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

We estimate that EU emissions went down 3.8%, US edged down 0.6%, & Chinese emissions edged up 0.2%. Emissions were up more strongly in India 4.6% & international aviation 13.5%. The record growth in renewables is helping bend the curve, just not enough to get a peak in global emissions. 2/

This is very good.

Questionnaires, says one academic, have “changed how we view ourselves”. Not always, many felt, for the better

I was looking at some Scottish cause of death data yesterday and the extent to which transport accident deaths in young men have all but disappeared is pretty remarkable. Nice to find a good news story in this data for a change.

Looking forward for my postdocs and I to host the Oxford-London Environment and Public Policy workshop at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, tomorrow (October 1st). Thanks to @politicsoxford.bsky.social, @lsegovernment.bsky.social, and @leverhulme.ac.uk for support 💫 So many cool papers!

The world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall has died at the age of 91, her institute has said. “Dr Goodall’s discoveries as an ethologist revolutionised science,” the statement read. “She was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world.”

Universities often serve as "anchor institutions" that deeply affect the character of their communities. In a new paper, we estimate how (and when) the establishment of a college influences local political and civic life. 🧵 osf.io/preprints/so...

Big milestone in Poland, where renewables overtake coal www.ft.com/content/ae92...

Our 2025 report on global trends in climate change litigation by Joana Setzer and Catherine Higham is out now! It features an overview of the latest global developments and insights into recent international cases heard by Supreme Courts. www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminst...

My team and I at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@[email protected], Soha Hammam, & Chris Shay) have a new piece out: wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/amer.... In it, we show that through May 2025, the size and scale of anti-Trump protests have dwarfed those in 2017. 🧵

Some similar fun with data from Paris' Vélib here: pwyckoff.github.io/posts/2023/0...

There are so many ways one could provide context for this data. For example, in the last five years universities have received 52-55% of their research funding from the federal government. That's the lowest percentage since the 1950s. 1/x ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/high...

New study finds that 25 million could die in the next 15 years if US cuts off global health spending via @nature.com Study: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Who does Spiderman vote for? Who you vote for. In a new paper w/ @markuswagner.bsky.social we show that people engage in motivated projection of political identities. In the absence of explicit info on politics, individuals rely on valence to infer the politics of others doi.org/10.1017/psrm...

Canada is strong. Together with our allies, we are even stronger. Good to meet with you in France, President Macron. The friendship between our two countries is the envy of the world.

🎉 New paper in PNAS: Urban highways are barriers to social ties https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2408937122 Highways are barriers that cut opportunities for social ties. We quantify this effect by overlaying the US highway network with millions of social ties from Twitter.

New working paper! In this research note, @bogatyrev.bsky.social, @tabouchadi.bsky.social, @heikekluever.bsky.social, @lstoetze.bsky.social, and I present the first systematic test that causally identifies the electoral consequences of state-sponsored homophobia: osf.io/preprints/os... 🧵Thread

Most conservation funds go to large vertebrates at expense of ‘neglected’ species

“The push to make Canada part of the U.S. reached a fever pitch following passage of the highly protectionist McKinley Tariff in 1890.” For @time.com I discuss the last time the GOP tried to use tariffs to annex Canada. *spoiler: it didn’t go well time.com/7212675/tari...

The @lsegovernment.bsky.social / STICERD political science & political economy WiP seminar resumes tomorrow with @dang11.bsky.social, and an exciting line up for the Winter Term

Submit your paper to our LSE/Imperial Workshop in Environmental Economics! 📅 June 10-11, 2025 | LSE, London 📬 Deadline: Feb 1 🌟 Collegial setting with cutting-edge research 📄 Full papers & ⏳ egg-timers for early careers 🎤 Keynote: Josh Graff Zivin 💵 No fee & 🏨 accommodation +🍴 meals covered 1/2

Students at Brown have used the Google Maps API to create a live tracker for traffic flows under congestion pricing in NYC. It includes a real-time diff-in-diff type comparison between NYC, Boston, and Chicago: www.congestion-pricing-tracker.com

Excited to welcome @antvalentim.bsky.social at the @lsegovernment.bsky.social Political Behaviour seminar today! He will present his paper "Climate Change and Political Entry: Evidence from Brazilian Municipal Elections" today *4-5 pm UK time* (in-person or online)

Help us make London's streets safer! If you're working or studying at a London university, sign our cross-university letter to London's mayors: forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...

Join us online next Tuesday for insights from our COP28 team on what happened and what needs to happen next. Panellists include Lord Stern, Dr Alina Averchenkova, Dr Timo Leiter and Bob Ward www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminst...

Wind & solar currently provide 1/5 of EU electricity generation. REPowerEU means the share of these technologies could reach 50% by 2030 of total electricity generation in the EU. But how to keep the costs of this build-out in check? @regassistproj.bsky.social blueprint.raponline.org/deep-dive/co...