Is the emerging transition economy securing a green future? Or just replicating existing working conditions? BLOG | @nicholasbeuret.bsky.social | 'Or Something Worse: Why we need to disrupt the climate transition’ – @versobooks.bsky.social buff.ly/36SeoYK

4yrs ago I wrote in @novaramedia.com that we were ignoring how the green transition was already unfolding as a business plan against workers. Tmw the book that came from that article is finally out - and since then the transition has only gotten worse tinyurl.com/yw33j4b2

Just one week to go until my book launch! Come hear me, Asad Rehman, James Meadway, Emma River-Roberts and Harpreet Kaur-Spannos get stuck into the green economy and where we take the fight from here! 23 Sept, free to register - tinyurl.com/khurbx6u

"Our data reveals a pervasive sense of societal breakdown. The surge in the belief that society is 'broken' or 'in decline' in key nations like Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, highlights a growing unease that has been brewing since 2016." www.ipsos.com/en-uk/system...

The Climate Squeeze is not only a problem of prices and shortages. It is a question of deteriorating physical and mental health as social and health services are pushed to breaking point. The squeeze makes lives smaller. Even our hopes and dreams shrink theecologist.org/2025/sep/12/...

**taps the sign** "The US is the world’s largest oil and gas producer. The profoundly destructive ‘shale revolution’ underpinned US economic growth over the past decade and provided a ready source of cheap energy. Any decline in oil and gas usage will undermine the US economy"

The UK govt is guaranteeing profits for renewables for the next 20yrs through CfD. While places like Spain end up with neg electricity prices, consumers in the UK will be charged more to ensure the transition is one into a profitable rentier future www.ft.com/content/adca...

Worker's Planet this wkend in Brighton has an amazing line-up. If you're coming, I'll be talking on this session - come say hi! Pay Up: Who should pay for the crisis and how can we make them? ⏰ Time: 5pm - 6:30pm 🎟️ Get your ticket workersplanet.org/2mworkers_pl...

“A lot of them voted for Trump, and they didn’t vote to have their jobs cut, Crowley said” Trump's stop-work order on windfarms has already sidelined 1000 workers. How many more of the 1.1m employees in the renewable sector will lose their jobs to Trump? tinyurl.com/bdcpncet

I'm launching my book "Or Something Worse: Why we need to disrupt the climate transition" - if you are in London come along! 🟩 London launch: Book tickets, free to register - www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/london-boo... 🟩 Speakers, Q&A & drinks reception

"Droughts in Spain, Italy and Portugal, where the UK sources much of its fresh fruit and vegetables, have pushed up prices this summer" Despite claims inflation would fall back to under 2%, climate change means the squeeze on ppl won't end tinyurl.com/2ycw5hnt

It’s real!! Or Something Worse out next month w/ @versobooks.bsky.social Preorders tinyurl.com/cc4ptp4e

The global authoritarian turn comes *after* the failures of the populist Left, and, distinct, from prev right turns, the failure of the climate movement. Decline, including ecological decline, is what powers the rights repressive and punitive turn.

📢 Coming soon! 🎉 Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition 👉 Our 23 Sept | Pre-orders @versobooks.bsky.social Or Something Worse exposes the bleak realities of the climate economy, and shows how we can win the war of transition tinyurl.com/cc4ptp4e

The reality of the Transition Economy is admist overcapacity in every single industry, govts have to bribe companies to not close down "Tegu...had been in negotiations to buy the site but had asked the govt to underwrite £5mn of financing for the deal" t.co/q61vROWOK7

When I wrote about the Spanish blackouts, I pointed out that the fault wasn’t w renewable energy but w the more general state of the grid caused by profit seeking. It turns out the trigger was shoddy maintenance processes with conventional thermal energy stations. t.co/qBr5zsPLFS

Using the US industry as a base, creating this many jobs means putting **200,000** self-driving cars on British roads "Alexander claimed the autonomous vehicle industry could create 38,000 new jobs and add £42bn to the UK economy by 2035." t.co/0lDedCfiDC

'The digital economy is not post-material; it is hyper-material': Dreams of a tech-driven green capitalism are turning out to be a nightmare. @nicholasbeuret.bsky.social & Peter Bloom

Peter and I have a new piece up on @theecologist.org We can’t assume that green capitalism is opposed to the incipit of fascism of the MAGA milieu. Both are pushing authoritarianism as a solution to capital’s problems. theecologist.org/2025/jun/09/...

One of my main points in "Or Something Worse" is that the green economy isn't a manufacturing economy in the Global North, its an installation one This means it's working base is in the small business sector - petit bourgeois essentially This is the MAGA and Reform base 🧵

Climate change is now so bad, and inflation so baked-in, that the market for catastrophe bonds is expected to grow dramatically. CAT bonds enable insurers to transfer the risk of disasters onto investors willing to go high risk/high return in a world of permanent stagnation

This is the 2nd example of how right wing politics will mean we suffer more from climate impacts, and are less able to adapt. Trump's war on migration was the 1st The need for care, and the gendered burden of care, will only intensify with climate change www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The transition economy is mostly a petit bourgeoisie one, and a source of economic growth. This is the contradiction at the heart of Reform's constituency. Kill net zero & some shopkeepers and landlords benefit, but other SMEs suffer and jobs are lost www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Labour just don't get it. This policy, which costs peanuts, creates jobs (net zero as a sector is posting 10%/yr growth rates), saves households £100s/yr, and is an easy way to reduce household CO2 (17% of UK emissions). If anything it should be massively increased

The far-right, anti-net zero brigade is blaming Spain’s blackout on renewable energy. But the likely culprit is not 'inertia' but destructive profit seeking behaviour in Spain and France. Me in @theecologist.org tinyurl.com/nhzmz6cs

Climate change is making climate change worse "We est. that temperature effects contributed around 20% to the increase in electricity & natural gas demand & drove the entire increase in coal demand. For CO2 emissions, weather effects contributed around half of the increase" tinyurl.com/5ba5f8sb

"Half of consumer spending in the US is today accounted for by the top ten percent of incomes." When we as environmentalists talk about consumption, we just end up perpetuating a mythology of choice that only serves the ruling class. It's not a real category...

Last yr while writing 'Or Something Worse' I was on a call with union organisers for British Steel. The first q asked was what technology would save jobs. We said none What the transition promises these workers is broken promises The green economy is an installation economy

Trump's war on migrants means those industries critical for climate adaptation and disaster recovery dependent on migrants will struggle to function. Forcing children, prisoners and the unemployed to do them instead is the next step.

1/2 the 2024 increase in CO2 emissions were bc of air conditioning Climate change is an energy doomloop. Hotter weather = more energy demand = more CO2 Hotter weather makes energy generation less efficient; you need to burn more coal to make the same amount of energy = more CO2

As with AI, electric cars and everything else, the call for more nuclear investment in the US is fundamentally not about energy security but about securing the lead in future technologies. And as with green tech, China is already leading, making it the epicentre of future growth

The climate transition isn’t dead - but the losers are fighting hard. That’s how we need to understand BP’s retreat and Trump’s policies. Both are stuck on the wrong side of the green valley of death Me in @novaramedia.com novaramedia.com/2025/03/06/b...

​“There’s going to be firefighters that die because of this, there will be communities that burn” Neglect and abandonment are not accidental but are part of an emerging, deliberate regime of climate governance. As flood waters rise the state will retreat tinyurl.com/2p9k4vjj

"Air pollution derived from the huge amounts of energy needed to run data centres has been linked to treating cancers, asthma and other related issues." Each time we build one a new aspect of the technosphere we create new illnesses and forms of pollution.

Trump’s election was about the green transition and a recognition that the US has lost The minerals grab in Ukraine & Greenland, the demand other countries buy US manufacturing, & the focus on fossil fuels are all desperate attempts to stay in the race. theecologist.org/2025/feb/20/...

Is Trump the end of the green transition or the start of America’s decline? A timely and provocative essay from @nicholasbeuret.bsky.social theecologist.org/2025/feb/20/...

Roberts corrective to the idea that tariffs will work: "Global imbalances...were the result of the higher productivity and technology base of the major companies in the ‘winning’ economies leading to a transfer of profits to the strong from the weak." tinyurl.com/e45skj9j

Global energy transition investment hit $2.1 trillion last year, more than doubling since 2020 “Policy changes, politics change and investor sentiment comes and goes, [but] despite the challenges, we don’t think the fundamentals have changed.” The end of the green transition is overstated

There goes UK growth One of the changes I set out in The War Against Green Capitalism is govts aren't engaged in protectionism so much as nakedly bribing companies to set up shop locally. In a world awash with overcapacity, companies want handouts more than they want protection

The Deepseek saga should be a profound reality check for the myth of “innovation”. While tech broligarchs dream of robot coders and post-worker utopias, the reality of innovation is its used to stop progress and limit competition. tinyurl.com/ycxsmjbp

30% of the Arctic - 40% inc wildfires - is now a carbon source. Half of the Earth’s soil carbon pool is in the Arctic soil - more than there is in the atmosphere. The Arctic tipping point is at 1.5C - last year warming breached 1.6C The Arctic carbon sink is breaking down.

Starmer's AI push makes it likely the UK will go backwards in decarbonisation: AI used around 3.6 TWh of electricity in 2020. If this consumption increases as per the govt’s target, it could reach 72 TWh, 1/4 of total energy consumption in 2021, by 2030 tinyurl.com/bdd2r2sw

IRA & CHIPS Act couldn't save US manufacturing - 40% of projects have been paused or delayed. The US has lost the transition race and AI is a bubble. Frontier tech - and the green transition economy - belongs to China.

Camille and I have a piece out in Kohl Journal on the strike "This progressive confinement of the strike mirrors the confinement of the worker. But the proletariat has long struggled against this confinement and knows work as the cage of the strike" kohljournal.press/strike

Oh look, it's almost as though technology is a weapon deployed against the working class and not for the benefit of humanity “People are starting to see, with AI and generative AI, the potential of those technologies to be more productive... in a world where the costs of employment are increasing”

The US is a state-capitalist economy "More than 20% of new US jobs are created by government, up from 1% in the 2010s. Public transfers including Social Security account for more than a 1/4 of residents’ income in more than 50% of US counties — up from just 10% in 2000

Most coastal management plans in Britain are based on outdated estimates, & assume a 1m sea level rise by 2100. Current emissions will raise sea levels by 2.2 metres by 2100 and 3.9 metres 50 years after that None of our defences or plans are real tinyurl.com/ytwuvha2

One of the main points we made repeatedly during the now forgotten anti-globalisation movt was that economies in the Global North were polarising fast, and professions were becoming precarious

As Greater Manchester floods we’re seeing how the climate crisis changes politics & life Climate impacts are worse than the sum of their parts - it creates the climate squeeze The squeeze isn’t just disruption & inflation, it’s the loss of possibilities tinyurl.com/ya8nf8vt

This is a wild demand given EU gas demand has likely peaked and by 2027 will have more gas under long term contracts than needed. Swapping US for Russian gas won't change the fact that the US is looking down the barrel of peak demand - not a good place to be for a petro-state