Connoisseurs of revolutions (whether 1645 or 1791) will be pleased to see calls for self-denying ordinances

I guess all civilisations end, but I genuinely didn't think this would be how ours would.

I'm pretty relaxed about shareholder compensation in these cases, but no one seems very keen to explain why public ownership, in a time of serious fiscal challenge, is going to magically solve a problem that we know will require enormous capital spending www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Now they've crossed that Rubicon, is the Archbishop going to finally make it to London after 1400 years?

Increasingly seems like a weird feature of the C21st, that we expect the market to do stuff governments should do, while also wanting governments to do what the market does better. It's all arse about face basically.

The perils of thinking the private sector will supply public goods. Yes, it might happen if the incentives are there (which means meaningful govt created climate markets), but otherwise this is just wishful thinking. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

As the old saying goes - "If you rob Peter to pay Paul you've already got half the votes"

Can't believe America is having to relearn basic stuff like vaccines are public goods.

Can't believe these people are driving me to memes.

What are my Environmental Policy class interested in? Here's my annual word cloud of their keywords

Just watched "Trente sept": small budget French hitchhiker movie with some plot flaws but definitely deserving better than its current 5.7 on IMDB. 6.5/10, Melodie Simina v engaging as the hitcher, just need to suspend some disbelief www.imdb.com/fr/title/tt3...

When are airlines going to introduce an "eco-business class", with all the lounge access and queue jumping benefits, but without the extra carbon emissions of big seats? (Premium economy is usually the opposite of this).

Rereading Heilbroner's chapter on Marx, and the last sentence in this passage of American exceptionalism feels like it's getting an empirical test. (America is surely only exceptional in being unusually rich for a developing country 😉)

Reform. In need of some, it seems. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Thinking about friends and colleagues in #Madagascar right now. Feels like this has been on the cards for some time - people have been 'leo délestage' (lit. fed up of power cuts, but also corruption etc) since well before the last, deeply flawed election midi-madagasikara.mg/mouvement-le...

I don't really care if he goes but I wonder if Starmer has ever considered the 'optics' of 'thinking for himself'? “big fight inside the government between some officials pushing Starmer to make the trip ... and others wanting him to focus on domestic issues" www.ft.com/content/5f8f...

Weird, I would have thought he was just the chap to give us the lowdown on medicine safety.

Special circle of hell for publishers who send you on epic Lord of the Rings quests of clicks & captchas just for off-campus access that your institution has paid for. Especially when, having slaid the last dragon, you reach the inner sanctum and the website is like "so, what was it you wanted?"

Interesting watching the double accounting and wishful thinking that has beset climate policy starting to unravel in aviation - good piece by @kenzabryan.ft.com As so often in climate policy, it's a case of: cheap, green, plentiful - choose two. www.ft.com/content/0ad1...

Should rivers and whales have legal rights? @henrymance.ft.com in the FT. Glad to see him touching on the key issue with all this stuff - what does it change? Why is giving a river rights any different - in terms of outcomes - to any other form of environmental regulation? www.ft.com/content/d8ed...

So maybe the First Amendment was just about campaign contributions after all...

Marginal cost pricing, in Viz.

You could say there's nothing un-libertarian about recourse to private contractual terms, willingly signed. You could also ask what business that is of a legislator.

Boarding the Morogoro-bound SGR train in Dar, on my way to join colleagues at Sokoine Uni for fieldwork as part of our research and KT project on the viability of Carbon Credits as an income stream for Tanzanian Village Forests/PFM (funded by Defra/GCBC).

If West Oxfordshire is scared of electricity, just cut them off.

Listening to @empirepoduk.bsky.social on Suez. Among many take-aways, I suppose it's reassuring to be reminded that countries have frequently laboured under inglorious political leadership & survived. (yes it forced a brutal re-appraisal of our place in the world, but hard to see that as a downside)

An excellent summary of the difference between Twitter and Bluesky can be obtained by typing "Linehan" into the search bar of each.

Some good Qs. I can see a case for leaving the ECHR, but not under our current constitution that vests so much power in the executive. My question to ECHR leavers would be: how would you sufficiently weaken the executive, to prevent a future slide into autocracy. I haven't heard any such proposals.

. @davidallengreen.bsky.social on our constitution's leaky roof. Something that intrigues me: if the UK wanted to scrap parliamentary sovereignty, what wld be the mechanism (other than revolution!) given that no parliament can currently bind its successor? www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

Miarahaba ny Malagasy rehetra tratry ny fetin’ny fahaleovan-tena! #madagasikara Best wishes to all Malagasy on the 65th anniversary of independence.

100%.

Great to have a chance to speak with @lsrplaid.bsky.social today about a bunch of environmental issues (including my favourite subject, David Lloyd George & the Land Value Tax 😁). Good to see a politician asking probing questions across a range of issues.

True, but in economic terms these are simply a transfer, from largely publicly funded bodies back to the govt.

Cymraeg? Diddordeb mewn ymchwil gwyddorau cymdeithasol mewn cyd-destun amgylcheddol? Dyma #PhD efo ysgoloriaeth llawn, gweithio efo fi Sophie Wynne-Jones @juliajones.bsky.social a Ruth Swetnam i astudio agweddau cymdeithasol/economaidd o adfer y goedwig law Geltaidd www.bangor.ac.uk/cy/cadwraeth...

Just heard Rory Stewart claim that for every £1 of subsidy to small upland farmer, £9 flows into the rest of the economy. Imagine if that were true. We could create virtually infinite money! Which should tell you that it isn't true, at least not in any meaningful way.

I've no doubt this is true, but worth remembering that US border officials were notorious for being unpleasantly capricious before Trump, and if you come from developing countries, so are those of the UK and EU.

Enjoyed this by @tomforth.co.uk: "The Southern section of [HS2] has an extremely low BCR. The Northern section has a much higher BCR. The Southern section of HS2 will be built. The Northern section has been cancelled. The Green Book isn’t the problem. The UK govt is" tomforth.co.uk/northerntran...

So, "Email" in Swahili is "barua pepe". Barua = letter, which makes sense. But I just read that "pepe" = "astray". Which is weird but also seems spot on.

Duolingo Swahili is certainly not shying away from the gender stereotypes.

The prudish limitations of AI

Do any private sector organisations use "iTrent" for expenses? Absolute bobbins. Just took me 14 minutes to upload receipts for a 1 week trip (receipts were already organised, so this is just the time taken to laboriously upload each receipt individually as required by the useless system).

Interesting snippet from this major land restoration project "[The Trust] has also committed to the donor that none of the work at Inverbroom will be funded through the sale of carbon credits" www.heraldscotland.com/news/2497303...

Elle veut le beurre et l'argent du beurre.

Cheerful stuff from the FT. Especially enjoyed this: "The costs cited for reducing the likelihood of a devastating war are trivial compared with the amount EU states have spent — for ludicrous example — on compensation paid to consumers for higher energy bills" Our govts have been feckless.

Absolutely not stanning for Trump's foreign policy, but listening to this made me wonder whether Denmark would be in a stronger position re Greenland if they hadn't been forcibly sterilising Greenlandic women for decades (into the 1990s). www.rfi.fr/fr/podcasts/...

Really don't understand the bureaucratic approach of drawing up lists of occupations eligible for visas. If you want to restrict immigration, why not just have a high monthly charge for visas, and let the market decide?

Something that bothers me about all this chicken, is how much of it goes into food that is just not very good. Had my first Nandos on Sunday: an underwhelming wrap with some dry, tasteless, chicken and a bit of lettuce. Really not worth all the eutrophication.

Great piece by @herdyshepherd.bsky.social on the fallacy of using offsets to pay for nature restoration - even if they work (& there are good reasons to be doubtful), they could only offset what is being lost now, not recover what needs to be restored unherd.com/2025/02/labo...

Great looking PhD on temperate rainforest restoration, biodiversity, carbon and resilience, with colleagues at @buforestry.bsky.social deadline 28th February www.findaphd.com/phds/project...