Just heard the terrible news that we have lost Sarah Knuth. She was such a brilliant academic, activist and person. My thoughts go out to all her loved ones. climateandcommunity.org/bio/sarah-kn...

Sarah Knuth (In Memoriam) - Climate and Community Institute

climateandcommunity.org

An important contribution to macrofinancial analysis of the AI boom, which cautions against comparisons with the global financial crisis of 2007-9 & visions of apocalyptic fallout. www.crisesnotes.com/sigh-no-ed-z...

*Sigh* No Ed Zitron, AI bond issuance is not AI’s "Subprime Mortgage Crisis”

EDITORIAL NOTE: Given the importance of this issue, and in a desire to be fair when writing such a critical piece, I sent a draft of this article to Ed Zitron to review and give his response to. I've ...

crisesnotes.com

"Tenbury Wells ... the United Kingdom's first "uninhabitable" town, not because the water has made it physically impossible to live there, but because the withdrawal of insurance has made it financially impossible."

John Hogan Morris@johnhoganmorris.bsky.social · 2d ago

Tenbury Wells: A Canary in the Insurance Industry's Coalmine www.linkedin.com/pulse/tenbur...

Bordeaux, France, has now recorded more days above 40°C in 2026 alone than during the entire 105-year period from 1920 (when observations began) to 2025. This is deeply shocking.

The growing intermittency of…conventional nuclear energy. www.reuters.com/business/ene...

Low Danube river levels force Romania to shut down both of its nuclear power reactors

Romania will shut down its ‌second nuclear reactor on the Danube river, the energy ministry said on Wednesday, three days after decades-low river levels forced it to shut down the first.

reuters.com

Aside from defensive strategies, we should also call out investment manager strategies designed to *exploit* climate extremes... www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...

Barclays spots a chance to profit from extreme weather crisis

Europe’s biggest funder of fossil fuels urges investors to see an opportunity in ‘super’ El Niño that could leave millions starving

thebureauinvestigates.com

Nick Taylor@ntaylor.bsky.social · 2w ago

It's all of those plus it's right now. Climate extremes are here, just mostly for the Global South. Routine temps of 47C across India? My worry is these (welcome) scenarios feed a defensive strategy for investor returns, rather than acknowledging existing investments as a big part of the problem!

"Keeping warming below 2°C requires global emissions cuts of 8% every yr... For wealthy nations such as the UK, which repeatedly claim they will lead the transition, the rate of cuts needs to be in excess of 10% yr on yr. Contrast that with the UK gov's enthusiasm for widespread airport expansion!"

Kevin Anderson@kevinclimate.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Quelle surprise: my comment on the Govt's latest climate commitment (www.gov.uk/government/n... is out of step, at least publicly, with many colleagues: www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-react... With expert whitewash on one side & charlatans on the other, an honest climate debate stands no chance.

The train network might be in crisis, but one impressive thing is the price of Deutsche Bahn tickets in the summer holidays. €60 Familienticket for the whole family to travel the length of the country on a high-speed train? Incredible.

It's all of those plus it's right now. Climate extremes are here, just mostly for the Global South. Routine temps of 47C across India? My worry is these (welcome) scenarios feed a defensive strategy for investor returns, rather than acknowledging existing investments as a big part of the problem!

Jim Kane@kanejim.bsky.social · 2w ago

“‘The climate science community finds it hard give exact dates, but for investors the time frame really matters,’ said Shah. ‘Is this is a 10-year story, or 50-year or a 100-year story?’” 🫠

The phrase “UK wildfire season” would have sounded strange not long ago. Now it’s becoming increasingly familiar. Climate change isn’t just about hotter days, it’s increasing the conditions that allow wildfires to ignite, spread, and become harder to contain. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Wildfires destroy moorland size of 1,250 football pitches

Hundreds of hectares of "precious" moorland have been burned by wildfires, United Utilities says.

bbc.co.uk

Antitrust and the Age of Asset Management - this book by Andrew McLean on the corporate consolidation driven by asset managers looks like it will be an important read (forthcoming Nov) www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

Antitrust and the Age of Asset Management — Harvard University Press

A compelling account of the role of asset managers in driving consolidation across the American economy, offering a bold call to revive and reinforce US antitrust and antimonopoly policy.Recent decade...

hup.harvard.edu

Wow, removing 150 tonnes of CO₂ per year out of thin air! That's a time machine that takes a year to bring us back to an atmosphere we had 0.1 second ago (i.e., less time than it took to read this post).

Ucaneo opens Germany's largest direct air capture plant

Berlin start-up Ucaneo has opened Germany's largest direct air capture plant — 150 tonnes of CO₂ a year, filtered with electricity. Why it matters for Power-to-X.

power-to-x.swiss

This is a great defence of Law & Political Economy approaches against the dismissal they receive from Law & Economics. Lots of links to work on climate, antitrust, consumer credit & more lpeproject.org/blog/the-eco...

The Economics that Law and Economics Ignores

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

lpeproject.org

🔴 For the past year @lucasamin.bsky.social and I have been investigating Palantir in the UK What we found was a company with unrivalled political access, selling a product many data experts in the NHS don’t use, and don’t rate Please read and share democracyforsale.substack.com/p/its-just-a...

"It's just a waste of time": inside Palantir's £330m NHS failure

Our new investigation reveals the problems with Palantir’s NHS tech - and the unrivalled political access that fuelled the firm’s march into the British state

democracyforsale.substack.com

We need a new politics of climate adaptation. It’s much harder than the politics of cutting emissions phenomenalworld.org/analysis/glo...

Scorched Earth - Phenomenal World

Programming Note: In addition to this monthly newsletter, Kate and Tim are regularly publishing dispatches and putting out podcasts, which you can find at thepolycrisis.org. This summer’s heat waves h...

phenomenalworld.org

It's in the diary

Astronomy Bot@astronomybot.bsky.social · 3w ago

On January 4, 2037, the planet Mercury will reach its greatest western elongation. This means Mercury will be at its farthest point from the Sun in the morning sky, making it the best time to see it. Look towards the eastern horizon just before sunrise to spot this elusive planet.

The May and June heatwaves killed 2,700 people in England and Wales, new data suggests. This is a damning indictment of the climate crisis but also a warning the U.K. needs an urgent plan to keep disabled and older people and young children safe in extreme heat. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

May and June heatwaves killed about 2,700 people in England and Wales, data suggests

Extreme heat led to 440 deaths a day during June peak, say scientists, with climate crisis ramping up temperatures

theguardian.com

Not far from where I live. Urban wildfires haven't been on people's list of concerns in London... but we're several heatwaves deep & this is one of the main effects of a heating planet. Grateful that London Fire Brigade tackled this one so quickly.

Anne-Marie Silbiger (happimess73)@happimess73.bsky.social · 3w ago

Please head to St Mary's Welcome Centre in Walthamstow if you can help/donate food and water to residents being evacuated due to the fire in Wood St, Walthamstow.

We have a brand new podcast series out today looking at the global struggle for critical minerals. You can listen to episode 1 feat. @quinnslobodian.com and @isabelestevez.bsky.social wherever you get your podcasts: open.spotify.com/episode/0Xk1... More episodes out weekly –– big things to come!

The BREAK—DOWN@the-breakdown.bsky.social · 4w ago

The next global power struggle is for critical minerals. Resources like cobalt, copper, and lithium are reshaping geopolitics and the struggle to dominate critical minerals is a defining challenge of this political moment.

RIP Pizza Hut www.nbcnews.com/business/con...

Pizza Hut’s strange new private equity bedfellows: 24 Hour Fitness and a ‘deathcare’ firm

PE firms have bought up restaurant chains in recent years, but they have a mixed track record when it comes to turning them around.

nbcnews.com

The ownership & management of financial assets is ever-more concentrated. This fuels systemic risk but occurs during times of growing risk supervision. In our new paper Hayley James and I address this puzzle by studying the rise of the so-called Master Trust. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 🧵

My department at the University of St Andrews is hiring a permanent lecturer (assistant professor) in International Political Economy. Please share and spread the word! www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

As much as 40 percent of longform posts on LinkedIn and X that users actually see are fully AI-generated, according to new research Particularly notable because we know these platforms are flooded with slop, but this studied what the algorithm actually shows people www.404media.co/linkedin-and...

Terrifying... but also nice to see some foresight! Eurostar orders trains to cope with 55C giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Eurostar orders trains that can cope with 55C ‘Saudi’ summers

Amended contract follows heatwaves across UK and western Europe

giftarticle.ft.com

👀

Ed Zitron@edzitron.com · 4w ago

Today’s free newsletter has a very simple message: The AI industry can not (and will not) be bailed out - AI is not too big to fail, OpenAI is not AIG, this is not 2008, and all of this is nothing like the Dot Com Bubble. And when it fails, we must let AI burn. www.wheresyoured.at/let-ai-burn/

Inertia? Many UK Universities have spent time, money and resources endlessly restructuring trying to adapt without sufficient government funding

Times Higher Education (THE)@timeshighered.bsky.social · 4w ago

Opinion – Universities must adapt or die: The institutions that transformed the modern world face existential threats from AI, political hostility and their own inertia, says Geoff Mulgan #highered #edusky https://ow.ly/gZNy50ZkB8T

Some sobering graphs from the EIA today. This one shows that, while the rise of renewables lately has been notable, the real energy story of the 21st century in the US has been the large-scale replacement of coal by natural gas.

Everyone, quick! The blackberries are ripening

Climate damages to agriculture are non-linear, so it's not that each degree changes X%- it's that beyond a certain threshold you get massive losses

Wolfgang Blau@wblau.bsky.social · last mo.

www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/a...

This is big news. Total held responsible for its Scope 3 emissions. Shows the potential of France's Duty of Vigilance law, which directly inspired the EU CSDDD directive, mandating corporate human rights & environmental due diligence across supply chains.

Notre Affaire à Tous@notreaffaireatous.bsky.social · last mo.

🔥 VICTORY! Whilst France is currently experiencing an unprecedented heatwave, judges have ruled that TotalEnergies failed to comply with its climate obligations. This is a landmark decision that lays the groundwork for putting an end to climate impunity for multinationals.