“How do I know,” she said at last, “that you are what you seem to be?” “You don't,” Said he. “I don't know what I seem, to you.”
Tom Ackers
@tomackers.bsky.social
https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/decarbonising-the-built-environment/ Writing on the political economy of the built environment & social-ecological transition. Postdoc, Uniarts Helsinki https://orcid.org/0009-0004-9088-984X
We're already seeing concrete carbonation now being seen as a positive, in providing a carbon sink. It's nonsense, aimed at supporting business as usual.
TL;DR - at least in the OECD, growth in solar and wind has prevented an increase in coal power after the start of the Hormuz crisis, even as gas-fired generation has fallen sharply.
South Korea's coal use increased due to weak performance of nuclear, while Australia and Poland saw increases due to insufficient clean energy growth, and poor wind conditions in Poland's case.
Outside of the OECD, China and India have both seen rebounds in coal-fired power generation after falling output last year. Gas-to-coal switching is not a significant factor in either country so the increases are not related to the Hormuz crisis however.
Every year I have my nice boots repaired, and every time it costs at least 30 percent more than a new pair of cheap boots. Boots theory ignores the global automation of manufacturing and the rising organic composition of capital. It isn’t true anymore. Disposability is very cheap
Dr. Cara Berg Powers@clbergpowers.bsky.social · 24h agoToday's bsky argument about "boots theory" seems to come down, from my perspective, to 2 different ideas of what it says- (1) believe that poor people could make better choices to save themselves out of poverty (2) believe that poverty enacts worse choices, creating cycles of more instability.
The "despite" in the title is what gets me. It's clear the math works out to "because". That's pretty much the business model.
The case for rewilding could not be more clear, on every conceivable level. Now it's time to put it into *action*.
The Conversation UK@uk.theconversation.com · 23h agoDone properly, rewilded landscapes are more fire-resistant.
And, as is the case every year, my 'minority view' is confirmed: we have an incredible amount of straw. So much, in fact, that we could insulate the whole of Europe against heat + cold in a climate-neutral way without having to grow anything extra, without competing for land, food, fossil nonsense.
Unless we ban the use of fossil fuels for energy generation and surface transport, no company will ever leave this stuff in the ground. Why would they when they're making money hand over fist?
Oil Giant Saudi Aramco Reports 33% Profit Surge, Despite Iran War Disruptions (Gift Article)
Higher oil prices propelled a quarterly earnings jump for Saudi Arabia’s energy giant, which used pipelines to work around disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
nytimes.com
"It is bad enough that cars with combustion engines fuel climate change through their use of fossil resources. On days like these, the waste heat they generate is simply absurd—a particularly blatant form of inconsideration."
Ulrich Brand@ulrichbrand.bsky.social · yesterdayHitze in der Stadt? Ein Fahrverbot für Verbrenner-Autos hilft! Mein Kommentar in @derstandard.at. Einschränkungen des Verkehrs im urbanen Raum könnte für eine Abkühlung in den Städten sorgen. www.derstandard.at/story/300000...
Funny how no one calls this "overcapacity" @katemac.bsky.social @aldasky.bsky.social @edwardongwesojr.com US Data Center capex boom of many trillions over a decade + global dominance at about 80% of global AI investments is analagous to China's enormous Green boom + 70-80% global dominance.
3/3 That's why I've signed a parliamentary motion calling on the Government to develop an exit plan from Palantir and move towards an open, interoperable and sovereign alternative.
The Tyndall Centre climate change risk assessment for the Fens outlines a range of significant risks – from heat & drought to farming & biodiversity – even at two degrees of warming, which we could see by the 2040s. We need to respond now ⬇️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQQ...
Institutional investors on North Sea drilling: “If what you’re trying to achieve is the trifecta that most governments appear to be looking for ... affordability, energy independence and decarbonization,” then increasing North Sea drilling “doesn’t achieve any of those."
Investors Raise Alarm on Prospect of More UK North Sea Drilling
Institutional investors are raising concerns over the prospect of UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham supporting more oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.
bloomberg.com
I've set out my alternative proposal for the Rotterdam Shift Embassy: www.dezeen.com/2026/08/03/r...
Great overview from @simonpirani.bsky.social about the serial inadequacies of the UK government’s recent Local Power Plan (published in Feb 2026)
People & Nature@peoplenature.bsky.social · last wk."An obsessively centralised system of regulation, and energy corporations’ power, are blocking change, activists argue. Even modest proposals to support community energy projects with a long-term, fixed price for their electricity fall on deaf ears." peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2026/07/28/t...
The reason Israel blew up the 900 year old Beaufort Castle in Lebanon is (1) they have to fake their nationalist archaeological ancestry and can't bear any other regional history; (2) they were ignominiously defeated at Beaufort by PLO in their 1980s invasion of Lebanon & want to erase the memory.
Hungary's new government is tested very early. Paks nuclear plant is about to go offline for the first time in 44 years because the Danube is drying up. That's nearly half the country's electricity. Collapsed supply & gas prices spiking throughout the region. Just brutal. apnews.com/article/hung...
Hungary braces for a full shutdown of the Paks nuclear plant as the Danube River hits record lows
Hungary's only nuclear power plant is shutting down for the first time due to record-low water levels on the Danube River.
apnews.com
Crap urbanism & car dependency: “many working-class families were eager to leave damp and crumbling houses for a new-build estate and a bit of greenery […] For two decades, families who could afford it moved to suburbs or new towns (and bought cars); a riot of road-building followed.“
London Review of Books@lrb.co.uk · 4d ago‘In one place after another, policies aimed at sustaining families produced new inequalities. Such inequalities were magnified by the hegemony of the car. ’ Susan Pedersen on the modern British city. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
The current political concensus is that "nature conservation has gone too far". Sadly, the reality is the very opposite. Predicted decline in common bird and butterfly species even under conservation policy scenarios in Europe | Nature Ecology & Evolution share.google/KnsJvVsTNy6E...
share.google
Open letter to the Prime Minister on new North Sea drilling 📢 Prof. Kevin Anderson & other Tyndall Centre scientists at the University of Manchester have urged Andy Burnham to rule out further development of the Rosebank/Jackdaw fields: buff.ly/aGbyTqM
Indeed, and while tech usually scales, AI itself does not. Those same hyperscalers carry >$1.2 trillion in off-balance-sheet debt for data centers precisely because AI unit costs don't go down with scale (much less reach "near-zero"). AI requires hefty compute costs every single time it's run.
JW Mason@jwmason.bsky.social · 5d agoIt is certainly true that the tech sector enjoys increasing returns. But it is *not* true that this is a difference from "traditional production industries" - increasing returns are ubiquitous in manufacturing. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
(3/3) State-capital relations are key in understanding the China-west competitiveness divergence. Real industrial policy is not throwing subsidies at corporations but leveraging and creating public and private capacity towards goals like a green transformation.
This grotesque headline is from the Telegraph. 3,000 people in Britain have been killed in heatwaves this year so far. 20,000 in Europe. Even if Britain did get to “embrace Mediterranean life”, what about the actual Mediterranean, what do they get to embrace? What about India?
🚨New paper Like most things in democracies, achieving climate action in the form of sustainable policy needs a significant amount of political mobilization. We investigate when & where this is more likely to happen across places on the climate frontline: the Global South🧵 📌 osf.io/preprints/so...
We systematically test all of this. We rely on a new data frame (the Climate Vulnerability Dataset) that encompasses political engagement and vulnerability indicators of 10,527 districts in Brazil, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Mexico & South Africa at monthly level b/w 2010 and 2022 (N= 1.3M+). 8/
