A French coder estimates that using Claude Code will account for 1 tonne of CO2 over a year - 10% of the average French individual carbon footprint.
We have never encountered emissions-intensive software like this, ever before (with the sole exception of Bitcoin)
www.linkedin.com/posts/gwitte...
THE ASSET CLASS publishes today! The book is a roving investigation of private equity, a surreptitious realm of finance that has infiltrated almost every corner of our lives…
NEW: The first evidence of a solar take-off in Africa☀️✈️
x33 rise in Algeria solar panel imports in the 12 mths to June 2025, compared to previous 12 mths.
x8 in Zambia
x7 in Botswana
x6 in Sudan
x3 in each of Liberia, DRC, Benin, Angola, Ethiopia
🧵
Importantly, the Pangram founder Max Spero says that the tool is capable of detecting the level of 'AI assistance' that's been used in editing an original, human-generated text. So it's not just a binary decision on usage.
This feels v important for ppl working in Higher Ed & beyond. Pangram is an AI detection tool that says it has 99.98% accuracy. Frankly I'm looking forward for this to migrate to university plagiarism systems, or journal peer review.
youtu.be/OmYH5OKcUF0?...
📣 New on the CLaSP blog 📣
Will Monteith (@willmonteith.bsky.social) examines the colonial origins of the green hydrogen frontier.
www.claspblog.org/blogposts/green-hydrogen
The latest oil shock has led to a resurgence of North Sea petro nationalism. I’ve written for @the-breakdown.bsky.social on the illusion of plenty behind Reform, Tory and SNP claims that red-green wreckers are sabotaging our energy security by blocking drilling. www.break-down.org/north-sea-na...
To understand better how it came to be that private equity has its fingers in everything from childcare to housing and media, get yourself a copy of @hettieobrien.bsky.social book out next week!
www.waterstones.com/book/the-ass...
"From what I understand about private equity is you invest upfront early, you make back your money, you sell & get out – that is the model as I've understood it ...That to me is completely incompatible with healthcare of any form, early years care & so on."
Yep!
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
1. Germany already said the war is illegal.
2. US now threatening "complete obliteration" of Iran's energy system and, maybe, of desalination plants – i.e., war crimes.
3. Reminder: The war is conducted from Ramstein, Germany: "the nerve center of America’s operations against Iran".
What gives?
Of all human activities, few have as big an impact on the planet as agriculture. Globally, the agri-food system—everything that’s produced & consumed, from farm to fork to landfill—is the largest consumer of water & user of land, and one of the largest GHG emitters: drawdown.org/news/only-ha... >>
Pakistan's solar revolution: from 0% to 25% in a decade.
2021: 4%
2022: 7%
2023: 10%
2024: 14%
2025: 25%
Solar is now Pakistan's #1 electricity source. Not driven by policy — driven by consumers.
“We’re sold this idea that this is going to be the key to rebuilding Britain, when in fact it looks more like the key to making some fund managers quite a nice profit.”
@hettieobrien.bsky.social joins us to discuss the billionaire machine of private equity.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HOm...
On the 15th of Mai, AARG is organizing an event that brings together scholars to discuss Reimagining Care: Accounting, Political Economy, and the Financialization of Life. Registration link buytickets.at/queenmaryuni... - with @shirinmrai.bsky.social @theobourgeron.bsky.social , but also with...
Official UK oil and gas statistics and projections suggest that 93% of the oil and gas that is likely to be produced from the North Sea has already been extracted.
eciu.net/media/press...
A prescient & informative article on how countries around the world locked themselves into LNG dependency, either as exporters or importers. Alongside the climate risks, the economic risks are now abundantly clear.
it has occurred to me recently that black snot is no longer a thing in London. It used to be a standard feature of a day in town.
Extreme weather is damaging homes and causing systemic risks to the financial and economic system.
What happens when climate change makes homes uninsurable? This week's New Economy Brief takes a look: neweconomybrief.net/the-digest/w...
I met with AI data labelers in Kenya who are organizing their colleagues to fight the brutal working conditions and horrible pay given to the workers at the "bottom of the AI supply chain." They believe the NDAs they've signed are unenforceable so are speaking out:
www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...
end of an era
It’s exactly a month until my book publishes on 9 April! THE ASSET CLASS is a narrative investigation of private equity, a relentlessly destructive wing of finance that infiltrates almost every corner of modern life. Here are some of the very generous things that people have said about it so far…
"Wars of choice rarely confine themselves to their intended targets. They consume not only the combatants but the assumptions that animate them."
The dry and the wet burn together - by @eskandarsadeghi.bsky.social www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...
Bar graph comparing emissions from Grok's fossil-fuelled data centres to avoided emissions from Tesla's products for the years 2023 and 2024.
Comparison of emissions from manufacturing xAI's chatbot responses (5,127,553 tonnes CO2e) versus all Tesla products (1,056,000 tonnes CO2e) with respective analyses.
*New short blog* - finally (with help) got around to getting a total estimate of Grok's climate pollution 🫠
- Once all fossil gas online, = to between half and all of Tesla's ANNUAL GLOBAL avoided emissions
- Currently, 5x the emissions of Tesla's total manufacturing
ketanjoshi.co/2026/03/02/m...
One factor currently putting private credit’s value at risk is the future of software With the ascent of AI .. about 20 percent of loans in private credit funds are to tech companies. Oracle has borrowed at least $56 billion from banks for its expansion of data centers to be leased by OpenAI. 💯
Hamba kahle Susan George. Her 1988 Fate Worse than Debt connected so many dots for me. She offered clarity without jargon, rigour without deference, and a platform for scholarship in service of struggle at TNI. 91 years, very well lived. www.tni.org/en/article/s...
📣 New on the CLaSP Blog: Bargaining over job loss: trade union legitimacy in the UK steel industry, by Chris McLachlan
www.claspblog.org/blogposts/le...
Concerned about ICE's $45 billion plan to convert warehouses into immigration detention centers? This is what they'll look like inside. From ICE's plan for the Social Circle, GA facility. Each little dot: a person. www.socialcirclega.gov/home/showpub...
Thanks to @claudinegrisard.bsky.social for pointing me towards this great special issue of CPA on 'The financialization of daily life: the lived experience of financially responsible behaviour?'
www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...
The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering
The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory
OKAY BIG ONE FOR YA
NEW report out today: I dig deep into how big tech has been muddling tech types and overstating evidence to claim "AI" will make global emissions drop like a stone....
Not only will it not, it seems to be verifiably doing the opposite!!
ketanjoshi.co/2026/02/17/b... + 📼+🧵>
