wonkhe.com/blogs/treati...

Nuclear clouds: the infrastructural convergence of AI and energy systems This short commentary maps the convergence of industrial AI infrastructures and national energy systems, with a focus on the role that nuclear power plays in these ambitions. Drawing from examples ...

tinyurl.com/7w777xrn

buff.ly/GBU8ZOS

Competing causalities: The politics of disaster attribution between climate finance and community narratives How disasters are explained and understood plays a key role in determining which adaptation responses are considered possible. International climate f…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

WORLD VIEW 15 April 2026 Why more fossil fuels won’t fix the Iran energy crisis Climate-friendly technologies are the best way to stymie rising inflation — and will get better and cheaper over time. By Gernot Wagner Spend any time discussing solar and wind power as a solution to climate change, and you are sure to encounter someone who asks about reliability. The Sun does not shine at night and the wind does not always blow, so fossil fuels will be needed forever as a back-up, they argue. But how reliable are fossil fuels? In the past two months, conflict in Iran has created an energy crisis — the latest in a series. Oil prices spiked within days of the start of US, Israeli and Iranian bombing in the Gulf region on 28 February. Fuel prices remain high and volatile, and the ripple effects are set to increase inflation in the coming months. Isabel Schnabel, a member of the European Central Bank’s executive board, memorably named this effect fossilflation in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. There was, and is, one clear winner: renewables and other low-carbon technologies, from batteries to electric vehicles (EVs) and heat pumps. That is what distinguishes this Middle East oil and gas crisis from the Arab oil embargoes of the 1970s. Then, renewables were mostly unavailable, and industrial decarbonization was on few people’s radars. Solar power cost at least 500 times more than it does today, and EVs, heat pumps and induction stoves were a pipe dream. Ditching fossil fuels is not all smooth sailing. In 2022, European natural-gas prices spiked to ten times their levels before the Ukraine invasion, resulting in long waiting times for solar panels and heat pumps. Prices for these rose as demand outpaced supply, an effect Schnabel dubbed greenflation. She used a third term, climateflation, to describe the economic effects of climate-induced weather extremes, such as food-price rises from crop failures (M. Kotz et al. Commun. Earth Environ. 5; 2024).

The Iran War has once again led to a bout of what @isabelschnabel.bsky.social memorably dubbed 'fossilflation'.

It's en vouge to talk about the solution as some massively complex undertaking. It really isn't. Get off fossil fuels faster.

My latest just out @nature.com

rdcu.be/fdxig

Making expertise in international environmental governance: establishing loss and damage expert groups in the UNFCCC This article advances the third generation of expertise scholarship by exploring how expertise is produced through socio-material practices within global climate governance. The Paris Agreement com...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Map showing the western United States mean temperature for January to March 2026 relative to a 1991-2020 departure.

Almost the entire Western United States is averaging more than 5°F warmer than the most recent 1991-2020 climate baseline so far in 2026, which is truly remarkable. Off the color scale here!

Graphic from wrcc.dri.edu/my/

Place, Climate Change and the Experience of Loss When places deteriorate due to climate change, people's connections to them (attachment) are also affected. The loss of the life possibilities sustained by places as a result of climate change is at ....

Paper alert: wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Our researcher, Pablo Fernandez Velasco, together with Virginia De Biasio, connects the experience of ecological grief to place attachment and incommensurable losses.

Central bank bosses enlist for war game to gauge threat of Lehman-style bust Finance chiefs to join exercise in Washington designed to assess how they would handle collapse of significant bank

Central banks meet to gauge threat of Lehman-style bust.

Tests incomplete - shadow banks, including hedge funds & private equity are unregulated.

UK Govt deregulating retail banks.

Major banks will be bailed out by the public purse. No incentive to behave responsibly.

Reparations and our hopes for the future | Letters Letters: Sunit Bagree calls for a collective effort to eliminate the scourge of illicit finance, while Dr Pat Ryan says those who benefited directly from the proceeds of slavery should pay

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Headline from The Guardian: Traders placed over $1 billion in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war. What is going on?

Yeah geez weird impossible to know I guess

Lauren Berlant with Michael Dango

open.spotify.com/episode/5mjo...

ING’s Answer in the Milieudefensie Climate Case Is a Direct Challenge to the Legal Theory Behind Financed Emissions Claims In perhaps one of the most important climate cases that is unfolding in 2026, we now have ING's statement of defence in Milieudefensie v ING. In this climate case against ING, rather than targeting a ...

www.climate-court.com/post/ing-s-a...

It’s coming, and you know it.

The Roundup Podcast #25 How the AI boom could cause a financial crisis; how tenants took on their landlord and won; and why you should be worried about a super El Niño.

This week's podcast - on AI and financial crisis, tenants taking on their landlord, and the likelihood of a super El Niño - is now live!

Substack: open.substack.com/pub/gracebla...

Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/roundu...

Thank you!

The War on Iran: A Conversation Four scholars on the consequences of U.S. and Israeli aggression, reactions from Iran and the Iranian diaspora, and the warped analysis that pervades U.S. media.

“Anti-imperialism without feminism can easily collapse into support for authoritarianism, but feminism without anti-imperialism becomes cheerleading for empire. The record of Iranian history is very clear. There can be no freedom or democracy under the boot of empire.” —Manijeh Moradian

Because capitalist firms must continue to achieve valuations or dividend payouts at an ever increasing rate, merely generating profits is considered failure, and these firms will be targeted for sell-offs or takeovers. It doesn’t matter if you make a good product at a good price; in fact it’s not even necessary to have a real product. Many startups with huge valuations had completely fabricated products (theranos), illegal products (YieldStar), products based entirely on insider trading (prop betting) or pump and dump scams (meme coins), or unworkable business models that required a decade of massive subsidies in order to put market competitors out of business so they could achieve monopoly status and jack up prices (Uber, AirBnb).

Shana Marshall may have written the best description of late capitalism with US characteristics I have ever seen:

www.securityincontext.org/posts/a-viol...

I’ll be in Edinburgh next Thursday talking about THE ASSET CLASS at @lighthousebks.bsky.social - get your ticket here: lighthousebookshop.com/events/the-a...

Flyer with USF Logo for the 2026 CALL FOR APPLICATIONS of the International Fellowships on a Photo by Zeke Tucker

Flyer with USF Logo for the 2026 CALL FOR APPLICATIONS of the International Fellowships, on a blue background, with the following details: Open to early-to-mid-career urban scholars from the Global South; PhD must have been awarded within the last 10 years; Requires a Mentor at your chosen host university; deadline 6 July 2026 at 23:59 UTC +0; Apply online; This fully-funded program offers 3-9 month sabbatical research visits for urban scholars from the Global South.

📢 2026 USF International Fellowships - CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

This fully-funded program offers 3-9 month sabbatical research visits for urban scholars from the Global South.

Deadline: 6 July 2026
Read more & apply : https://ow.ly/ezMb50YILbw

Climate finance and the legitimacy machine: Insights from the Green Climate Fund in South Africa - Jonathan Barnes, Richard Perkins, 2026 The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is the principal multilateral mechanism for channelling climate finance to developing countries. This paper examines the processes ...

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The Platformization of Everything: From the End of the Like Button to AI Infrastructure in Space - Anne Helmond, 2026 A decade after the term was coined, “platformization” has evolved from describing the infrastructural expansion of platforms into other domains to capturing a b...

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Tragedy of the horizon on steroids: the green transition and credit ratings How do financial markets influence the green transition? Advocates of harnessing markets to foster the green transition claimed that market rationality is a reliable mechanism to channel investment...

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/DEWKJ...

Animal Spirits and Public Promises: Phantom Beavers and the Politics of Monetary Design By Rob Hawkes There is a spectre haunting Nigel Farage. The spectre of a beaver. On 11 March 2026, the Bank of England announced that, following a public consultation, its next series of banknotes …

Phantom Beavers! 🦫