For Earth Day, a Few Signs of Hope for Our Planet

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/c...

A Year After U.S.A.I.D.’s Death, Fired Workers Find Few Jobs and Much Loss

Obviously not the worst outcomes of Musk's evil destruction of USAID but still horrible to read these stories of what has happened to people who built careers on public service trying to help in the poorest places. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/u...

The Forces of Scarcity Hitting Asia May Soon Spread Across the World

NYT on the scale of impact across Asia of the US war of choice in Iran. Meanwhile US administration cronies make money out of trading opportunities from volatility and higher fossil fuel prices. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/w...

Press Briefing Transcript: Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four (G24), Spring Meetings 2026 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Pavis Devahasadin, a communications officer from the IMF's Communications Department. I would like to welcome everyone here in this room and our online a...

From the Spring meetings IMF/Bank: "developing country debt servicing of around $163 billion in 2024 outweighed overseas development assistance of about $47 billion plus foreign direct investment combined" www.imf.org/en/news/arti...

$30m an hour: big oil reaping huge war windfall from consumers, analysis finds Exclusive: Climate action blockers including Saudi Arabia, Russia and major fossil fuel firms set to make extra $234bn by end of 2026

$30m an hour: big oil reaping huge war windfall from consumers, extra $234bn by end of 2026

It is Trump's way of rewarding his backers. Corporations always profit from war whilst household/Govt budgets are decimated.

Govts must levy windfall taxes.

Cuts to overseas aid will worsen shocks to global economy, David Miliband says Exclusive: Former UK foreign secretary says poor and rich countries alike will be hit amid humanitarian crisis sparked by Iran war

David Miliband “there could hardly be a worse time to cut the aid budget. Because you have got very significant numbers of people in extreme poverty...and the evidence about the positive impacts of aid are in fact stronger.”

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

It's aggravating that we took money away from something the UK did - or rather used to do - rather well (international development) to spend it on something we do unbelievably badly (defence procurement). One of the many problems with using input measures to drive policy.

Opinion | Why Aren’t the Kids Out Protesting Against Trump?

Seems important... AI and social media reduce sense of agency, persistence, knowledge base - particularly among younger users. Promotes lack of political engagement, apathy, depression... Although this is an opinion piece the evidence base is strong. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/o...

‘Non-survivable’: heatwaves are already breaching human limits, with worse to come, study finds Analysis of six extreme heatwaves found when temperature and humidity were accounted for, all were potentially deadly for older people

“If it’s already happening now, then what does a future that is two or three degrees warmer hold?” Australian researchers have found that extreme heat mortality is "seriously underreported” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Conference in Colombia Could Mobilize an Economic Bloc Larger Than the US Against Fossil Fuels If it advances, the initiative could reshape the global energy market and push investment toward clean sources — leaving petrostates and their billion-dollar reserves stranded.

Will be worth watching how much momentum builds around the Just Transition away from Fossil Fuels initiative - conference in Colombia end of April infoamazonia.org/en/2026/04/0...

Not just about Gaza: the Muslim voters turning from Labour to the Greens Campaigning in Newcastle before next month’s local elections shows the rise of the far right, the climate and cost of living are concerning voters as much as the Middle East

Musharraf migrated to the UK from Bangladesh..“Many Muslims are from countries on the frontlines of climate change,” he said, adding that the Muslim community’s interest in the Greens is wrongly portrayed as being solely due to Gaza. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... absolutely bone-chilling reporting on yesterday's horrific attack on Lebanon. "There is no such thing as safety anymore"

No words.... www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Which would inspire more confidence if the US was not itself doing a good impersonation of a bad actor... 2/2

Opinion | Anthropic’s Restraint Is a Terrifying Warning Sign

Oh... Latest Claude thingy from Anthropic can detect flaws in pretty well any major software platform... Proposed solution - US and China to cooperate to prevent 'bad actors' getting access before the defensive fixes are installed. 1/2 www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/o...

Clever defence lawyer:
But you have to prove my client intended to commit genocide against an entire civilisation.

Worldly prosecutor:
May I read out this social media post.

The original anti-Zionists have been all but forgotten. Molly Crabapple wants to change that. in 'Here Where We Live Is Our Country,' the artist and journalist offers a family memoir and a history of the Jewish Bund.

On the original anti-Zionists - the Jewish Labour Bund of the early 20th Century... forward.com/culture/8165...

The internet is deciding what to forget Do digital bananas in Hawaiian shirts chatting up pineapples need to be saved for posterity? Probably not

the de-climatechageification of the internet giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Developing countries face rising financial stress amid tensions in the Strait of Hormuz.

Investor pullback weakens currencies and drives up borrowing costs, making capital harder to access when it’s needed most.

UNCTAD analysis: https://ow.ly/Wn9G50YEkQf

Line chart showing atmospheric CO₂ concentration at Mauna Loa Observatory from 1958 to 2024. A light blue sawtooth line shows raw monthly values, reflecting the seasonal cycle of plant growth. A dark blue smooth line shows the seasonally adjusted record, rising from 315 ppm in 1958 to over 426 ppm in 2024. A dashed red curve shows the super-exponential fit, with the instantaneous growth rate rising from 0.27%/yr in 1960 to 0.64%/yr in 2024, more than doubling over the period of the record.

1/ Why is atmospheric CO₂ accelerating faster than fossil fuel emissions are growing?

The answer is buried in the data, and it's more worrying than most people realise.

A thread. 🧵👇

Asia Depends on L.N.G. From the Middle East. This Is What Happens When It Runs Out. With a cutoff in shipments imminent, Asian countries, the biggest importers of liquefied natural gas from the Middle East, are already burning more coal and reducing consumption.

Countries across Asia are bracing for a complete cutoff in coming days of Middle Eastern LNG, a fuel that underpins power generation and industrial output across much of the region.

Opinion | Trump Is Setting the World on Fire. The Rest of Us Choke on the Fumes.

The madness of the US administration. A good account of the impact on South Asia. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/o...

Humans Had Dogs Before They Had Farming, Ancient DNA Confirms

duh - of course humans had dogs before farming - dogs are about watching over you while you sleep, and helping you to forage and hunt. Cats on the other hand... initially were about keeping the things that ate your stored crops under control.. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/s...

Trump administration is taking money Europeans and others have paid for arms for Ukraine and other purposes, not delivering said arms, and spending their cash to help with self-created Gulf mess. This is not a trustworthy power. Credibility incinerated.

The Iran War is Revealing the Messy Middle of Our Renewable Energy Transition

Some more of Gramsci's morbid symptoms... www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/m...

I’m actually surprised that it took him so long to say it.

Branding environmentalists as terrorists has very apparently been part of the plan all along.

Beavers bring biodiversity to wetlands, study shows Beavers should be embraced as key allies in the fight against biodiversity loss according to scientists at the University of Stirling, after new research revealed the significant ecological benefits t...

Beaver created wetlands are the best wetlands... phys.org/news/2026-03...

Analysis: UK is ‘halving’ its climate finance for developing countries

✍️ By @joshgabbatiss.bsky.social

Read the new analysis here ➡️ bit.ly/4t91fxL

The Prime Minister’s plan to offer rapid routes to settlement for those earning six-figure salaries whilst punishing and making lower-paid workers wait up to 15 years appears to be based on the notion that care workers are “low-skilled” because they are low-paid - its a disgrace