Melania Trump says she ‘never had a relationship’ with Jeffrey Epstein – US politics live First lady holds press conference where she also said ‘I am not Epstein’s victim’; it was unclear whether she was responding to any specific accusations

In a follow-up statement she said she was actually born in Boise, Idaho and met Donald Trump when he visited the nunnery where she was a novice.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/live...

Why Passive Cooling Matters More in a Hotter, More Volatile World As temperatures rise and cooling demands soar, energy systems face increasing strain. The International Energy Agency warns of a tripling of energy demand for cooling by 2050, highlighting the urgency of passive cooling measures. These strategies can reduce energy costs, enhance resilience, and improve public health, ultimately addressing rising heat challenges in an economically sensible way.

Heat is no longer a comfort issue. It’s a cost, resilience, and security issue. My latest post explores why passive cooling may be one of the most overlooked climate and business strategies of this decade, especially as energy prices lurch with every geopolitical shock.

The Infrastructure Was Built for the Climate We Had. Not the Climate We’re Getting - Climate Confident Heat is becoming a business risk in plain sight. And if cooling demand is set to soar, the energy transition has a problem most people still aren’t talking about. In this episode, I’m joined by Rob At...

The bigger issue here is this: much of our infrastructure was built for the climate we had, not the climate we’re getting.

That has consequences for buildings, warehouses, data centres, rail, resilience… all of it.

Listen to the full episode here 👉 www.climateconfidentpodcast.com/1329991/epis...

We also got into the hidden economics of materials. In this case, titanium dioxide in paint. Cost. carbon. scale.

The interesting bit isn’t just better cooling performance. It’s whether a solution can be greener, cheaper, and easier to deploy through existing manufacturing channels.

Another point that stayed with me:
“A paint’s not gonna break down.”

Simple. But sharp.

Mechanical cooling can fail. Passive cooling just sits there doing its job. In a hotter, more volatile world, that matters more than many business leaders realise.

That changed how I think about this category.

Passive cooling isn’t just about comfort. It’s about resilience. Lower electricity demand. Lower emissions. Less strain on already stressed grids. And fewer failure points when heat becomes operationally disruptive.

One line from Rob cut straight through:

SUSTAINABILITY DOESN’T SELL ITSELF.

That’s not cynicism. It’s market reality. Climate tech scales when it saves money, reduces risk, and improves operations. Not because it sounds noble in a keynote.

That’s why I found my conversation with Rob Atkin, co-founder and CEO of Pirta, so interesting.

He’s working on passive cooling systems using coatings and paint additives. Which sounds niche… until you realise how much heat, cost, and grid strain are hiding in plain sight.

Air conditioning already accounts for about 15% of global electricity demand. And that’s set to triple by 2050.

We spend a lot of time talking about clean power. Much less talking about the fact that cooling itself is becoming a major climate and business problem.
#ClimateChange #PassiveCooling

It is TACO Tuesday, so will he:
1. Take out Iran in 1 night?
2. Open the Strait?
3. Extend the deadline (chicken out)? or
4. Something else (suggest in the comments)?

Ben Roberts-Smith arrested: former Australian soldier charged with five war crime murders in Afghanistan Roberts-Smith previously failed in his attempt to sue three newspapers which published allegations he murdered unarmed civilians and bullied comrades

Consequences.

This is why MAGA is never giving up power. They know as soon as they’re out of power, they’ll face convictions for their myriad crimes and brazen corruption.

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

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Fossil fuels don’t just drive emissions. They drive price shocks, exposure and instability. In this post, I unpack why renewables, grids, storage and electrification are now central to affordability,…

tomraftery.com/2026/04/03/why-fossil-fu...

Why Fossil Fuel Dependence Is a Terrible Business Model - Climate Confident What if fossil fuels aren’t just polluting, but a standing threat to economic stability?This episode makes the case that the energy transition is now as much about security and cost as it is about cli...

So this episode is about decarbonisation, yes.

But it’s also about resilience, cost control, energy security, and whether leaders still confuse familiarity with prudence.

Subscribe to Climate Confident.

Link: www.climateconfidentpodcast.com/1329991/epis...

That is changing how people think about EVs.

They’re not just lower-emissions cars.

They’re also a hedge against oil volatility.

That matters for households.
For businesses.
And for countries.

The EV angle is fascinating too.

We’ve spent years hearing about range anxiety.

Now petrol prices surge and suddenly the real issue appears:

pump anxiety

The real risk was never the battery. It was the pump.
#electricvehicles

One amazing stat:

Record wind + solar electricity generation in Great Britain in March avoided £1bn of gas imports in a single month.

That’s not green branding.

That’s hard cash.
Less fuel bought. Less exposure carried.

And no, I’m not pretending renewables solve everything by magic.

You need grids. Storage. Transmission. Flexibility. Faster permitting.

But those are build problems.

Not perpetual tribute payments to global chaos.

The core idea in the episode is simple:

This is not really fossil vs clean.

It’s fuel dependence vs infrastructure.

One keeps billing you forever.
The other, once built, starts working for you.

I recorded a new Climate Confident+ bonus episode on this because I was genuinely angry reading the numbers.

War is always horrific.

This one also shows, again, how fossil fuels spread damage far beyond the battlefield.

€14 billion.

That’s how much the Iran war added to the EU’s fossil fuel import bill in just 30 days.

And we’re still told fossil fuels mean “energy security”.

They don’t. They mean exposure.
#climatechange #energysecurity #renewableenergy #iranwar

The Iran War, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Real Cost of Fossil Dependence - Climate Confident War doesn’t just kill people. It also blows up energy security, drives up emissions, and exposes fossil fuels for the liability they’ve always been.In this first Climate Confident+ bonus episode, avai...

That’s what this bonus episode is about.

Less fluff. More signal. More timely analysis when events move faster than the regular publishing cycle.

If that sounds useful, subscribe to Climate Confident+ and listen to the full episode here www.climateconfidentpodcast.com/1329991/epis...

This changed how I frame the whole debate.

Clean energy is no longer just the moral case.
It’s the security case.
The industrial strategy case.
The affordability case.
The resilience case.

The cheapest route to energy security is increasingly not drilling, escorting, and bombing. It is building.

Fossil dependence used to be held up as energy security. No more. Its fragility has been exposed. It is geopolitical exposure. Real energy security comes from electrification, renewables, storage, efficiency, and stronger grids.

But that is not the same as saying electrification doesn’t matter.

It means the more an economy builds around renewables, storage, efficiency, and stronger grids, the less exposed it becomes to exactly this kind of fossil-fuel shock.

There’s nuance here though.

A critic could say: “electrification doesn’t magically solve this overnight.”

True. If the grid is still coal-heavy, short-term outcomes can still get worse before they get better. India gets 79% of its domestic energy from coal. Reality refuses tidy slogans.

And here’s the part too many people miss:

wars like this don’t just wreck lives and markets. They can worsen emissions too.

India is already facing gas disruption severe enough to push parts of the economy back towards coal, kerosene, and biomass. That is a direct line from war to higher emissions

What really hit me while putting this together was the obscenity of the opportunity cost.

The same $88.7bn could instead buy roughly:
128GW of utility-scale solar
85GW of onshore wind
462GWh of battery storage

These are not toy numbers. These are system-shaping numbers

One fifth of the world’s oil and gas passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

If your energy system depends on tankers getting through an active war zone, that’s not energy security.

That’s exposure.