Brett Christophers

Warning! This “Colorful Chart” is Censored by IPCC James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha and Dylan Morgan

“One implication of the increased growth rate of GHG forcing in the last 15 years is that the goal to keep global warming under 2°C is now implausible.” open.substack.com/pub/jimehans...

Can We Blame Private Equity for Everything? Did PE firms make the world worse? Or was it something else?

A new piece for @thenation.com on everyone's favourite industry -- private equity; in conversation with one of the many new books on PE, by Megan Greenwell.

Here:

Working Nature Working Nature offers a history of the energy economy and its representations over the 19th and 20th century.Russ argues that “Energy” is not a thing nor an ability, but a social relation to nature fo...

the most anticipated book of 2026:
bravo @ueberdruss.bsky.social !!

www.versobooks.com/products/334...

Can We Blame Private Equity for Everything? Did PE firms make the world worse? Or was it something else?

A new piece for @thenation.com on everyone's favourite industry -- private equity; in conversation with one of the many new books on PE, by Megan Greenwell.

Here:

Where does our waste go? Podcast Episode · The LRB Podcast · 19/11/2025 · 57m

On the pod: @brettchristophers.bsky.social joins @moonjeykey.bsky.social to discuss what happens to our rubbish. They talk about where it goes and why it’s so difficult to get rid of it, let alone reduce its quantity, when waste creation is so much more profitable.
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Brett Christophers · Assume the worst: Where our waste goes Just as Big Oil has repeatedly failed to deliver on pledges to begin decarbonising, so too the promises of plastics...

“it is abundantly clear that corporate social responsibility was and is a myth”. This is an excellent piece on the problem of waste by @brettchristophers.bsky.social
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

The Politics of Late Urban Entrepreneurialism: The Innovation District The Politics of Late Urban Entrepreneurialism provides a critical examination of how innovation district transformation in Barcelona has led to periodic crisis and an overproduction of commercial real...

Out today!

www.routledge.com/The-Politics...

Pitching What We Publish We’re interested in original ideas and clear, compelling writing that breaks down complex subjects for an engaged but non-expert audience. The best guide to what we might like is to…

Submissions for ISSUE #3 – AIRBORNE, are now open!

We are accepting pitches exploring the importance of air in the climate and ecological crises, its role in environmental history and activism, and its future on a transformed planet.

More details 👇

Brett Christophers · Assume the worst: Where our waste goes Just as Big Oil has repeatedly failed to deliver on pledges to begin decarbonising, so too the promises of plastics...

‘What distinguishes plastic from other forms of waste is that the problem does not then go away. Try as we might to make it disappear through incineration or landfill, we can’t.’

@brettchristophers.bsky.social talks trash.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Brett Christophers · Assume the worst: Where our waste goes Just as Big Oil has repeatedly failed to deliver on pledges to begin decarbonising, so too the promises of plastics...

I got to write about our global waste problem for @lrb.co.uk, in dialogue with 3 really good books, by @alexclapp.bsky.social, Oliver Franklin-Wallis and John Scanlan.

You can read it here:

The banality of evil: how Epstein’s powerful friends normalised him Long after his conviction for sexual abuse, people in royalty, academia, business, journalism and politics sought his ear

The only amusing thing about Summers/Epstein is this journalist referring to Summers as a "leftwing academic". LOL.

Also, how did it take so many so long to peg Summers as a wrong'un? Already in 1991 he was trumpeting the economic logic of "dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country".

Very senior economist speaks out against Summers and against the discipline continuing to bestow privileges and honors on him; calls out sexism in economics.

You'd think this site should be flooded with similar threads...

Brett Christophers · Assume the worst: Where our waste goes Just as Big Oil has repeatedly failed to deliver on pledges to begin decarbonising, so too the promises of plastics...

‘It is abundantly clear that corporate social responsibility was and is a myth. Even if firms claim to recognise their social and environmental responsibilities, profitability always trumps them when they clash.’

@brettchristophers.bsky.social on where our waste goes.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

“A Country of Long Credits and Long Seasons”: The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the Agrarian Question A major contradiction in U.S. capitalism before the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was a mismatch between the credit needs of agriculture and the financial resources of the country. Pitching the South...

Fantastic article by Mikael Omstedt on the early, regionalised Fed and finance capital's difficulties with the "agrarian question" -- carrying on the seminal work of George Henderson

Brett Christophers · Assume the worst: Where our waste goes Just as Big Oil has repeatedly failed to deliver on pledges to begin decarbonising, so too the promises of plastics...

‘These deals were tools of economic development. By 1988, the estimated dollar value of the toxic waste flowing from the global North to the global South exceeded the value of the parallel flow of developmental aid.’

@brettchristophers.bsky.social talks trash.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

29.1 degrees in France! In November!

Would you like a free up and coming urban history book for Christmas? Would you like to write a review for us at @urbanhistory.bsky.social? We have the books and you have the words! Browse the below list and get in touch if you want to write us a review:

Climate effects aside, just the sheer scale of our emissions are astounding. Humanity makes more CO2 every year than all other materials we produce combined

Reading Stuart Hall for the Climate Crisis Stuart Hall’s politics of culture offers the left a blueprint for confronting the climate crisis.

Excited to be soft-launching a new online essay series for @the-breakdown.bsky.social - (re)reading radical thinkers for the climate crisis.

First up is Casey A. Williams on Stuart Hall and his analytical power for climate strategy today.

www.break-down.org/reading-stua...

Brett Christophers · Assume the worst: Where our waste goes Just as Big Oil has repeatedly failed to deliver on pledges to begin decarbonising, so too the promises of plastics...

I got to write about our global waste problem for @lrb.co.uk, in dialogue with 3 really good books, by @alexclapp.bsky.social, Oliver Franklin-Wallis and John Scanlan.

You can read it here:

Housing is central to the social dynamics of cities. However, many recent citywide analyses of social change have largely set aside housing to concentrate on shifts in income and occupational class structure. In this paper, we argue that examining the intersections of class with tenure provides a richer framework for making sense of patterns and processes of urban social change. Using data from the 2011 and 2021 Censuses, we examine (1) how the intersecting occupational class and housing tenure position of households in London has changed over the decade before (2) analysing the shifting locational and tenure positions of middle- and working-class households in the capital. The results show that ‘leasing space’ through the private rented sector is a key dynamic enabling the continued gentrification of Inner London boroughs. The apparent persistence of working-class London meanwhile masks disadvantageous changes in the residential position of working-class households, as declines in working-class homeownership and social housing have been offset by the growth of working-class private renting in the northern and western suburbs. These restructuring trends have major implications for social inequalities of wealth, residential security and access to opportunities.

New open access paper with Rory Coulter

Leasing space through the private rented sector: The intersections of class and tenure change in London, 2011–2021

doi.org/10.1177/0042...

The distribution of populations in cities is increasingly tied to the strategies of property investors and developers

Inflation-targeting (IT) central banks fared no better in controlling the 2021-2023 inflation than non-IT central banks, according new paper from IMF.
www.imf.org/en/publicati...
We need a new macropolicy framework. WIll be working on this over the next two years with my team @iipp-ucl.bsky.social

it is almost as if someone was promoted beyond their ability

No oil peak until 2035, even under stated policies (pink line). No gas peak in sight. Grim stuff

Maybe it's just me, but I find the positive tone of posts like this infuriating. It isn't "good" news.

To limit warming to 2 (not 1.5) degrees, emissions must fall by ~8% p.a., every year, from NOW.

Fossil fuel use GROWING for ~5 more years would be an unmitigated disaster.

This is an excellent article - highly recommended.

Shell quits giant floating projects in blow to ScotWind Oil giant hands back lease for 3GW Campion Wind after swap deal with former partner Iberdrola

The Scottish Government's plans for offshore wind expansion continue to fall apart as Shell cancels a 3GW floating wind project.

As @brettchristophers.bsky.social argues, even large-scale renewables development is seldom profitable enough for oil majors.

A public pathway is the only way forward.

One solution is to advocate for elected officials to adopt the "Canadian model," where private management firms oversee the investment of public pension fund dollars at arm's length from the pension funds and their administrators. In the US, pension fund boards are typically a mix of elected officials or former elected officials. At pension funds, such as Calpers, the overlap of investment and political duties has raised conflict-of-interest concerns. Some Republican politicians in the state, for example, have accused the pension fund's fiduciaries of making politically motivated investments in sustainable and ESG products. The Canadian pension fund management companies, such as CPP Investments, are overseen by boards of directors that operate separately from the federal and provincial governments. Investment professionals and corporate executives with specific financial expertise sit on these boards and are unbound by the political and civil salary caps that restrict their US neighbors.

take the politics out of pensions = remove it as far as possible from democratic control.

from Pitchbook's "Capital Pool" newsletter pitchbook.com/tag/capital-...

Federal budget’s focus on extraction and fossil fuels does little to help average Canadians and First Nations All of this spending and investment is justified as an urgent measure to protect the country against the tariff and trade wars with the United States. But Canada’s industrial policy

New piece: Private and public capital are flooding into mining and LNG development in the service of a war economy. Over 44 per cent of the Liberal budget is allocated toward defence spending that will eventually slap a Canadian flag on missiles and submarines.

www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Lula’s Dilemmas and COP30 Adrienne speaks to Sabrina Fernandes about the complexities of Brazilian ecological politics at the start of the COP30 climate conference.

For the latest episode of @the-breakdown.bsky.social podcast (we're back!), I spoke to @sabrinafernandes.bsky.social about Brazilian ecological politics, developmentalism and her essay "Lula's Dilemma"

Listen below / wherever you get your podcasts 🌳🍃

www.break-down.org/lulas-dilemm...