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...
Of course, both Badenoch and Farage *want* Britain to be more reliant on gas imports. Both have taken money from fossil fuel lobby groups, and both represent the interests of the oil and gas industry.
but what would effective execution even look like in this context? It seems to me if they'd realistically weighed up the risks they'd have given diplomacy more of a chance!
🤯 every day I'm more stunned at just how unprepared the Trump admin, with access to world-leading intelligence and expertise, was for the fallout of attacking Iran
It is extremely difficult to construct a practical case against this position. Net Zero is now as much about patriotism as it is about climate change.
UK's Climate Change Committee has some of the smartest minds working on modeling the costs of how to get to net zero. And this assessment is likley to be applicable to any fossil-fuel import dependent country.
🎁🔗 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public.
I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.
1/ Here's what I can share:
Reaching net zero by 2050 ‘cheaper for UK than one fossil fuel crisis’
- @thecccuk.bsky.social finds move to renewable energy would also bring health, economic and security benefits
#climatecrisis
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Reaching net zero by 2050 is often framed as a cost burden.
The UK Climate Change Committee’s latest analysis suggests the opposite.
The real risk is fossil fuel dependency.
Wow, an article that says to 'break the link', and then explains how that would be done. Big admiration for that, I do not have to tap the sign!
The idea needs interrogation (a mix of market bifurcation with an 'Iberian exception' twist?), but fair play.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
For every pound spent on net zero, the benefits would outweigh the cost by between 2.2 and 4.1 times says @thecccuk.bsky.social
www.ft.com/content/d163...
I follow the news around local data center resistance fairly closely. This one stands out.
The idea the North Sea is some great goldmine waiting to be tapped is entirely at odds with reality.
whistling is an expression of joy! alas my children share your opinion on this 🥲
Attacks leave dead vs killed
Good for the hed/dek writers at @nytimes.com just now:
Not "appears to contradict" or "is at odds with" or "may give rise to suspicions that."
Flat out: "Contradicts." "Video shows." About the US blowing up a school full of little girls.
And of course, terrible for the world.
Helpfully Tim Leunig accepts as a premise that more North Sea drilling won’t make oil nor gas more affordable in the UK.
But his arguments about tax and the strategic benefit of allowing more North Sea licensing are flawed in key ways (as well as in ways that James has pointed out). Long 🧵 below:
“China … recognized its strategic vulnerability to oil shocks years ago and has been methodically decreasing it — not with warships, but with electric vehicles and high-speed electric rail.”
It’s an imperative to challenge—not accommodate—U.S. petrostate politics.
they went from being a new market entrant to the UK's biggest energy utility within a few years. I guess they still have that growth mindset. Doesn't seem sustainable though - at some point they'll overreach and lose trust
lol yes that surprised me too. As a satisfied energy customer I just updated my will with them and it turns out they bought the company that wrote the previous version. The exact same guy came to my home, with different branded stationery.
I wish I understood the financial engineering stuff
in April, the first International Conference for the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels will take place in Colombia
CLEW is bringing together a global, cross-border newsroom - providing 5 journalists with travel grants and access to the conference
⏳Deadline to apply: 17 March
“Israel depends on desalination plants for 80% of its drinkable water.
“About 90% of Kuwait’s water needs are met by desalination.
“Bahrain, where the drone strike occurred, is almost completely dependent on such plants for its population of 1.6 million.”
www.wsj.com/livecoverage...
Tehran is covered with thick dark clouds, and the rain is saturated with oil, per CNN.
The city exists surrounded by a mountain range, creating kind of a bowl that is holding in toxic materials that emerged after the US-Israeli bombing of oil facilities.
Here’s an actual news article on the topic. It supports the idea that the issue was outdated data, but not that the target was selected by gen AI. www.npr.org/2026/03/04/n...
Past fossil-fuel price spikes left import-dependent countries with two options: pay up or cut fuel use. Now there is an alternative in solar and batteries.
I looked at recent examples in Europe, Pakistan, Cuba to glean what might happen with the war on Iran.
🎁🔗 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?
A lot of people say AI isn't very good for the world and its outputs are routinely unreliable, but these haters fail to see how it's revolutionizing how we incinerate schoolchildren.
Who profits from an energy crisis in the wake of the war on Iran?
The 1%.
Thanks @nytimes.com @hclairebrown.bsky.social for covering our research.
Link to coverage: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/c...
Link to our article:www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
"Today’s AI mania rhymes: Gas and nuclear vendors that can’t beat energy efficiency and renewables in competitive markets are leveraging hype into mandates and subsidies to rescue their losers," write Amory Lovins and Justin Locke: www.canarymedia.com/articles/dat... 🔌💡
