Charlie Lawrie

Here's something that's not talked about enough

The air pollution from burning fossil fuels kills an estimated 10 million people a year

1 in 6 deaths is caused by fossil fuels

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

Green party reaches 100,000 members for first time after Polanski becomes leader Green party in England and Wales has had near-50% rise in membership since since Zack Polanski took over last month

If you missed the news last night, the Greens (in England & Wales) now have 100,000 members for the first time. At this rate - around 15,000 new members a week - they’ll very soon overtake the Conservatives.

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

‘Unimaginable horrors’: more than 50,000 children reportedly killed or injured in the Gaza Strip Statement by UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Edouard Beigbeder

www.unicef.org/press-releas...

Article link here: doi.org/10.1016/j.er...

This article is very STS-y, draws on fieldwork that we both conducted in Lebanon, and also does a big old review of the generator literature. If you're into energy transitions, the anthropology of energy or critical macrofinance, this article's for you.

Plus, the failure of big development finance and national grids has meant generators pop up to meet growing demand. Generators don't care about neoliberal finance feelings!

Generators are often a necessary precondition for solar rollouts around the world. Without that backup, micro-grids just couldn't work.

🌎New article! 🌎

Camillo Stubenberg and I have a new article out on why diesel generators are everywhere these days:

The Greens now have nearly 200 more councillors than Reform.

This is not something you'd be likely to guess from all the copiously salivating media coverage of Farage & his crew of billionaire-backed far-right chancers.

In about an hour we have a Commons urgent question on Kneecap, submitted by Tory MP Mark Francois. I genuinely remember when we last had a proper moral panic about popular music. It must be a while.

when you have no idea how to govern on the macrofinancial front, you go 'brr, migration' even if the universe screams at you it wont actually do much for your miserable poll standings, driven by your failures on the economy front

‘I had rose-tinted spectacles’: UK city dwellers on relocating during the pandemic As London once again becomes the most searched-for location on Rightmove, which is better, rural or city life?

This article says more about the state of the nation than it intends to, I think:

(tldr: Londoners benefit from amazing facilities but get soaked for rent, then move to countryside to discover non-existent facilities thanks to decades of austerity)

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

The fact that this monster can say shit like this and no one in the Euro-American governments say a word is a lasting stain on all our consciences.

Hello Wim, can't DM you but would love to review your book!

Larry Fink’s 2025 Chairman’s Letter to Investors | BlackRock Larry Fink shares how thinking on retirement can be reshaped, and how expanding access to capital markets can help build a more prosperous future.

Larry Fink's 2025 letter:

we will solve distributional crisis of capitalism if you give me your savings so I can privatise every public good under the sun.
We shall call this democratizing investment.

www.blackrock.com/corporate/in...

Thank you so much Benjamin! Your data were totally crucial to convincing us that there is a global story to unpack here. We'd really love your perspective on the paper

(PDF) Friend or foe? Diesel generators and the global energy transition PDF | This paper examines the factors driving the persistent success of diesel generators within the global political economy of electricity. Despite... | Find, read and cite all the research you need...

The article is out in ERSS soon (it's already gone through initial peer review) and the preprint is here. dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.... 13/13

So until we 'solve' the storage question, diesel generators are here to stay. That brings all sorts of political and economic questions around who governs and maintains generator systems. Ask any resident of Lebanon or Nigeria! 12/13

For me this last one is the most interesting argument: that renewables buildout (for now at least) is conditioned by fossil fuel expansion. But it's decentralised fossil fuel expansion, which we tend to forget when thinking about big coal and fossil gas plants. 11/13

3️⃣ Generators provide essential backup for renewables. So even when solar is being installed (as it is in massive volumes around the world), diesel generators are there for cloudy and rainy days. 10/13

2️⃣ Attempts to modernise and expand grids through private capital have failed (surprise!). Strangely, people won't wait until investments are 'de-risked' to access electricity: they'll just buy a generator or literally rent the wires. 9/13

1️⃣ Generators are a reliable, tried-and-tested technology. They're a combination of electromagnets and internal combustion engines, aka technologies that loads of car companies produce. Most of them get made in wealthier industrialised countries. They're also cheap to install and repair. 8/13

So why are generators so popular all of a sudden all around the world? In our paper, we suggest three reasons. 7/13

We learnt that (at least!) 17 countries have more generator capacity than grid generation. Insane. Thanks to @benjaminattia.bsky.social for those stats. 6/13

There's lots of lit on the health consequences and economic viability of generators, but nothing that situates them in the global political economy of electricity. That's what we try to do in our paper. 5/13

Generators are an old technology that are being rolled out wherever there's an unreliable grid. Lebanon, Nigeria, South Africa, Ukraine, the UK, the USA. 4/13

Camillo and I also want to thank all of our interlocutors in Lebanon for their time over the past few years during our fieldwork in a couple of stressful, awful years for all in Lebanon. 3/13

First of all, I want to thank @peternewell.bsky.social and Lucy Baker, my PhD supervisors, for their comments and encouragement on this paper (here as always throughout my PhD). 2/13

Diesel generators seem to be everywhere these days, chuntering on in the background.

But *why* are they everywhere? Where do generators sit in our grand schemes for electrifying the world?

Camillo Stubenberg and I have a new paper coming out soon that tries to answer these questions. 🧵👇 1/13

As I said to BBCBreakfast government *isn’t* proposing reform. It’s cuts.

The DWP has a genuine plan for reform to help more people get support, healthcare & work when they can.

Treasury is driving the opposite. Cruel & counterproductive cuts for short term savings.