@nicholasbeuret
It’s not doom if it’s a best case scenario. Author of Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition out 23 Sept 2025 @versobooks | https://linktr.ee/orsomethingworse Lecturer, University of Essex
Gulf states have invested heavily in data centres & AI to secure an economic future. And now all of them, inc those in Iran, are under attack.
But what if AI is just a bad bet for growth in general?
On Braumol, Brenner and AI-stagnation
tinyurl.com/ysdf6nrf
This is a staggering paper. While people rightly worry about the AMOC collapsing, more worrying is the atmosphere itself becoming toxic to us
Just as the ocean is becoming more acidic, the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere increases physical and cognitive harms as early as 2070
"The [US] government estimates that 93% of new generation capacity expected to be added to the grid this year will come from wind, solar and batteries."
“No matter what Trump tries to do, he’s not going to see this resurgence of fossil fuels.”
-Bloomberg
I think there is a failure to appreciate just how damaging attacks on small 'c' conservationism have been to right wing parties. Ppl care about sewage, about forests, about birds. Going after all things 'Green' or 'Climate' has clear limits as a strategy
tinyurl.com/mt8dvbce
There is no direct movement from exposure to political preference, but as Reform’s errors and failings at a local level start to mount, I think we’ll see movement in the places political pundits least expect it
tinyurl.com/4xrxd54z
One reason rural and coastal regions could be more likely than assumed to vote Green is exposure
Reform has 8 MPs, representing 1% of the population
It’s constituencies get 4% of flood defence funding thou, as they are much more exposed
Meanwhile
"The large-scale disclosure of materials known as the “Epstein Files” has revealed “disturbing and credible evidence” of a possible global criminal enterprise involving systematic sexual abuse, trafficking and exploitation of women and girls"
news.un.org/en/story/202...
Climate change is amplifying the MAGA right's attack on women.
The health impacts of climate change will double down on the attack on women organised by the State through austerity, intensifying social reproductive work and exacerbating misogyny
tinyurl.com/4tud2jvb
ICYM In a year when the UK economy grew 1.1% the Low Carbon and Renewable Energy Economy grew 12 per cent. And yet somehow it remains received wisdom on much of the right of British politics that clean technologies are bad and must be stopped. www.businessgreen.com/news/4526135...
This is on tonight - if you are in Belfast come say hi!
Free - tinyurl.com/bdem2243
Reform's push back against net zero on behalf of the fossil fuel lobby will deepen Britain's decline - from SMEs and regional investment to the last remaining large companies, net zero is vital to the UK economy
eciu.net/analysis/rep...
And there goes the window in which the UK could have saved its steel industry by going green. China is moving rapidly to 'green' its heavy industry, both reducing blast furnace emissions and switching to electric arc furnaces
Expect more stories like Port Talbot to unfold -> tinyurl.com/2weensb5
The entire Suffolk & Norfolk coast is at risk. And protecting one part leads to increased erosion in others.
The coast is also already a space of climate displacement in Britain, where ppl pay to demolish their own homes
@novaramedia.com | tinyurl.com/y4ve4cnk
Half the world's nuclear capacity is on the coast, with another third near rivers. Rivers are increasingly prone to flooding w risk doubling over the past 40 yrs - and sea level rise is accelerating.
Building more nukes on fast-eroding coasts is a profoundly bad idea
Based on what we already see with AI, those low productivity services will include monitoring AI and data streams, making us the poor adjuncts to the AI that displaced us
Overall what happens isn't economic revival but a deepening of structural stagnation. Growth is over
/end
Both problems lead to a low-growth economy where essential services become unaffordable (ie., childcare) while TVs get cheap.
So what if AI does the same thing to services, creating a bifurcation between high and low productivity services?
4/5
The first problem is as manufacturing drives wages higher, service wages also go higher. So while goods get cheaper, services get relatively more expensive
Secondly, jobs shift to the service sector, exacerbating the problem of cost and overall low market productivity
3/5
This quote looks a lot like an AI version of Baumol's Cost Disease.
Baumol's Cost Disease describes how productivity increases in manufacturing are coupled to stagnation in services productivity, leading to two problems.
2/5
Will AI transform Baumol's Cost Disease, bifurcating services, creating high & low productivity silos?
"Despite repeated boasts of record productivity, white-collar workers lost jobs to machines, forced into lower-paying roles."
tinyurl.com/mu6y5acc
1/5
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Extreme rain in Western Europe and Morocco has decimated Europe's "winter pantry" - salad and fruit crops exported northwards when the rest of Europe can't produce them.
It's not just food - damage extends to irrigation systems, farm machinery and rural roads
Shoddy as a mode of political accumulation - after the end of growth and with the rise of political capitalism, amongst the smaller businesses that are making the climate transition, scams and fraud have emerged as key modes of accumulation
tinyurl.com/ad4wv6u5
Only one more day to get my book on the climate transition economy 'Or Something Worse' cheap in the @versobooks.bsky.social sale! Less than a tenner - a steal!
www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...
The UNHCR is using refugees in Uganda and Rwanda to generate carbon credits.
My latest, based on writing by @nicholasbeuret.bsky.social, @matildaf.bsky.social, and @davidharvie.bsky.social.
Big Polluters will get cheap carbon credits and keep polluting.
reddmonitor.substack.com/p/how-the-un...
Not angry, just disappointed: the shoddy reality of the climate transition
(Or how the transition is being botched, and what it means politically)
tinyurl.com/bdc4fx5j
Climate change is getting personally expensive in the North...
Insurance payouts due to storms and flooding are exploding. UK payouts for 2025 totalled £1.6bn, up from £1.3bn in 2024, and double the average payout from 2017-2021
Community owned energy is both cheap to create and provides huge benefits. What does Labour do?
"Ministers intend to spend two-thirds less than planned on supporting the development of solar panels, batteries and heat pumps in libraries and community centres around the UK."
Flyer for talk by Nicholas Beuret, 'Or something worse: why we need to disrupt the climate transition' at Queen's university Belfast on 25th February
'Or something worse: why we need to disrupt the climate transition'
@nicholasbeuret.bsky.social
Wednesday 25th Februrary
Queen's University Belfast
Free and open to all
Green deindustrialisation in the north of China is underway. It’s not just Port Talbot…
“following a spree of relocations in recent years, 13mn tonnes of [aluminium] capacity — about 30% — now comes from new smelters in areas with clean energy [in the south]
