Stop the climate-wrecking Silvertown Tunnel

This Briefing, published by the Transport Action Network, answers some of the claims made in support of the £2 billion Silvertown tunnel road-building scheme. I am a supporter of a local campaign against the tunnel project, which is incompatible with London making a fair contribution to climate targets and undermines efforts to move London's transport system away from car dependence

Everyday life and capitalism's ecological crisis

A review of The Imperial Mode of Living: everyday life and the ecological crisis of capitalism, by Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen.  

Unused Tools: How Central Banks are fuelling the climate crisis

Oil Change International's report, to which I contributed research. "While some central bank executives claim that tackling the climate crisis is beyond their mandates, at the same time they have positively reinforced fossil fuel financing, and even directly financed fossil fuel production. [...] Central banks have the tools to catalyze and accelerate the end of financing for fossil fuels — through monetary policy, regulatory action, and excluding fossil fuel assets from their own portfolios. But, with only limited exceptions, they are not using these tools."  

Don’t Expect Real Climate Solutions From COP26. It Functions for Corporations

 My comments on the upcoming climate talks in Glasgow, in Truthout.

Azerbaijan's gas sales strategy at a crossroads

The natural gas sales contract between the Shah Deniz consortium and Botas of Turkey, covering 6.6 bcm/year from the first phase of the project, expired last month and was not renewed. Deliveries stopped. In an Energy Comment for the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, I wrote that this throws a shadow over the future of the Southern Gas Corridor and the timing of Azerbaijan gas development.

Strategies for the new climate war

My review of The New Climate War by Michael Mann, in The Ecologist. “Enemy weapons, Michael Mann argues, include greenwash, illusory technofixes, and deflecting attention to individuals not companies. Agree. But the further Mann goes into the social implications of transition from fossil fuels, the greater problems I had.” 

Ukraine-EU gas market integration: short-term progress, long-term challenges

My colleague Jack Sharples and I wrote a paper, just published by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, that surveyed the recent changes in the gas storage market in Ukraine, the use of that storage capacity by European traders, and how this fits into the larger picture of the integration of the Ukrainian and European gas markets.  

Response to Greenwich borough Climate Neutral Plan 2021-2030

I have written a response to the consultation on the Carbon Neutral Plan 2021-2030 for Greenwich borough, where I live. The plan recognises problems with carbon offsetting and negative emissions technologies: I suggested the council go further, and think in terms of a “zero carbon plan”. I urged the council to focus on the carbon budgets in the Tyndall centre Scatter tool, rather than those used by government. I suggested a wide public discussion on combining decarbonisation aims with measures to achieve social justice and resist government austerity policies. I called on the council to reverse its support for the climate-wrecking Silvertown Tunnel, the largest infrastructure project in the borough, which is incompatible with aspirations for cutting transport sector emissions. The council’s stubborn support for the tunnel is eroding local democracy, I argued, and I asked: “why would residents listen to anything the council has to say about the climate emergency, if it continues to support the tunnel project, so damaging for decarbonisation and air pollution policies, and does not even explain why?”  

The Direct Air Capture road to socialism?

I have taken a critical look at "left" support for geoengineering, and at talk of "ecological Leninism", in this review essay of Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency by Andreas Malm. The essay was published by Capitalism Nature Socialism (March 2021). And the final draft of the text (pretty much what ended up being published) is downloadable here.

The transition away from fossil fuels: What could, and could not, be achieved by a Green New Deal

 I gave this talk, on zoom, to Teachers Against the Climate Crisis in India.

The market takes shape: the Ukrainian gas sector to 2030

Domestic gas market reform is moving ahead in Ukraine. The cycle of disputes with Russia on transit has been broken by the deal struck at the new year; the transit business continues to decline, while the storage business is soaring and interconnections with European markets are developing. Market pricing has been adopted for the residential sector, and the largely unreformed heat sector should follow in May 2021. Over the longer term, Ukraine’s integration not only with European gas markets but with European energy policy will determine whether gas demand will fall with coal or find new openings, firstly in the power sector. My paper published by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, is here.

Moscow, 1990: when Trotskyist travellers met Soviet reality

My retrospective, published by Open Democracy, on a Trotskyist meeting I helped organise in Moscow in 1990, and on Trotskyism before, during and after the collapse of the USSR.