Fossil fuel consumption since 1950: the other side of the extractivist coin

Presentation at the World Ecology Research Network conference in Helsinki, 16 August 2018.

How Did It Come to This? Unsustainable fossil fuel consumption in historical perspective, 1950-2018

Here are notes and slides from my presentation at a seminar on 24 May, at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, at the University of Manchester. The room was packed, there were loads of questions, and the researchers and students there engaged with the issues, made me think, and made me welcome.

Let's not exaggerate: Southern Gas Corridor prospects to 2030

The Southern Gas Corridor will by 2030 supply to Europe, at most, enough for an extra 15 bcm/year of capacity on the Trans Anatolian pipeline - and, probably, less than that, I argue in a working paper published today by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

How Russia/EEU economic relations with the EU are reflected in the gas trade

Russian gas exports to the EU; the crisis of the Russia-Ukraine gas trade; and gas markets within the Eurasian Economic Union are covered in this presentation, given at a seminar at University College London (School of Slavonic and East European Studies).

The decline and fall of the Russia-Ukraine gas trade

Article in the Russian Analytical Digest (download here). … The Russia–Ukraine gas trade is being reduced to a shadow of its former self. Contracts between Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrainy—for the import of Russian gas to Ukraine and the transit of Russian gas across Ukraine to European customers, in 2009–19—remain in place, but have been broken by both sides. This analysis examines the state of affairs after the final ruling of the arbitral tribunal and looks beyond 2019.

After the Gazprom-Naftogaz arbitration: commerce still entangled in politics

In this Oxford Energy Insight, on the big arbitration case between Russian and Ukrainian gas companies, I argue that "Commerce has been unable to disentangle itself from politics".  

Russia: democracy, oligarchy, repression

Russia with its oligarchs, precarious workers, FSB officers and anti-fascists. An interview (9 March 2018) with Tom Rowley and me by James Butler on Novara FM, the Novara Media/Resonance FM show.

How fossil fuel use became unsustainable

A video of a talk I gave, on "How Fossil Fuel Use Became Unsustainable", at the Radical Anthropology Group in London on 20 February 2018, is now available on line.

Why haven't we turned our backs on hydrocarbons yet?

Why haven't we turned our backs on hydrocarbons yet? Interview with Pro-Ved (a Russian economic news web site), 19 December 2017. In English here, and Russian original here.

The social history of the Russian revolution, a century on

Here's a video of a talk I gave, on 23 November, about "the social history of the Russian revolution, a century on", in the Social Histories 1917 series at Birkbeck University London.

Workers and the Soviet state: lessons from the 1920s

Here's a video of a talk I gave on 3 November, on "Workers and the Soviet state: lessons from the 1920s", at the international conference on "1917-2017: hopes, utopias and legacies of the Russian revolution" at the Institut Marcel Liebman in Brussels.

Why unsustainable fossil fuel use keeps growing

On 19 September I presented at the LSE Grantham Centre on "how global fossil fuel use became unsustainable, 1950-2017". The slides and notes from my presentation are here. And my guest post for the LSE Grantham Centre is here. "The shocking thing about the rate of fossil fuel consumption since 1991 – by which time the scientific evidence for climate change was clear – is how inexorably it has risen."